270. The Rolling Stones - Exile On Main St. (1972)
















Track Listing

1. Rocks Off
2. Rip This Joint
3. Shake Your Hips
4. Casino Boogie
5. Tumbling Dice
6. Sweet Virginia
7. Torn And Frayed
8. Sweet Black Angel
9. Loving Cup
10. Happy
11. Turd On The Run
12. Ventilator Blues
13. I Just Want To See His Face
14. Let It Loose
15. All Down The Line
16. Stop Breakin' Down
17. Shine A Light
18. Soul Survivor

Review

Well. this is an interesting album. I have been pretty busy preparing the music playlist for my wedding on the 5th of May and therefore I have been listening more to snippets of the tracks I'm cutting and pasting than actual music. I was able to give this album about 4 or 5 listen throughs though and even tohugh I know I really like it, it hasn't sunk in that much yet.

Firstly there is no immediate catch here, there's no single or stand out song, that's very much the fault of the fact that the whole album is pretty uniformely good. Little stands out because very little is unimpressive as well. This has the pernicious side-effect however of making the whole double-album kind of blend in itself.

The Stones are taking a much rawer approach to music here than in previous albums, the music frequently drowns Jagger's vocals out, but this is only fair if you take into account the fact that Jagger was faffing about celebrating his wedding while Keith Richard was doing all the work. It is only fair that the music takes precedence over the vocals. There are, however some very nice vocal touches, particularly in the gospec inspired backups and this is particularly good in Tumbling Dice and Let It Loose. Other tracks rock non-stop like Rip This Joint. In the end it is a pretty perfect showcase of the Stones' capacity to produce coherent albums with impeccable music, even more so than The Beatles did. This is no White Album because the White Album was such a hit and miss affair. Get it from Amazon UK or US.


Track Highlights

1. Tumbling Dice
2. Rip This Joint
3. Rocks Off
4. Let It Loose

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

From Wikipedia:

Legend has it that the album was recorded in the basement of Keith Richards' new home, Nellcôte, at Villefranche-sur-Mer, near Nice, France. In reality, many basic tracks were recorded in 1969 and 1970 at Olympic Studios and Mick Jagger's Stargroves country house in England during sessions for Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers. These tracks, together with additional basic tracks recorded at Keith's villa in June 1971 (most probably only "Rip this Joint", "Shake Your Hips", "Casino Boogie", "Happy", "I Just Wanna See His Face", "Turd on the Run", and "Ventilator Blues"), were taken to Sunset Sound Recorders in Los Angeles and numerous overdubs (all piano and keyboard parts, all lead and backing vocals, all guitar and bass overdubs) were added during sessions that meandered from December 1971 until May 1972. Some tracks (like "Rocks Off" and "Loving Cup") were freshly recorded in Los Angeles.

The basic band for the Nellcôte sessions is believed to have consisted of Keith Richards, Bobby Keys, Mick Taylor, Charlie Watts, Jimmy Miller, and Mick Jagger when he was available and/or interested. Bassist Bill Wyman did not like the ambience of the Richards villa and sat out many of the French sessions. As Wyman appeared on only eight songs of the released album, the other bass parts were played by Taylor, Richards, and on four tracks upright bassist Bill Plummer. Wyman noted in his memoir Stone Alone that there was a clear dichotomy between the band members who freely indulged in drugs (Richards, Miller, and Keys) and those who more or less abstained (Wyman, Watts, and Jagger).

Tumbling Dice, it's better on the album: