Often the trait of a great band is that they can be remembered for a single masterful album. For Led Zeppelin, this album was their fourth album. For Dire Straits, it was Brothers in Arms. Although some fans would argue that Aftermath and Beggars Banquet show Mick Jagger and Keith Richards at the peak of their songwriting abilities, popular opinion shows that Exile On Main Street is their emerald jewel (or maybe their Ruby Tuesday).
Listening to this great album I can fully understand why. What makes Exile truly unique is that the band produced their best work at a time when many of their ’60s peers had fizzled out. Remember that in 1972, the world had seen the deaths of sixties icons Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison while suffering the traumatic breakups of Cream, Simon and Garfunkel and, most heartbreaking of all, The Beatles. Those few that had survived from the mid-sixties into the new decade (for example, The Kinks and The Bee Gees) had begun to fade at this point. Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple had become the new faces of rock. One could easily imagine that The Stones had passed its expiration date. This album must have proven the doubters wrong.
As with many seminal albums, the story behind the songs would turn out to be almost as great as the wealth of material. To record Exile, the band moved to Nellcôte in the south of France, where they recorded most of the backing tracks in the basement of Keith Richards’ rented house. Although the recording sessions began in earnest, the five Stones (along with producer Jimmy Miller and saxophonist Bobby Keys) soon found themselves plagued by commitment issues. Frontman Mick Jagger was frequently absent from the initial recording sessions to spend time with his new wife Bianca. Guitarist Keith Richards also missed several sessions due to his growing heroin addiction. In a matter of weeks, Richards’ villa had become a druggie’s paradise, which irritated bassist Bill Wyman to the point that he also skipped several sessions (Wyman reportedly only played on eight of the album’s eighteen tracks). , with subsequent bass parts recorded by Richards and lead guitarist Mick Taylor). Surely this must have been a recipe for disaster. The end result, however, was magnificent.
Although there are no instantly recognizable tracks like “Gimme Shelter” or “Satisfaction”, the album features a host of brilliant songs. From the acoustic ballad “Sweet Black Angel” to the gospel “Shine a Light,” the album experiments in many genres while also finding success in the genres for which they are best known: rock and roll and blues. As with most of the standout Stones albums (such as Sticky Fingers, Let It Bleed, and the aforementioned Beggars Banquet), Keith Richards comes through the strongest on the record. Though he was never a guitar god in the same way that Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page were, his gifted playing is everywhere to be heard on the album. Richards’ jangling staccatos on the upbeat “Happy” were almost certainly an influence on Johnny Marr, while the Eagles’ Joe Walsh would praise Richards’ genius guitar playing on “Tumbling Dice”. Mick Taylor’s guitar playing is just as impressive, whether it’s his effective riffing on songs like “Ventilator Blues” or his Latin American solos on “I Just Want To See His Face.” So it’s no surprise that guitar virtuoso Slash would later proclaim Taylor as one of his biggest influences. If there is one song that stands out above all, at least for me, it is “Shine a Light”.
Noel Gallagher would not only drop the melody line from his song “Live Forever” but it would also become the title of his 2008 concert documentary. It is believed to have been written about the death of former member Brian Jones (although the lyrics could easily be interpreted in terms of Richards’ growing dependency on drugs), features Mick Jagger at his peak singing about a lost friend. The track features Billy Preston (who had the rare privilege of playing with both the Beatles and the Stones) playing a beautiful organ line. A soulful, soulful ballad, this song displays a sentimentality not normally attributed to the band. Exile is an excellent work. Many of the tracks on this album are performed by the band to this day and still sound just as powerful as they did forty years ago. Unlike many double albums, this beauty holds the listener’s interest from start to finish. More experimental than Physical Graffiti, more energetic than Blonde on Blonde, and more cohesive than The White Album, Exile On Main Street is a strong contender for the best double album of all time.