"Exile on Main Street" Turns 50
The Stones' masterpiece may be the only time they actually meant it.
Fifty years ago tomorrow, the Rolling Stones released the double album βExile on Main Street.β It was the best thing they ever did. It was also unlike anything else they ever did, before or after, and to this day it confuses some Stones fans and first-time listeners. Honestly, the first time I heard it, back in 1972, I thought it was sludge β a murky goulash of tracks that were impossible to differentiate from each other. Reviews were mixed. Hardcore fans were puzzled and casual fans like me turned up βTumbling Diceβ whenever it came on the radio and ignored the rest.
It wasnβt until I was in college several years later that I got it, during a long overnight drive where βExileβ was the only cassette in a friendβs car. As we bumped down Interstate 91 from New Hampshire to New York City, the songs began to disentangle themselves into their constituent melodies, riffs, and genres: Gospel-inflected ring shouts (βI Just Want to See His Faceβ), country love songs (βSweet Virginiaβ) and laments (βTorn and Frayedβ), blues rave-ups (βStop Breaking Downβ), guitar boogie (βShake Your Hipsβ), horn-driven shuffles (βVentilator Bluesβ), pile-driving declarations of love and lust (βLoving Cupβ), straight-up rockers (βRip This Jointβ) and heartfelt unburdenings of the soul (βLet It Looseβ). βExile on Main Streetβ is a great midnight-to-dawn record in large part because those are the hours in which it was recorded.
By the time we arrived in Manhattan, Iβd come to understand that itβs best not to think of the album as a collection of songs at all but as a towering work of atmosphere. A record soaked in exhaustion and decadence and a love for a specific kind of music that had finally sunk into the musiciansβ bones. A half century on, βExileβ isnβt just the one record where the Rolling Stones dropped the posturing and became what theyβd only pretended to be (quite expertly) up to that point. Itβs the album where the eternal Classic Rock issue of white musicians appropriating Black musical forms to great cultural cachet and profit finally became moot, or as moot as it ever would get. Which makes it as relevant as ever and a fascinating point on the timeline from minstrelsy through Elvis to Eminem and beyond.
Elvis, of course, was very vocal about supporting the Black artists who influenced him, and Eminem has long since been accepted by the gatekeepers of hip-hop. Along with the Animals and Eric Clapton, the Rolling Stones were in the wing of the 1960s British Invasion that fetishized American blues and R&B (as opposed to more pop-oriented groups like the Who, the Kinks, Hermanβs Hermits, et al.; the Beatles just drew on everything). This could turn to shock upon touring the American South and seeing the racist reality of where the music came from, as Eric Burdon discovered when (per his autobiography) the Animals were run out of Meridian, Mississippi, in the mid-1960s for not playing White music.
The Stones especially turned their love of Black music, from their name on down, into an integral aspect of their rebellious image, drawing on the anger of the underdog with few of the attendant risks. On the early records, their taste in cover songs was impeccable, their originals ingenious, their misogyny daring rather than cruel. They promoted themselves as the anti-Beatles β the line was that the Fab Four wanted to hold your hand while the Stones wanted to burn down your house β and much of the power of the pose came from their insistence on real rock βnβ roll, which was nasty and sexy and rude and exciting. And Black. They made that work up until 1968βs βBeggars Banquet,β at which point (and with the assistance of producer Jimmy Miller), they took a turn for the legendary, with a more hard-driving, bottom-heavy sound and songs like βStreet Fighting Manβ and βSympathy for the Devilβ that seemed as prescient in their implied social commentary as anything by Dylan.
The four records released in those four years β βBeggars Banquet,β βLet It Bleedβ (1969), βSticky Fingersβ (1971), and βExile on Main Streetβ β represent one of the all-time great album runs, but they didnβt resolve the issue of how much Mick and Keith took from American music β Black or White -- because they loved it and how much they took because it just felt cool. Some of Mickβs βcountryβ singing (βCountry Honk,β βDear Doctorβ) is embarrassing to listen to today, just as some of their covers of blues (βYou Gotta Moveβ) or R&B (βLet It Bleedβ) sound awfully forced.
With βExile,β that changed. Recorded over several sweltering months in 1971 in Keith Richardsβ French villa NellcΓ΄te, itβs Keithβs album much more than itβs Mickβs, and the irony is that Keef was at his most strung-out on drugs at the time. If Jagger was the theorist and agent provocateur of the Stones, Richards was the keeper of the musical flame, and the NellcΓ΄te sessions were steeped in a love of the groove, with very little demarcation between work and play. Songs grew out of jams that seemed to be going nowhere and then suddenly came together with outrageous force.
The result is the groupβs least conceptualized, least thought-out piece of work. βExile on Main Streetβ is a record not composed but simply played. Itβs such an anti-concept album that it becomes a concept album by default: The concept is the riff, the groove, the pocket. Charlie Wattsβ backbeat and pianist Nicky Hopkinsβ hammering eighth notes, Bobby Keys and Jim Price conjuring horn charts from the 30s, 40s, R&B 50s, and Keithβs rhythm chords resounding like a rusty Valhalla. With some exceptions (βStop Breaking Downβ), Mick Taylorβs hot-shit British blues-boy guitar was kept on a leash, and while his gentle eloquence is missed, this is not a record about the solo.
As such, Mick is buried under the murk, his vocals haunted by their own βghost tracks,β early temp versions laid down for guidance but still heard as a shadow version in the mix. No wonder he hated the record and seemed ever baffled by its standing. Jagger took charge during the later L.A. sessions that added backing vocals and overdubs, and he apparently was inspired by a visit to the church where Aretha Franklin was recording βAmazing Graceβ to infuse cuts like βLet It Looseβ and βLoving Cupβ with a rich gospel sway. But he never came around. In 1971, before βExileβ even came out, he told a reporter, βThe new albumβs very rock & roll, and itβs good, [but] Iβm very bored with rock & roll.β By 2003, Jagger was saying βGenerally I think it sounds lousy β¦ I had to finish the whole record myself, because otherwise there were just these drunks and junkies. Of course, Iβm ultimately responsible for it, but it's really not good and there's no concerted effort or intention."Β
I beg to differ, as do a lot of people β as does posterity. But it makes sense. Like a lot of other great pop musicians of his time β David Bowie and Ray Davies of the Kinks spring to mind β Mick Jagger liked to play roles and keep audiences guessing about what was real and what was an act. Keith Richards, by contrast, just liked to mean it, and by 1971 he was too spent and too wasted to do anything but mean it. βExile on Main Streetβ is the greatest thing the Rolling Stones ever did because, after so many years of mastering the music and playing canny, ironic mind-games with their listeners, the games were overtaken by the mastery. This was no longer somebody elseβs music. It was finally and fully theirs. Theyβd never get there again.
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Indeed a great album, but their early stuff should not be discounted. Rock & rhythm and blues that appreciated the roots of their music before others. And Let It Bleed not too shabbyβ¦
Great article, Ty. But I still think you give too short shrift to a group of songs on Black and Blue, Tattoo You, Voodoo Lounge, Some Girls and Emotional Rescue. Not all perfect but some really good music on all of them.