The Rolling Stones-Exile On Main Street (1972) May

Any review of this album will describe it as a hugely influential record and use words such as 'seminal' and 'gritty'. When I first came across it (in cassette form) I was living as a student in London and during that time I had it pumping out of my Sony Walkman earphones probably a bit too loud, as I walked around the college campus and streets. The album offered what I craved at that time: an escaped from the perpetually grey skies overhead and pebble-dashed houses of North London. A warmth, energy and otherness you just couldn't find in England. As a complete package, the music combined with the album cover artwork and the stories of hedonism surrounding the production of the album (derived from articles in NME and Rolling Stone magazine over the years), it made for a pretty intriguing piece of commercial art. Listening to the songs, you immediately got the impression that the album was an unstable thing, teething on the edge of collapse. If this had happened, if the songs turned into a wall of mush, it would have confirmed the suspicion that if you lock a bunch of preening, drug-addled rock stars into a studio, telling them to have at it, indulge every creative whim no matter how ridiculous, you would almost certainly end up with a big pile of musical dung. Not in this case. Despite all the pitfalls of Rock and Roll excess, the Stones managed to pull it off. On the first listen, right away you notice, if you familiar with the Rolling Stones catalogue, the lack of identifiable radio-friendly hits (apart from 'Tumbling Dice'). You may also notice that the lyrics delve head first into dark areas: sex and drugs and the internal mechanics of a band who had, at that time, turned outlaw, deciding to run away from their record company and taxation masters back in the UK. Or so the legend goes. Whatever the case, the Stones were on the verge of changing into a monster. A touring industry. They were moving towards a series of endless one night stands with thousands of fans in concrete stadiums across the globe. One night stands that would carry them through the 70's and 80's. And the 90's. And the noughties. And into this decade. Five granddads who still, to this day like to rock out with their......well, you know the rest of that line. The point is before they became Rock and Roll pensioners, they were the real deal. As such, they were able to knock out Exile on Main Street.

The album cover (even in tiny print on the cassette case booklet) further indicated the complexity of the album's seeming haphazard assemblage. There was (is) a collage of black and white images. Freakshow performers, vaudeville people, bellydancers and the Stones themselves. Like the music, it felt rough and slapped together. A motley crew of images, songs and performers. You could see the edges of these images, complete with film stock numbers and the sprocket holes of the Kodak negatives. It looked and sounded like it had been put together in a slap-dash way. And what was up with the weird references of colonialism? The images of Indians and the African guy with three oranges stuck in his mouth? It could be nothing. Many rock stars trade in ambiguity and weird juxtapositions. Throw some random lyrics together, some garbage poetry, then work out some music to accompany these words. Then let the fans provide the meaning.

Anyway, the songs start and stop but the general mood of the album perpetuates. Decadence. Boredom. Hanging out at Keith Richard's chateau in the south of France. Anger and the possibility of violence. Time slipping away. Youth buried in the slow or fast accumulation of years. Love. Sex. The hollow trappings of being a spoilt rock star.  The patchwork quilt quality of the music was a result of the inclusion of the Blues, Gospel, Rock and Roll, Country and Western (among other influences) performed by a group of gaunt English musicians. Because of the inclusion of extra instruments and guest musicians, Exile on Main Street covers a lot of musical territory over the course of its 18 songs and is a full sounding, layered record. Full and rich but also fuzzed out, echoing through empty spaces, fading in and out, morphing from song to song. Coherent while simultaneously coming apart at the seams, blurring at the edges. At once bleak, perhaps escaping the bummer last years of the 1960's while offering some sort of spiritual hope in the form of Shine a Light & Soul Survivor, hope that the 1970's would hold more promise. Anyway listening to this, in London at that time, I was able to define my position according to one of the life's most telling classifications. Ie. What kind of Rock and Roll fan are you? A Beetles or a Stones fan? Both have clearly defined attributes and qualities. I'd have to go with the Stones myself.