Contributing musicians: Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman, Mick Taylor, Nicky Hopkins, Ian Stewart, Bobby Keys, Jim Price, Bill Plummer, Billy Preston, Jimmy Miller, Al Perkins, Richard "Didymus" Washington ("Amyl Nitrate"), Clydie King, Venetta Field, Jesse Kirkland, Joe Green, Dr. John (Mac Rebennack), Shirley Goodman, Tamiya Lynn, Kathi McDonald.
 

Rocks Off
Rip This Joint
Shake Your Hips
Casino Boogie
Tumbling Dice
Sweet Virginia
Torn and Frayed
Sweet Black Angel
Loving Cup
Happy
Turd on the Run
Ventilator Blues
I Just Want to See His Face
Let It Loose
All Down the Line
Stop Breaking Down
Shine a Light
Soul Survivor
 
 
 

(Main Street is in L.A.) You can see pimps, knives flashin', real inner city...

The front cover of the album is a photo (Robert Frank) took of a wall in a tattoo parlor in New York City. The wall is covered with photos of strange and unusual people. Frank filmed the Stones with a Super 8 amera, then made stills out of individual frames and composed the back cover to match his original wall picutre.

Exile is really a mixture of bits and pieces left over from the previous album recorded at Olympic Studios and which, after we got out of the contract with Allen Klein, we didn't want to give him: tracks like Shine a Light, and Sweet Virginia. Those were mixed up with a few slightly more grungy things done in the South of France. It's seen as one album all recorded there and it really wasn't. We just chucked everything in.

Some songs  - Sweet Virginia - were held over from Sticky Fingers. It was the same line-up and I've always felt those two albums kind of fold into each other... there was not much time between them and I think it was all flying out of the same kind of energy.

Mick: I hope the (next) record isn't so long getting out.
Chess: No, got to get the next one out by September.
Mick: Have we (started it yet?) Haven't we done half of it?
Chess: No, chucked it all away.
Mick: Oh, have we? See what I mean? We'd done half of it four weeks ago and now we've chucked it all away. And where do we stand? You just turn up... (To Chess) It's ALL thrown away, the other?
Chess: Yeah.

Yeah, (we're going to do the next album) right in me own basement, as it turns out. After months of searching I end up sitting on it.

Stoned is the word that might describe (the band at the time). (Laughs) It's the first album Mick Taylor's on, really (sic). So it's different than previous albums, which had Brian on them - or Brian not on them, as the case may be. It was a difficult period, because we had all these lawsuits going with Allen Klein. We had to leave England because of tax problems. We had no money and went to live in the South of France - the first album we made where we weren't based in England, thus the title.

We hadn't intended to record in my house. We did look around for studios around there once we'd all decided that was what we were going to do - but although there are plenty of very good French recording engineers now, at that time in the South of France in the early 1970s, there weren't too many. There were no studios with good rooms to work in, the equipment was shabby and nobody felt comfortable in any of the places we looked at. I had this basement, which was really very ugly, but it was the biggest one of all the houses we had down there, and we also had our own mobile recording truck. So we said, Why don't we just forget about looking for a studio. Let's bring in the truck and work around the problems; at least this way we don't have to ask interpreters every time we want to turn it off or on.

Recording at my place (Villefranche-sur-mer, France) was a necessity. The idea was to find another place to record like a farmhouse in the hills. But they couldn't find anywhere, so eventually they turned around and looked at me. I looked at Anita and said, Hey, babe, we're gonna have to handle it. Anita had to organize dinner sometimes for something like 18 people. We redid the basement kitchen into the studio.

I remember Gram Parsons sitting in the kitchen in France on day, while we were overdubbing vocals or something. It was crazy. Someone is sitting in the kitchen overdubbing guitar and people are sitting at the table, talking, knives, forks, plates clanking.

We cut at least thirty tracks in France. Mick was close to becoming a father and kept skipping off to Paris to see Bianca, which left Keith to lay down the rhythm riffs. On many of the tracks, Mick came in later. It was mid-summer on the Riviera when we cut most of the album and very humid and very hot working in the basement studio. Guitars didn't stay in tune and it was often difficult to get a really good drum sound. Many of the actual songs came quite late on. We had an awful lot of rhythm tracks with no songs written to them.

