The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main St.

A never-ending party, turned into a hungover search for salvation.

art by Robert Frank

Mick Jagger: lead vocals, harmonica, some guitar

Keith Richards: guitar, Wurlitzer, some bass, lead vocals on “Happy”

Mick Taylor: guitar, some bass

Bill Wyman: bass

Charlie Watts: drums

Bobby Keys: saxophone

Jim Price: horns

Backing vocals: Clydie King, Venetta Fields, Dr. John, Kathi McDonald, Tami Lynn

Produced by Jimmy Miller, engineered by Andy and Glyn Johns

Author’s Note: This post corresponds to the Exile on Main St. episode of Vinyl Monday’s Double Album December miniseries, originally posted 12/13/2024. Save for audio/editing jokes that cannot be included in a text format, this is a faithful adaptation of the review chapter. To watch the full episode, scroll to the bottom of this post or visit my YouTube channel here.

Forget four separate Beatle films, how the hell is there not an Exile-era Stones biopic yet?

It’s the stuff of rock-and-roll legend, and it all started because of cartoon supervillain – and the only guy equally hated by Beatles and Stones fans – Allen Klein. Amidst the chaos of Mick and Keith’s drug bust in 1967 and Brian Jones’s in ’67 and ’68, Klein bought out ex-Stones manager Andrew Oldham’s share in the band for a ¾-million-pound profit. Mick smelled something fishy, the Stones lawyered up, and they found the proverbial rotting fish under the carseat. Klein was sitting on a lot more than just ¾-million pounds. Not only had he withheld the equivalent of the Stones’s Decca advance from 1965, he hadn’t paid the guys’ taxes. The guys made moves to fire him, but some truly outstanding circumstances slowed the process: the death of the band’s founder, the Altamont speedway disaster and ensuing PR nightmare, and Klein artfully slithering away to the Beatles.

Having assumed their taxes were taken care of, the Stones carried on spending like rock stars do: clothes, cars, guitars, new car, caviar, etc. But it wasn’t taken care of. Compounded with an 83-93% tax rate on Britain’s highest bracket (i.e. celebrities) on earned income and a whopping 98% on earned, the Stones had massively overspent.

How bad was it? Just before tax day 1971, the Stones’s UK office manager Jo Bergman sent out an S-O-S.

All the guys’ personal accounts were overdrawn. The business account was overdrawn. They were out of funds to run the office.

They needed at least 7,000 pounds to pay the most pressing debts. Klein left them in financial ruin, and the tax rate wasn’t helping much. If the Stones wanted to pay any of their debts, they had to actually accrue some money. As long as they were living and working in Britain, they couldn’t do that. So it’s decided: the Stones must flee Britain.

photographed by Dominique Tarle, 1971

The guys descend on Villa Nellcote in the south of France; a beautiful, but worn mansion once occupied by the Nazis. Rock-and-roll shenanigans ensue: Andy Johns and Jim Price buy a roulette wheel. Anita Pallenberg and her lover Tony build a raft to row out to the ghost ship Mary Celeste. The cooks blew up the kitchen. Keith and his new bestie Gram Parsons doing everything but pressing record. Not like they could record anyway: the Rolling Stonesmobile didn’t make it to France until June, then they proceeded to waste a month looking for a studio before settling on Nellcote. But the fun doesn’t last for long. Heroin has only just entered the fray, and the Stones are in the worst sweet spot ever. Geographically, too: Nellcote was halfway between black market central Marseilles and the literal actual mafia. Death and destruction soon took hold. Keith got in a bust-up at the harbor, once again putting the Stones on the authorities’ radar. Brian’s ex Linda Lawrence teamed up with Jo to get Gram out of Nellcote, but he overdosed. Friend of the band Tommy Weber went on a bender and passed away, leaving his son Jake orphaned. He comes under the care of Anita, who gave him – a seven-year-old – cocaine. The basement was supremely ill-equipped to record in; so humid it pushed the guitars out of tune, and running so much power that blackouts and fires were frequent. I wonder if, had the Stones not been busted again and fled to LA, they would’ve cried uncle and shelved Exile. I certainly would’ve!

Thank god the Stones made it to the other side of Exile relatively unscathed, and thank god they make it easy to evaluate their work. It’s always nice coming back to them; by nature of how my YouTube channel functions, it’s a while before I can circle back to any group. Having had a year or so since celebrating the 55thanniversary of Beggars’ Banquet, it’s been long enough for me to have a great time listening, and for me to remember why I love the Stones’s music. I don’t have to break my brain to “get” it. It’s good, stupid fun. I wasn’t anticipating the monster Exile would be. I had no idea the sheer hype surrounding this thing. I knew this would be a Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Album of All Time. But when I referenced my copy of the 2003 list, I was shocked to find Exile all the way up at number seven! And it’s remained in the top 20 of every list ever since.

