Still torn and frayed
It’s a weird sign of the times that The Rolling Stones can put out an album recorded some 40 years ago and still get more raves than they have for their last 10 albums combined. Granted, the band — which continues making new music on occasion, despite mass indifference, though they still take their live act on the road and to the bank every few years — recorded “Exile on Main St.” during their most fertile period, from 1969 to 1972.
Yet what’s most interesting about the lavish remastered version of “Exile” (better sound, 10 extra tracks including unreleased and some rerecorded music, tons of photos capturing the basement quality of those sessions and, best of all, a DVD documentary) is that even the toss-offs and outtakes from those days sound better than most Stones imitators do — better, in fact, than the Stones themselves nowadays.
Lead single Plundered My Soul is actually great fun, a “fresh” tune dusted off from the ancient mummified archives of Messrs. Jagger and Richards. The joke is, it’s been juiced up on digital steroids: 66-year-old Jagger drops in some croaky vocals on what is basically a leftover backing track while erstwhile Stone Mick Taylor returns to lay down some vintage guitar work, the countrified opening riff circling before drummer Charlie Watts plops down into the milieu. The amazing thing is, it works! Ersatz “Exile,” maybe, but shiny nonetheless.
Stones purists may cry foul at such digital “fiddling” with history, but it’s worth noting that the Stones often recorded tracks and then let them lie around in the can for years before dusting them off. In fact, it’s hard to trace the precise genealogy of many Stones tunes. Much of “Tattoo You” (1981), for instance, was recorded in the early ‘70s during the “Goat’s Head Soup” sessions in Jamaica. And, unlike the Beatles, whose plundering and rerecording of the late John Lennon’s Dakota demos for their “Anthology” series of albums struck many as ghoulish, the Stones are (basically) still alive (well, give or take a couple). They arguably still have a stake in preserving history, not just cashing in on it.
Plundered My Soul has a lazy, sloppy charm, the sort of thing that once made the Stones great: it’s about a chick who Jagger mistakenly thought only “wanted my money,” but it turns out she “wanted my soul.” A common complaint in those days among rock musicians, who were always quick to blame Eve for their excesses. It settles into a common-enough Richards reworking of a Chuck Berry riff, one brain cell gone into overdrive, but it sounds… just about right.
It’s proof that the Stones’ horn of plenty during those years was such that they could afford to toss a decent track like this on the shelf after they’d finished cutting “Exile” — their famed double album recorded in Villa Nellcôte, Keith Richards’ Riviera paradise in the South of France where the band decamped to avoid paying hefty British taxes for a year. Besides all the debauched legend surrounding that exile, some of the band’s best music was conjured up there.
But as critics have pointed out, a lot of the final material on “Exile” was also recorded elsewhere: in ’69 in London, or in LA sessions in ’70. So the Nellcôte “vibe” seems to have wandered the globe.
What was it like to record in the South of France? I haven’t seen the documentary (I balk at paying US$140 for a deluxe version of “Exile,” which I just got around to buying on CD a few years ago; those who want to hear the unreleased Stones tracks for free can listen to them on YouTube, as I did), but it was reportedly the best of times, the worst of times. According to art dealer and drug connection Robert Fraser (in his book Up and Down with the Rolling Stones), the band was involved with guns and knifeplay with the locals, Richards jealous over guys ogling then-girlfriend Anita Pallenberg. There were dangerous drives down the coastal roads of the Riviera, guest musicians popping in and possibly lots of illegal substances about. But most of the real heavy lifting was apparently done in Richards’ sweaty basement, with its poor ventilation (hence one of the song titles: Ventilator Blues).
Jagger has dismissed the 1972 album over the years, as indeed critics and fans did at first; but “Exile” soon became part of the Stones’ classic trilogy, along with “Let It Bleed” and “Sticky Fingers.” Hearing it for the first time as a teen (on used vinyl) was like becoming a fly on the wall of those sessions: inspired by Richards’ collection of old blues and Slim Harpo sides, gospel and country and the presence of Gram Parsons, songs start out haphazardly, almost an afterthought, driven by off-the-cuff riffs, before eventually fading as though the jam goes on forever. Charlie Watts is the backbone on these tracks, accounting for about 65 percent of the “looseness” that is usually credited to Richards’ rhythm playing. His supple pulse gives the band just enough room to hang whatever they want on the line in all its ragged glory.
On vinyl, those who grew up with “Exile” came to adopt their favorite “side,” depending on the mood: either the “rip-this-joint” run of Side 1 to start your day; Side 2’s sloppy country blues Sweet Virginia opener (which nearly got me thrown out of my college dorm for playing it super loud at 1:30 a.m. after a frat party); Side 3’s chemically cheerful opener Happy; and the “coming down” of Side 4 commencing with All Down the Line to the sideways-tilting Soul Survivor.
It was pretty much downhill after “Exile.” “Goat’s Head Soup” in 1973 was a further document of decadence, but it was freeze-dried decadence by then, the kind of stiff posing that Led Zeppelin hurled up on “Presence” or Lou Reed pooped out on “Sally Can’t Dance.” And of course, after a brief return to relevance on “Some Girls” (1978) and “Tattoo You,” the Stones were, one by one, replaced by Cylon replicants, and it is this version of the band that now makes the stadium rounds.
But back in 1972, the air was fresh and the music still green. The other extras on “Exile” are no classics, but they’re passable. They shed a light on jams laid down in various studios at the time, all sharing a similar voodoo vibration. I’m Not Signifying is a jaunty New Orleans blues march, So Divine steals Keith’s own riff from Paint It Black, while Dancing in the Light and Following the Light are mere throwaways, just not quite good enough for “Exile.” Yes, some diddling did take place, according to Richards: “It was missing a bit of body here and there, and I stroked something on acoustic here and there… Mick did need to sing an actual vocal on Plundered My Soul because there wasn’t one and Mick Taylor also recorded lead and rhythm guitar in London… but otherwise, basically they are as we left them 39 years ago.”
My favorite new tracks are Pass the Wine (Sophia Loren), with its Riviera party feel, and an earlier take on Loving Cup that is wonderfully loose, as though the band is feeling its way around the gospel melody for the first time. Unfortunately the ending gets mucked up, the rhythms degenerating into sloppiness. But it’s a sloppiness that puts a smile on Stones fan’s faces. I’m not ready to shell out for the remastered box set of “Exile On Main Street,” but hearing these “new” old tracks for the first time is as close as you will probably get to partying with the Stones, circa 1972.