The recording at Nellcôte is what I really remember about Exile On Main Street, because the other tracks on the album were off-cuts, which we took down there and overdubbed. The drums were recorded down in the wine cellar. I had just moved to France and I used to have to drive from where I lived, through Nïmes and Aix-en-Provence to where Keith was. In those days they didn't have the autoroute; you can do the journey in four hours or so now, but in those days it was a six-and-a-half or seven-hour drive along these little raods. I couldn't do it every day, playing and then going home, so I used to have to live at Keith's but he was always upstairs and I'd be out in the day.

The basement was like a labyrinth of concrete and brick cubicles - not really separate rooms, more like stables, stalls. Charlie's round the corner in the second cubicle on the left, Bill's over there in that one, someone else is under the staircase. I could see Charlie's left hand flicking away. I would never rely on headphones; as long as I could see that I knew that we were in time.

You'd sort of jam an acoustic guitar into the corner of one of these cubicles and just start playing and you'd hear it back you'd think, that doesn't sound anything like what I was playing, but it sounds great. So you started to play around with the basement itself, aiming your amplifier up at the ceiling instead of like normal.

The sessions used to go on and on, night after night. Drums and guitars were in one room, the piano was in another, and the brass was done in the hallway. We had to have closed-circuit television monitors to see what was going on.

Actually, there were only four cuts that I wasn't on. Out of twenty tracks, Mick made a mistake with the credits on two of the cuts... We tend to fill in for each other, and the bass is easy to fill in for. If Charlie wasn't there it'd be difficult. If Mick isn't around he can always add his vocals the next day. If Keith isn't there - as he isn't on many tracks - he can overdub his parts later. I can never overdub, because you've got to get that rhythm track down with bass and drums together. So I'm at a disadvantage in that my instrument has to be present to build the foundation whether I'm there to play it or not. Yet if someone has filled in for me, I can't change it or overdub later on. Often when that happens I shift over to another instrument like keyboards or synthesizer.

We've not finished the album, we've just cut 20 tracks. Since July. Plus we've got about 28 others... The studios (at Keith's home) are not that great. OK, but not really good. It's TERRIBLE. I don't like it. Like it's too hot in the summer. I can't hear anything down there. We cut some nice things, but we'll mix it at Island (Studios) or some place.

(We were j)ust winging it. Staying up all night... Stoned on something; one thing or another. So I don't think it was particularly pleasant. I didn't have a very good time. It was this communal thing where you don't know whether you're recording or living or having dinner; you don't know when you're gonna play, when you're gonna sing - very difficult. Too many hangers-on. I went with the flow, and the album got made. These things have a certain energy, and there's a certain flow to it, and it got impossible. Everyone was so out of it. And the engineers, the producers - all the people that were supposed to be organized - were more disorganized than anybody.

The fact is that Mick spent most of his time during Exile away, 'cause Bianca was pregnant; you know, (sarcastically) royalty is having a baby. So what I am supposed to do? I'M supposed to be making an album. But I never considered it MY album.

I think that was Keith's album. Mick was always jumping off to Paris 'cause Bianca was pregnant and having labor pains. I remember many mornings after great nights of recording, I'd come over to Keith's for lunch. And within a few minutes of seeing him I could tell something was wrong. He'd say, Mick's pissed off to Paris again. I sensed resentment in his voice because he felt we were starting to get something, and when Mick returned the magic might be gone.

I did (write most of the lyrics last), but some of the tunes on there were from a previous session. I hate to puncture people's ideas. Most of them were written in a very short space of time but a couple were done earlier.

Exile was a double album. And because it's a double album you're going to be hitting different areas, including D for Down, and the Stones really felt like exiles. We didn't start off intending to make a double album; we just went down to the South of France to make an album and by the time we'd finished we said, We want to put it all out. We could have cut it in half and released a single album and then made another one, because double albums were very unpopular with record companies: the fact that you have to charge more is just one of the reasons why you shouldn't make a double album.

Stylistically, Exile being a double album, it had a lot of different styles on it. It really ran the gamut of what the Rolling Stones' interest was at that point. It's funny that while you're doing it you don't realize it quite as much. I don't think that when we did Exile we were trying to do every different style. We all thought it was a very hard-rocking album. When you actually listen to it, it's got a lot of different things on it.