I realize the following will be a steeply unpopular opinion. The oldheads will not like this. Frankly, I don’t know if Exile had to be a double album. If it were a single album, all killer no filler, it would be the best album the Stones ever released and one of the greatest rock-and-roll albums of all time.

Instead, it’s Exile. Good, but bloated, with clear pacing issues.

Side three hits it out of the park. To have both Happy and Ventilator Blues, two completely opposite but no less powerful tracks, on it? That just about speaks for itself. It’s a crime the latter has only been played live once! Side three’s only flaw is the unfortunately-named Turd on the Run; the weakest of the country tracks, but a better Mick J vocal and – gasp! A necessary harmonica! I could take or leave Shake Your Hips and Casino Boogie on their own, but they fit into side one like Cinderella into the slipper. The finale is where Exileloses steam. It’s weighed down by All Down The Line, which is altogether too samey to what we’ve heard before. Lenny Kaye said it best in Rolling Stone’s original review of Exile: it “spends its four sides shading the same song in as many variations as there are Rolling Stone readymades to fill them…” (Lenny Kaye, “Exile on Main St.” Rolling Stone Magazine, 5/12/1972)

There are too many closing tracks on this album. Loving Cup would’ve been a great finale for its triumphant and tender end-of-the-movie feel. It feels like “Moonlight Mile’”s mature older sister, the twinkle still in her eye, confessing, “I would love to spill the beans with you ’til dawn.” For something more sober (no pun intended,) Let It Loose could work. And if you’re wanting something more uplifting and put-your-hands-together, like “Salt of the Earth,” Shine A Light would’ve been great gospel track to end with.

But here’s the thing: we have all of these songs on the album, and none of them close! Instead, it’s Soul Survivor; an underbaked track relegated to the caboose. There’s no conclusion to the arc Exile sets up.

These issues are a symptom of the guys being fucking exhausted with Exile by the time they touched down in California. After having done every song over twenty times, they no longer had fresh ears. In addition, theywere naive to just how much work goes into assembling a double album. When it came time to make toughchoices, it seems the Stones threw the metaphorical spaghetti at the wall to see what stuck. They were just done. Exile loses its energy because the Stones did.

Many a critic over the years have taken issue with Exile’s mix. According to Mick J, producer Jimmy Miller was so whacked out on heroin by the time the Stones and Co. landed in LA that he couldn’t finish the job. This put Mick in a pretty good position: Bianca’s insistence upon staying in Paris – hours away from Villa Nellcote – and pregnancy had him largely sidetracked. Thanks to modern technology, the mixing issue has been largely alleviated on the most recent pressing (the one I own on vinyl and listened to for this review.) “Loving Cup” absolutely flew off my turntable! It’s got such richness and depth. But even still, I had to get up and check my stereo because I honestly thought one of my speakers came unplugged. Poor Mick sounds like he’s been locked in Nellcote’s basement and is singing through the wall!

That being said, I like how cluttered Exile is sonically. Yet another unpopular opinion among fans, so it seems. Exile is like Phil Spector’s wall of sound on All Things Must Pass, but a bit less manic. Although, as far as evaluating individual performances, this maximalist production style complicates my job. Oftentimes no one person sticks out; only a moment or feeling. Boy genius Mick Taylor and supremely underrated bassist Bill Wyman are often shrouded by the sheer amount of STUFF. And yet, hearing the sheer amount of people on Exile, feeling the buzz, transports you back to this very specific place in time. Wild, mythic, unbearably hot Nellcote with the Rolling Stones and their entourage.

I always say the Stones are masters of atmosphere. “Paint It Black,” “Street Fighting Man,” “Gimme Shelter,” “Moonlight Mile.” Their capacity to set a tone of intrigue and carry it through, despite playing a relatively simple brand of rock-and-roll, is simply marvelous. Across four sides of two discs, Exile’s atmosphere mutates in a way no other Stones album does.

