You will rarely hear me wax poetic about 1970s rock music. For the most part, that just ain’t my jam. But when I lean in that direction, I almost always put on Exile on Main Street by the Rolling Stones.
What a weird time in history that era was, the early 1970s. I have no memory of it, as I was a wee lad, but I remember much of the background noise—Nixon, Vietnam, hippies, drugs, smog, the gas crisis—because a lot of that was still reverberating when I started to become aware of my surroundings. It was kind of a downturn for America. A crap time.
In that context, the fact that the disjointed Rolling Stones band—in that interim phase of the group with Mick Taylor playing guitar between Brian Jones’s death in 1969 and Ron Wood permanently joining the band in 1975; the era of Keith Richards’s worst heroin addiction; and in an era where most of the 1960s rock bands had splintered or died—the fact that the Stones could get it together to make a record at all in 1972 was pretty impressive.
The fact that they made a record this damn good was by accident. They started by haphazardly recording basic tracks in France at a drug-filled villa with random guest musicians wandering in and out, Bill Wyman and Mick Jagger barely there at all, patching them together a year later with overdubs and re-recording in Los Angeles, all over a period of three years while the band had to leave England and become tax exiles in France… Well, you get the idea. It’s really a miracle that this album was ever finished and released to the public. It’s a big hot mess that they cleaned up just enough to release on a double-LP vinyl album.
I’ve always been drawn to this album because, well, it has it all. If the Stones were living a life of excess at the time, this record sounds like the soundtrack album. You’d think a band battling members with heroin addiction in the early 1970s would record twelve-minute hippie jams with endless solos and drum fills, and yet somehow the Stones come through with an album of mostly three-minute rock ’n’ roll songs. Everything feels dirty and greasy, but man, the grooves lock in so hard and the guitar riffs are absolutely killer. The intro to “Tumblin’ Dice” gets me every time. Man, the Stones could rock but still swing at the same time. And when you think about the hippy-dippy bubblegum nonsense that was popular when this record came out (I’m not going to shame anybody’s sacred cows, but I freakin’ can’t stand that happy hippy pop music of the early 1970s), man, the Stones went the opposite direction on this album. It feels mean, it feels dirty, it feels bluesy and cool, like a crowded basement bar that you want to get to the bottom of the stairs to see what it’s all about, and when you get there, all the hottest and sluttiest looking women are there, because of course they are.
From a technical angle, most of this was recorded by Andy Johns and then tweaked at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles. This album’s sonic character has always punched me in the gut—it’s recorded and mixed so perfectly. It’s not crisp high-fidelity like a Steely Dan record, and the audiophiles may not care for this album for that reason. Doesn’t matter. This album explodes out of the speakers and kicks you in the balls. Case in point, “Shake Your Hips,” mostly just one guitar, Mick singing, and Charlie Watts clicking sticks on the side of a snare—it’s minimalist but it still explodes out of the speakers, somehow. And the dense mixes of songs like “Sweet Virginia” and “Lovin’ Cup” just kind of define that era to me—it’s dense and thick but you can still hear all the instruments and everybody’s really locked in. There’s lots of good bass and the guitars and the snare drum all cut through without a lot of that 1970s muddy mix problem. Apparently Mick Jagger thinks Exile was mixed poorly. I beg to differ. It’s just such a… greasy-sounding record. In all the best ways. I love the way this record sounds.
The tunes are killer. “Rocks Off,” “Tumblin’ Dice,” “Happy,” “Lovin’ Cup,” “Turd on the Run,” mixed with blues covers like Slim Harpo’s “Shake Your Hips” and Robert Johnson’s “Stop Breaking Down,” and weird atmospheric tunes like “I Just Want to See His Face” and “Let It Loose.” It’s got it all!
I’ll always be a fan of this lineup of the band. I really love Keith’s guitar playing in this era (with his weird five-string guitar tuned to an open chord—to facilitate playing when he was so strung out). Somehow, the dude made it work, and came up with some of the most genius riffs of all time. And Mick Taylor—what an underrated dude. I love the interplay between Keith Richards and Mick Taylor on this album, it’s like listening to an engine lock in with a transmission or something. They just complement each other, and off they go. I never got that same chill down my spine with Ronnie Wood.
Without sounding too much like a rock critic, I guess I have always liked Exile on Main Street because it takes me to a place, a faraway place, that sounds like whorehouses and late-night bars and the sort of music you dream is bouncing off the streets in New Orleans on a hot summer night. The accompanying cover art and sleeve art take you there, too, with all the photos of freak show performers, black and white photos of the Stones in Southern juke joints, listening to the jukebox and smoking lots and lots of cigarettes. Exile is still one of the few albums where I’ll put it on, listen to all four sides (it’s a double album, don’t you know), and stare at the cover and the sleeve art and just let it take me to that faraway place. I like records like that. We need more records like that.
Lastly, I know I’ll offend a few more folks here, but I firmly believe a greasy, dirty, sexy, dark-sounding album like Exile on Main Street should be listened to via a very well-used vinyl copy (mine was found at a yard sale many years ago for a buck). The whole point of Exile is supposed to be about music with pops and clicks and static and crackle. I guess to each his own, but I don’t really see the point of having a 180-gram remastered mint pristine copy of this record. Mine had fingerprints all over it when I got it, and I’ve put a bunch more on it over the years. It honestly sounds better that way.
I’m gonna close my eyes now, and go to that place. I like it there.
Listen to the record with Deke at Deke’s original Facebook post!
