Exile on Main Street : the Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones rolled out of the 1970s as the world's greatest Rock N Roll band. The Beatles were broken up, so were the Yardbirds, Cream and many others. Death had taken Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and many musicians that the Stone's had shared the charts with. The Stones had felt death when one of their founders, Brian Jones, didn't make it out of the 60s. The Stones concert at Altamont, California had put an exclamation point on the decade and its declining idealism.

The Stones had an aversion to paying taxes in the United Kingdom and became tax exiles. In the next few years many top British acts including Ringo Starr, Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin were to take the same path. The band settled in to record in the south of France at Villefranche-sur-Mer, a town just east of Nice and close to the Italian border. Keith Richards got hold of Nellc´te a villa that had been home to the Gestapo during the occupation.

The band settled in with producer Jimmy Miller and got to work the best they could. At this point different band members, most noticeably Keith Richards, heroin, were struggling with various forms of addiction. Mick Jagger, now married to Bianca was a frequent absentee on top of everything else going on.

The band did have one advantage going into the sessions. They had squirreled away material from previous endeavors, most notably the Sticky Fingers sessions, as they had been afraid they would lose control over these songs because of legal problems with previous management.

The album has three distinct stages of production. The material that had been previously recorded. The material that flowed out of Nellc´te in its raw unedited form and the material after it had been shipped to Los Angeles and Mick Jagger got hold of it. At Sunset Sound studios the songs took final shape as most of the vocals, keyboard parts and other instrument overdubs took shape. This process went on through the winter of 1971 - 1972.

The album was released in May of 1972 and sold well. Tumbling Dice, the first single off the album went to #1. Critics were divided over the album. Lenny Kaye reviewing the album for Rolling Stone magazine said " 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. " Not exactly a ringing endorsement. Mediocre early reviews have meant little to this album and it's now considered a classic and made Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time list at #7.

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