It starts with so much freewheeling, driving energy. You’ve hopped in a car with a guitar, the clothes on your back, boots on your feet, and your beautiful lady (or guy) friend, with no plans and no expectations. Rocks Off is one of the most optimistic songs the Stones ever did. But in that Stones way, it bears hints of paranoia the guys no doubt felt after being run out of their home country: “I’m always hearing voices on the street, I want to shout but I can’t hardly speak.” This fear doesn’t last, though: it’s muscled up by the Stones’ signature sex drive and defiant “us against the world” attitude they’d had since the Let It Bleed days. “Kick me like you’ve kicked before, I can’t even feel the pain no more!” This is followed by old-school rock-and-roll swing Rip This Joint. (Which I erroneously referred to as “roll this joint…” only if it’s legal in your state!) “Rip This Joint” is the most energetic track on the record by a long shot. It shouts out all the southern cities they’ve hit on their nomadic adventures: New Orleans, Dallas, Tampa, Memphis, Birmingham, Little Rock...and all the lovely ladies the guys encountered along the way.

Exile remains lighthearted through Casino Blues, Shake Your Hips, and the country-tinged side two. “Happy” is a weak vocal performance by Keith, but I love his delivery of, "Always took candy from strangers." It's a good-old "bad kid grows up to be damn good rocker" song and it fires on all cylinders. Remarkable, considering the core track was cut in just one take. Even more so when you find Jimmy Miller sits in on drums and we have no Mick T to solo all over the place. Keith once said about his working style, “Me, I’m just happy to wake up and see who’s hanging around. Mick’s rock, I’m roll.” (Stones In Exile dir. Steven Kijak, 2010) “Happy” is no truer testament. The dialogue between Keith and...well...himself...is electric. It’s a nice flashback to Beggars’ Banquet and Let It Bleed, when Keith was pulling the weight of two men in Brian’s absence.

Around “Ventilator Blues,” the feeling shifts. The partygoers have been overserved, and this place is about to blow. “No matter where you are, everybody’s gonna need a ventilator.” Charlie’s emphasis on the three of one measure, then THREE-four of the next, then three-FOUR puts “Ventilator” on a pegleg. I also feel the wide-legged stance of the outlaw as he enters the saloon. The brass, courtesy of Stones mainstays Bobby Keys and Jim Price, builds tension, but never relieves it. It consciously avoids the heights of the guitar’s melody, instead buzzing like a wasp’s nest in the ground. A new musican influence enters the fray on “Ventilator” too: gospel. “Everybody trying to step on their creator.”

If disc one of Exile sins, then disc two repents.

I have to note my bias here: I am a Keith Richards Girlie. But I hope the following point still stands: Exile’s greatest strength is that it’s Keith’s Stones album. Throughout the band’s history, Keith displays his deep love and true, unadulterated reverence of Black American music of all kinds: rock-and-roll, blues, funk, gospel, soul, even reggae. All of Keith’s inspirations (save for reggae, which curiously stayed out of the fray until after the Stones recorded Goat’s Head Soup in Jamaica,) are on proud display on Exile. You hear it in Chuck Berry-inspred “Rip This Joint,” gospel “Shine A Light,” Ventilator BLUES. Exile features a subdued cover of Delta blues man Robert Johnson’s Stop Breaking Down; yet another track that suffers from its sequencing. I also couldn’t help but notice the nod to Delta blues recording fidelity on spiritual approximation I Just Wanna See His Face.

SO many white guys riffed on – and ripped off – Black music in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. (Damn you, Pat Boone.) The Stones shouldn’t feel more authentic than Elvis. Mick Jagger was raised middle-class. Not to mention he’s a literal actual finance bro – the guy went to school for economics. The Stones’s not-so-secret ingredient was Keith. He grew up working class. A little earthier, more grounded, less concerned with image. The macho, whiskey-guzzling blues-man foil to the androgynous funk/soul showman.

You gotta go through hell to be a blues man. The excess made Nellcote pretty close.

Thanks to his new bestie Gram Parsons, Keith also loved country and folk music. While I once wrote off Sweet Virginia as a hokey, faux-bar-room singalong, it grows on me the more I listen to it. Sweet Black Angelis a quaint front porch shuffle, albeit eyebrow-raising considering “Brown Sugar.” Torn and Frayed – perhaps a nod to the guys’ perfectly disheveled early ’70 style – bridges the gap between the Flying Burrito Brothers and Led Zeppelin III. Was that sound dated by ’72? To be honest, yeah. But it’s the clear, sunny brand of relaxed an album as groggy as Exile needs.

This record also feels true because the Stones knew how to integrate brass. It’s what set their music apart from other white-boy blues acts of the ’60s and ’70s. Their arrangements have a purpose; an honest homage to Motown and Stax Records. And it certainly helps that they were performed with gusto by the honorary sixth Stone, Bobby Keys. Sorry, Stu: Bobby really should’ve been a full-time member of the band. He roots, toots, and honks away with such ferocity, you’d be forgiven for mistaking him for Clarence Clemons. (Well...maybe a white Clarence Clemons. If only the Stones got Clemons on a record!)

