‘Exile on Main Street,’ released 50 years ago after they’d left Britain for financial reasons, marked a more eclectic, edgier turn in the famous band’s music
The Rolling Stones in the spring of 1971 were a band on the run. Victims of bad business advice and Britain’s steep, punitive tax rates, the Stones had brought in a new business manager, Prince Rupert Loewenstein, who urged them in early ’71 to become tax exiles in Southern France.
By June, the band was recording in the dank, partitioned basement of Keith Richards’s rented French villa near Nice, their 16-track “Mighty Mobile” studio truck parked outside. The Stones were under pressure to complete an album for their new Stones-owned label in advance of a planned American tour the following June and July.
The result was “Exile on Main St.,” their 12th studio album released in the U.S. and their first double LP, which turns 50 on May 12. The record reached No. 1 on the Billboard album chart and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2012. At the time of their exile, the Stones were joined in France by saxophonist Bobby Keys, keyboardist Nicky Hopkins and producer-percussionist Jimmy Miller.
Initially belittled by rock critics as directionless, “Exile” was soon breathlessly hailed as rock’s boldest album. Not only did the brash recording burnish the Stones’ reputation as “the greatest rock ’n’ roll band in the world,” but it also partially erased their nasty image after the violent Altamont free concert in December 1969.
Each song on the album seems to have a dual personality, like a radio dial lodged between two stations. At the music’s core is the classic Stones approach—with Keith Richards’s jutting guitar, Mick Taylor’s guitar fills, Bill Wyman’s bass and Charlie Watts’s snapping drums topped by Mick Jagger’s gritty blues vocals.
But each song also has a thick spread of American rock and soul styles underneath, punched up by horns, piano and gospel background vocals. The album’s 18 songs embrace the Delta blues, Bakersfield honky-tonk, Southern rock, Memphis soul, Laurel Canyon folk-rock and even the San Francisco jamming style developed by the Grateful Dead.
By 1971, the Stones were steeped in American pop styles picked up while touring since June 1964. But “Exile” also has a distinctly dark tone. As Mr. Wyman noted in his 1990 memoir, “Stone Alone,” the months in France were a “tense” and “rootless” period when practically all band members “dabbled in drugs,” except for Messrs. Wyman, Watts and Hopkins. Mr. Richards was more blunt in “Life,” his 2010 memoir: “Two songs a day written on a heroin habit.”
The rollicking opener “Rocks Off” is a perfect mash of American rock influences. Mr. Jagger sings the verses with a vocal reminiscent of Lou Reed on “Sunday Morning,” backed by a churning Little Richard-like piano and chanting horn riffs. The song’s sudden midway break reminds one of the psychedelic downshift on the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.”
“Rip This Joint” is a rockabilly hoe-down with Mr. Jagger’s vocal laced with Jerry Lee Lewis’s manic delivery. The tempo is likely the fastest used on any recorded Stones song.
According to Mr. Jagger, the lyrics to the slinky blues “Casino Boogie” were written by him and Mr. Richards by jotting down phrases on paper strips and plucking them out of a pile: “Wounded lover, got no time on hand / One last cycle, thrill freak Uncle Sam / Pause for business, hope you’ll understand.”
In the 2010 documentary “Stones in Exile,” Mr. Jagger said that lyrics for the top-10 single “Tumbling Dice” came from a conversation he had with his housekeeper, who liked to gamble: “Baby, got no flavor, fever in the funk house now / This low down bitchin’ got my poor feet a itchin’ / Don’t you know, you know the deuce is still wild.”
“Sweet Virginia” opens with a Neil Young vibe and is among the album’s most intriguing pieces. Mr. Jagger uses a country croon that’s joined by a saxophone solo and gospel handclaps.
“Happy,” the album’s second single, was written mostly by Mr. Richards, who takes the lead vocal. Apparently, the rest of the Stones were late to arrive at his villa that night and he went at it alone on guitar and bass with Mr. Miller on drums and Mr. Keys on maracas.
“Shine a Light” is a tribute to Stones founder Brian Jones, who had died in 1969. The song begins as a haunting ballad but soon transitions into a rousing gospel-rock work: “The angels beating all their wings in time / Smiles on their faces and a gleam right in their eyes / Whoa, thought I heard one sigh for you.”
The closer, “Soul Survivor,” brings the album back to the Stones’ early, English-rock roots, with Mr. Jagger’s vocal summing up their Riviera excesses: “I’m a soul survivor / Gonna be the death of me / It’s gonna be the death of me.”
What we hear in “Exile” is rock eclecticism shaded by lotusland decadence. After the album’s release, the Stones became known for their primal sound rather than any particular rock style. The album and shift weren’t lost on punk artists, who emerged two years later to remake the rock landscape.
By Marc Myers
May 11, 2022 5:22 pm ET