Jimmy (Miller) was brilliant. At the height of his talents. And Glyn and Andy (Johns) - what a couple. In some ways so alike, in others so different. Glyn was the right guy at the right time for that element of controlled chaos. And Andy, though he was pretty young then, nothing seemed to faze him. They handled the whole thing very well under difficult circumstances. It sounded like making a record under bombardment.

At the time Jimmy Miller was not functioning properly. I had to finish the whole record myself, because otherwise there were just the drunks and junkies. I was in L.A. trying to finish the record, up against a deadline. It was a joke.

L.A. was a huge contrast. It was weird taking the tapes from that basement and playing it in real studios. Just trying to adjust and, What have we got here? Is it going to sound terrible? But guys would come dropping in just to listen from other sessions, so we started to feel real good about it.

I want the snares to CRACK and the voices to FLOAT.. It's tricky alright. You think you've got the voices sussed and all of a sudden, the backing track sems so... so... ordinaire. (To Andy Johns) (The cymbals) sound like dustbin lids.

Have you heard? They're at it again. They decided to remix the whole album. Been up 31 hours so far I hear. (Laughs) Always happens. The more you mix, the better it gets.

This new album is fucking mad. There's so many different tracks. It's very rock & roll, you know. I didn't want it to be like that. I'm the more experimental person in the group, you see I like to experiment. Not go over the same thing over and over. Since I've left England, I've had this thing I've wanted to do. I'm not against rock & roll, but I really want to experiment... The new album's very rock & roll and it's good. I think rock & roll is getting a bit... I mean, I'm very bored with rock & roll. The revival. Everyone knows what their roots are, but you've got to explore everywhere. You've got to explore the sky too.

It was cut during the summer and we'll be touring this summer, so it all fits in. It's a summer-y album and very commercial, I think... It's a double album, like Electric Ladyland. God knows there was enough in that for a year's listening... I expect, too, that eventually there'll be a live album coming out of the tour.

I don't know what (record reviewers) want. We put together a side you can listen to in the morning or fall asleep to late at night and it says, Side two is the only one without a barrelhouse rocker. Well, I mean, you can't please everyone, can you? Actually there's several nice things in it. It's only that they're always waiting for another Let It Bleed... God, when that one came out, the critical reaction was no better than lukewarm.

When the record came out it didn't sell particularly well at the beginning, and it was also pretty much universally panned. But within a few years the people who had written the reviews saying it was a piece of crap were extolling it as the best frigging album in the world.

Critics always like to give the Stones bad reviews. One day they're going to be right. They just haven't been right so far, because we always manage - I don't mean to be conceited, but we always manage - to come up with the goods, and the public seem to like it and buy it. Then three years later the reviewers turn around and say, Yeah, that was a great album, after saying at the time, It was a load of old shit. Most of them did that with Exile, and came back and said it was probably one of the greatest albums or packages that the Stones had ever put out. So what? (laughs). I don't care what they say anymore.

I'd like to have a single album compilation of my favorite Exile on Main Street tracks, though I still feel that the amount of material we had at that point warranted a double album, even if they are always too long.

Well I did like Exile very much. It was like four single-sided albums - hopefully something for everyone. It wasn't really meant to be played all at once.

It's a wonderful record, but I wouldn't consider it the finest of the Rolling Stones' work. I think that Beggars Banquet and Let It Bleed were better records. They're more compressed. You know, when you put a double album out, there's always going to be something that could have been left off and would have made it maybe better. But, you know, Exile... its reputation just seems bigger now than it was back then. I remember it didn't sell well at the time, and there was only one single off it (sic). And we were still in this phase where we weren't really commercially minded; we weren't trying to exploit or wring dry the record like one would do now, with a lot of singles. I mean, we weren't really looking at the financial and commercial aspects of it. But the truth it, it wasn't a huge success at the time. It wasn't even critically well received. I think if you go back and look at the reviews, you'll see I'm right. It mostly got very indifferent reviews. And I love it now when all these critics say it was the most wonderful thing, because it's a lot of those same guys who, at the time, said it was crap! Anway, I think Exile lacked a bit of definition. I'm being supercritical, I know, but the record lacks a little focus.