Take “Rocks Off” for example. The brass enters exactly when it needs to and does exactly what it needs to. I can practically see the glittery curtains, shark-skin suits, and choreography in my mind’s eye. The saxophone solos on “Rip This Joint” and “Sweet Virginia.” They do such different things, but accomplish so much in bringing the songs to fruition. It drives paranoid, tense “Ventilator.” The Stones also really knew how to use backing vocals; thank you Merry Clayton on “Gimme Shelter” to opening the guys’ eyes to the power of the guest vocal. One of Exile’s highlights are the ladies. Venetta Fields and Clydie King hold down the fort, while keen ears will pick up on hitmaker Tami Lynn and Ikette Kathi McDonald. They inject any tired momentswith life force and personality; making for a record you can’t not at least shake your hips to. They fill out “Just Wanna See His Face” best. With the spread-out production, I feel like I’m listening in on a tenor soloist and girl group from outside the practice room.

All the best things about Exile come together on “Tumbling Dice,” to the degree at which I wish this was the album closer instead.

Mick’s performance is committed but tasteful. His whooping to a minimum, but his ad-libbing everything a seasoned soul singer’s should be. The chorus of ladies, with Keith’s thinner backing vocals and more Micklayered in, give some variation. It’s interesting to hear who covers what part, and what they add to the song. All the usual suspects color the song with brass. Ironically, Mick Taylor’s best moment on the album is this funk-meets-Motown countermelody on bass. Thank god I can actually hear him on a track for once! Of course, we have some saloon piano buried in there, courtesy of Nicky Hopkins. Charlie plays conservatively, using his snare and cymbal to accent. Shoutout to Jimmy Miller for playing the outtro; he focuses his attention on the kick drum for a nice, booming build. It’s all topped off with the Stones’ signature outlaw, devil-bargaining attitude. The lyrics are loaded with gambling references; referencing the guys’ favorite pastime at Nellcote. To the degree at which Andy Johns and Jim Price bought a fucking roulette wheel for their villa. “Got no money, I’m all sixes and sevens and nines.”

Bill Janovitz quoted Jack Kerouac in his write-up of Exile for 331/3: “...you end up finally not knowing any more whether a jukebox is sadder than a coffin.” Thank you, Kerouac, for verbalizing how I feel about this album.

Of course, I felt a lot of joy listening to Exile. It’s difficult to get any working, makeup, or laundry-folding done when you’re having that much fun and your body is doing that much moving. I relished in listening to something so relaxed, undone, and communal. I felt a deep connection; this music is so indebted to the American musical lexicon. I feel a lot of joy listening to the Stones. But through the whole of their classic period, there was a dark cloud looming overhead. On Exile, the dark cloud was displacement; a lingering feeling of being forced from the only place you’ve ever called home.

...and also drugs.

The more I read about Nellcote, the less fantastical it seemed and the more hellish it became. It is no longer rock star’s heaven in my mind. It’s more like Dante’s Inferno. Exile is the jukebox; keeping this place in time alive long after it should’ve been interred. Exile couldn’t have happened without Villa Nellcote. But when I think of all the death and destruction – Gram Parsons’s overdose, Tommy Weber and his son Jake – sometimes I wish it could’ve happened without this place. It destroyed so many people and permanently altered so many lives.

I get to feeling there was a karmic debt amongst the Rolling Stones. They’re bound together by karma, drugs, and rock-and-roll. It’s the dark side of the intangible energy that binds all of us devoted to music. Though this combination of guys could never quite find home in each other, they wore the outlaw attitude well. On Exile, perhaps more than any other Stones album, they find home in the most storied of their influences. Rock-and-roll. Gospel. Blues. Ultimately, these guys were better together than they ever would be apart. They may very well have had a soul tie to Nellcote from some past life. Was Nellcote even real, or was it a mirage born from a heroin-soaked haze? Of course it’s real, some Russian oligarch owns it now. But tomany of us, it only exists in Dominique Tarlé’s photos and on this album. You can’t see it from the road if you visit, the gates block the way.

The gates to heaven or hell? I’m not sure. Mama says yes, Papa says no. But the Stones’s never-ending party turned into a hungover search for salvation on this record. And, like many of our searches for god, Exile comes up inconclusive.

Personal favorites: “Rocks Off,” “Rip This Joint,” “Tumbling Dice,” “Torn and Frayed,” “Ventilator Blues,” “Let It Loose”

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