The Rolling Stones: Exile On Main Street (Re-issue)
November 2010
By Paul Green
Some would discount this now as plain noisy. Four decades on from its original hedonist context, there might seem limited contemporary application for such brazen partying rock and roll beyond nostalgic revisiting of joint-fuelled youthful abandon.
With the less than remarkable Tumbling Dice being the only single release, this double album partially escaped the attention of more mainstream-oriented audiences; yet many of the cognoscenti still regard it as summit Stones: a splendid celebration of majestic excess.
And, really, if the mood is right, it’s hard to remain unmoved by this ’72 vintage Jagger/Richard axis - vocals with enormous emotional range from swagger and crow to licentious drawl or stung regret, tangled with characteristic minimalist riffing rhythm guitar. Add the jiving sax and rippling honky-tonk piano and the liberation of hazed spirit in the basement of a hired French chateau is not hard to visualize.
What makes this so good is how the apparently effortlessly freewheeling sound is still, despite the illusory blur, tight and disciplined. Even spiraled down a well of cocaine and champagne, the instinct for crisply delivered songs remains.
This re-issue features ten hitherto unreleased recordings from the Exile sessions, including three alternative takes: a more ponderous Loving Cup, Soul Survivor with a flatter vocal delivery, and a brisker, less teeming but more cursory Tumbling Dice masquerading as Good Time Women. The other songs, generally sparer in instrumentation and subdued in authoritativeness, tend to tread water after a while and, with the exception of the sharply pointed So Divine (Aladdin Story) which bristles with aggrieved pride, their omission from the final cut seems entirely logical.
Of interest for the Stones specialist, but unlikely to stir up the unconverted.
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