I think Exile was a hangover from the end of the '60s.

Well, funnily enough, this year I've listened to (Stones albums) more than ever, because they all came out on CD... (T)he ones that impressed me were the ones I always thought were superior - Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed. And Sticky Fingers. And Exile. There's so much stuff on Exile that even I'm surprised. I can't even remember all of it: Oh yeah. Did I write that?

My favorite two Rolling Stones records during the period I was with them, are Exile On Main Street and Sticky Fingers.

It's a bit overrated, to be honest. Compared to Let it Bleed and Beggars Banquet, which I think are more of a piece, I don't see it's as thematic as the other two. I'm not saying it's not good. It doesn't contain as many outstanding songs as the previous (sic) two records. I think the playing's quite good. It's got a raw quality, but I don't think all around it's as good.

I don't often play Stones stuff but if I see a copy of Exile hanging about, I nick it and play it. I still love that record very much. I would say there is the best of the Stones in there - up till now... I've no doubt that one day we'll put out an Exile outtakes album.

Every time I (choose my favourite Stones album), I keep thinking about the ones I'm leaving out. It's like babies. But if I've got to pick one I'll say - and you can take it with a large dose of salt - Exile. Because of its amazing spirit, the incredible amount of enthusiasm and screw-you-ing, You can throw us out but you can't get rid of us.

Beggars Banquet and Exile (are my favourites), but if you want one I'll stick with (Exile).

The stuff I was writing and the music I was doing in the '70s, which is basically when I was on smack (heroin), I couldn't have done better straight. And maybe I wouldn't have done as well straight. Music and drugs - I don't really correlate one thing with the other. One is what you're putting out and the other is what you're putting in. I never felt any different about my music because of it.

It's a funny thing. We had tremendous trouble convincing Atlantic to put out a double album. And initially, sales were fairly low. For a year or two, it was considered a bomb. This was an era where the music industry was full of these pristine sounds. We were going the other way. That was the first grunge record. Yes, it is one of the (Stones') best.

The thing about Exile is that everyone loves it, but I don't really know why. There aren't any real hits on it, apart from Tumbling Dice. And although it's great to listen to, it isn't that great when you try and play songs from it. There are a lot of tracks on that double album, and only a handful of songs youcan perform: Tumbling Dice, Happy, All Down the Line and Sweet Virginia, which is a nice country tune. So there's a good four songs off it, but when you start to play the other nineteen (sic), you can't, or they don't work, or nobody likes them, and you think, OK, we'll play another one instead. We have rehearsed a lot of the tunes off Exile, but there's not much that's playable.

Exile On Main Street is not one of my favourite albums, although I think the record does have a particular feeling. I'm not too sure how great the songs are, but put together it's a nice piece. However, when I listen to Exile it has some of the worst mixes I've ever heard. I'd love to remix the record, not just because of the vocals, but because generally I think it sounds lousy... Of course I'm ultimately responsible for it, but it's really not good and there's no concerted effort or intention... As long as people like the album, that's fine. It's just that I don't particularly think it's a great album.

A tremendous set which skilfully uses all the accepted musical mechanics of rock & roll.

An album that might take a few listens but is rich with Stones power and movement.

There are songs that are better, there are songs that are worse, there are songs that'll become your favorites and others you'll probably lift the needle for when their time is due. But in the end, Exile On Main Street spends its four sides shading the same song in as many variations as there are Rolling Stone readymades to fill them, and if on the one hand they prove the group's eternal constancy and appeal, it's on the other that you can leave the album and still feel vaguely unsatisfied, not quite brought to the peaks that this band of bands has always held out as a special prize in the past.... Exile On Main Street is the Rolling Stones at their most dense and impenetrable. In the tradition of Phil Spector, they've constructed a wash of sound in which to frame their songs, yet where Spector always aimed to create an impression of space and airiness, the Stones group everything together in one solid mass, providing a tangled jungle through which you have to move toward the meat of the material... One consequence of this style is that most of the hard-core action on the record revolves around Charlie Watts' snare drum. The sound gives him room not only to set the pace rhythmically but to also provide the bulk of the drive and magnetism. Another is that because Jagger's voice has been dropped to the level of just another instrument, burying him even more than usual, he has been freed from any restrictions the lyrics might have once imposed....

