The Rolling Stones - "Exile On Main Street"

It seems the trend for "classic" bands is to open up the vaults and remaster their “classic” albums. Such efforts are easy money as fans will always feel compelled to buy such things. Other recent examples are The Cure’s Disintegration, Iggy and The Stooges’ Raw Power. And now The Rolling Stones have joined this craze by remastering and re-releasing one of their best: Exile On Main Street. The new release contains ten new, never heard before tracks. The question we all have as a "classic" fan is “Should I buy it?” The short answer is yes.

Exile is one of those albums so closely tied to the time in which it was released that at first blush it is hard to believe that this work has endured. It is also an album, however, whose history seems crucial to understand, evaluate and enjoy the recording. Exile happened during a difficult time for The Rolling Stones. They famously owed large sums of taxes and had been the target of so many drug busts in their home country that the Stones felt compelled to leave England and relocate to France. It was during this same time period that band members also faced personal changes such as Keith Richard's increasing reliance on heroin and Mick Jagger's recent marriage to Bianca. All this contributes to the sound achieved on Exile. Much of the recording occurred in the deteriorating basement of the house Keith Richards rented in France. Addiction and other commitments created very disjointed recording sessions offering a new construct and that was the Stones operating more as individuals than a cohesive unit.

The great appeal of Exile has been that its sound really mirrors the circumstance of late night, basement recordings. The remastered version thankfully does not eliminate this vibe, rather it enhances it. Exile is an eclectic mix of blues, rock, country, gospel, and soul. It is clear that the Stones paid close attention to the local musical surroundings during recording sessions at Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in Alabama for their previous record, Sticky Fingers, because Exile definitely has the sound of the Swamp Men. Moreover it is a continuation of the Stones drive through the seamy underbelly of life which seemed to begin in earnest with 1969’s Let It Bleed and continued through 1973’s Goats Head Soup. This era of the Stone’s recording is important because it shines a light on class disparities and drugs and violence. The feeling of exile didn’t only apply to the band; it was everyone struggling through the "darkness" in society.

The fact is Exile On Main Street was a double album made up of odd parts and styles that really didn’t seem to match. Perhaps this can be attributed in part to the mobile recording and varying line-ups recording at any given time. Musically there was a lot going on; the vocals on the other hand seem to be deeply buried in the layers of filth, overindulgence, weariness and the disappointment conveyed by the music. Jagger has explained this as a function of him having to run the soundboard due to their engineer not "functioning" the way he should at that time. I think today this can be described as a happy accident. Taken as a whole though, this album really creates a feeling and seems like something special. The sound is so unique and dirty, it sounds like the house band at the drive bar you stop at as you pull off the paved road to hell.

The truth is, even if you fully subscribe to the notion of The Rolling Stones as the world’s greatest rock and roll band, you either love Exile or hate it. This was as true at the time of the recording’s original release and it’s still true now. The inclusion of ten bonus tracks is unlikely to change your feeling about this record. If you are a fan of Exile On Main Street, however, the bonus tracks make this re-release a must have for your record collection.

The ten new tracks are billed as five outtakes from the original recording sessions that have not be changed or retouched. The other five songs had new vocals added prior to the release. The really nifty thing however is that the ten new tracks feel as though they could be a separate, standalone album. It would be an album that fits in perfectly in with the Stones’ late 60s and early 70s material. Additionally, like Exile, these songs are diverse and distinct and yet hold together as a singular work.

The bonus tracks begin with a soulful, jazzy blues number, ‘Pass The Wine’. These undiscovered tracks are perhaps at their best when Mick and the boys are under the Swamp Men influence as heard on ‘Plundering My Soul’ and ‘Dancing In The Light’. The Stones lay down the really bluesy stuff on ‘I’m Not Signifying’. This track lives up to the expectations one would have for a band who took their name from a Muddy Waters song.

Another interesting aspect of these songs is the bridge to the past and future Stones embodied on ‘So Divine (Aladdin Story)’ and ‘Good Time Woman’. ‘So Divine’ could be Brian Jones-era Stones thanks to the song’s definite ‘Paint It Black’ vibe. And ‘Good Time Woman’, which is actually an earlier version of ‘Tumbling Dice’, is the sound of Rolling Stones yet to come. It sounds a little bit like The Rolling Stones with Ron Wood.

Most importantly, none of these ten bonus tracks are throwaways. They are essential threads of rock’s rich tapestry and a magnificent addition to the Rolling Stones catalog.

Exile strikes me as being as relevant today as it was in 1972. Life still has a seamy underbelly we are all trying to navigate our way through. We are all coping with certain darkness. We all have more than ample reasons to feel exiled from reason in this world. There is an economic crisis that isn’t improving quickly enough, we have seemingly endless wars in the Middle East, and corporate greed and mis-steps have resulted in one of the worst environmental disasters in American history. Perhaps we can’t flee our country or reality, but we can listen to The Rolling Stones track through similar territory on Exile On Main Street and see that 40 years later, the world keeps spinning and the Stones keep rocking.