Happily, though, Exile On Main Street has the Rolling Stones sounding like a full-fiedged five-into-one band. Much of the self-consciousness that marred Sticky Fingers has apparently vanished, as well as that album's tendency to touch every marker on the Hot 100. It's been replaced by a tight focus on basic components of the Stones' sound as we've always known it, knock-down rock and roll stemming from blues, backed with a pervading feeling of blackness that the Stones have seldom failed to handle well... (T)alking about the pieces of Exile On Main Street is somewhat off the mark here, since individually the cuts seem to stand quite well. Only when they're taken together, as a lump sum of four sides, is their impact blunted. This would be all right if we were talking about any other group but the Stones. Yet when you've been given the best, it becomes hard to accept anything less, and if there are few moments that can be faulted on this album, it also must be said that the magic high spots don't come as rapidly... Exile On Main Street appears to take up where Sticky Fingers left off, with the Stones attempting to deal with their problems and once again slightly missing the mark. They've progressed to the other side of the extreme, wiping out one set of solutions only to be confronted with another. With few exceptions, this has meant that they've stuck close to home, doing the sort of things that come naturally, not stepping out of the realm in which they feel most comfortable. Undeniably it makes for some fine music, and it surely is a good sign to see them recording so prolifically again; but I still think that the great Stones album of their mature period is yet to come. Hopefully, Exile On Main Street will give them the solid footing they need to open up, and with a little horizon-expanding (perhaps honed by two months on the road), they might even deliver it to us the next time around.

The Rolling Stones are into a new thing: music. Well, that's not quite fair, because they've always been more than competent, but Exile on Main St. does tend to bury Mick Jagger's vocals in the band's sound and stress the group's eclectic musical abilities at the expense of words and messages. Which is too bad; we miss Jagger's mean, smartass trenchancy in most of these tunes. The zingers are on the jacket covers, in photos of assorted freaks, in penciled notes (I gave you the diamonds, you give me disease) and in the montages of Mick and the band. In the process of exposing the black roots of the Stones' music (Gospel, blues and boogie), the album shows how well the Stones can play in a variety of styles. Shake Your Hips is a dark, heavy-sounding boogie with a fine ricky-tick riff; Gospel comes on strong in Just Wanna See His Face and Shine a Light; there are good vocal tracks, like Let it Loose with Clydie King, Vanetta Fields, Dr. John, et al.; and the straight-ahead rockers, such as Soul Survivor, were never better. But where are the Stones of yesteryear?

The Rolling Stones: Exile On Main Street. Incontrovertibly the year’s best, this fagged-out masterpiece is the summum of Rock ’72. Even now, I can always get pleasure out of any of its four sides, but it took me perhaps twenty-five listenings before I began to understand what the Stones were up to, and I still haven’t finished the job. Just say they’re Advancing Artistically, in the manner of self-conscious public creators careering down the corridors of destiny. Exile explores new depths of record-studio murk, burying Mick’s voice under layers of cynicism, angst, and ennui: You’ve got a curtthroat crew / I’m gonna sink under you / I got the bell bottom blues / It’s gonna be the death of me.” A +.

The Stones still have the strength to make you feel that both we and they are hemmed in and torn by similar walls, frustrations, and tragedies. Exile is dense enough to be compulsive: hard to hear, at first, the precision and fury behind the murk ensure that you'll come back, hearing more with each playing. What you hear sooner or later is two things: an intuition for nonstop getdown perhaps unmatched since The Rolling Stones, Now!, and a strange kind of humility and love emerging from a dazed frenzy. If, as they assert, they're soul survivors, they certainly know what you can lose by surviving. As they and we see friends falling all around us, only the Stones have cut the callousness of '72 to say with something beyond narcissistic sentiment what words remain for those slipping away. Exile is about casualties, and partying in the face of them. The party is obvious. The casualties are inevitable... When so many are working so hard at solipsism, the Stones define the unhealthy state, cop to how far THEY are mired in it, and rail at the breakdown with the weapons at their disposal: noise, anger, utter frankness. It's what we've always loved them for.

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