Half Off #1: Exile on Main Street (1972)

It's the greatest rock and roll album of all time -- and we're tossing half of it in the bin.

. . . in which the pointless question is asked:
“What songs would you pick if you could keep only half of an album?” Many years ago, I pondered that question concerning some now-forgotten album. I don’t know why the question popped into my head, but it remains there still, so it’s likely never leaving. I’ve decided to do some posts asking that question of various albums in my life.

Here we go . . .

Exile on Main Street is the greatest rock and roll album ever made.

If you think about the greatest rock and roll album of all time, you might come up with a different album.

You are wrong.

Exile was one of the first things Laura and I realized we had in common when we met in July 1985. For years, when renting cars on vacations, Exile was always the first tape I played in that car’s tape deck. So Exile will be the first album in this “Half Off” series.

When Exile celebrated its 20th birthday in 1992, I wrote a short appreciation about it for a music magazine called Request. I repeated the story of the album’s murky birth in the thick humidity of the basement of Keith Richards’s home in Nellcôte, Villefranche-sur-mer, France.

It’s a fantastic origin tale, but subsequent years have revealed that it’s mostly a myth. The Stones recorded some of Exile at Nellcôte, but more than half of the album (and all of the overdubs and production) has absolutely no connection to the south of France.

Which makes Exile’s production one of the most astounding and confounding sonic feats of all time. Because when you listen to Exile — really fucking listen to it — when you get inside it and attempt to figure it out — you quickly start believing the Nellcôte myths all over again.

For example, the church organ and gospel singing in the second halves of “Let It Loose” and “Shine A Light” seem like they must have been happy accidents, some rare musical moments captured during a months-long bacchanal, perhaps in the exhausted hours just before dawn. But listen again — with the knowledge that these songs were produced — constructed — in a clean, well-lighted studio — and it makes no sense.

The second half of one of those never-played-live songs — “Let It Loose” — is a worthy contender for the finest two minutes of Mick Jagger’s entire singing career. At 3:05, he belts: “In the bar, you’re getting drunk . . .” The next two minutes is a sonic masterpiece, with various female vocalists coming in individually at 4:27, 4:32, and 4:38, and Nicky Hopkins’s superlative piano being pushed slightly forward at 4:46. Everyone’s performance is nothing short of astonishing and the mix feels like stumbling out of a dark bar as the first rays of a new morning come over the horizon.

How could a band so precisely create such an exhilarating, messy, tossed-off album? If you consciously tried, you’d fail. You’d squeeze all the life out of the songs long before you got halfway to your imagined goal. So how did this happen? I have no idea. Maybe it was a happy accident.

Mick Jagger proved, in 2003, that artists can be the absolute worst judges of their own work:

Exile is not one of my favourite albums, although I think the record does have a particular feeling. I’m not too sure how great the songs are, but put together it’s a nice piece. However, when I listen to Exile it has some of the worst mixes I’ve ever heard. I’d love to remix the record, not just because of the vocals, but because generally I think it sounds lousy. At the time Jimmy Miller was not functioning properly. I had to finish the whole record myself, because otherwise there were just these drunks and junkies. Of course I’m ultimately responsible for it, but it’s really not good and there’s no concerted effort or intention.

The mix is what makes it work. If it had a cleaner mix, if you could discern what the fuck was going on, the album would lose a lot of its power and mystery.

There are 18 songs, so here are my nine keepers (in the order they appear):

Rocks Off
Tumbling Dice
Torn & Frayed
Happy
Let It Loose
All Down The Line
Stop Breaking Down
Shine A Light
Soul Survivor

Back in March 2010, when I criticized how the Stones utterly fucked up the Super Deluxe Edition of Exile (here and here (and this)) — it still infuriates me, knowing it could have been a mind-blowing experience for fans and the greatest de-luxe expanded version of an album in rock and roll history if the Stones had actually bothered to give a shit and put even a modicum of thought into it — I chose eight of the same songs. In 2010, I went with “Loving Cup” and not “Stop Breaking Down”. I’m a little surprised by how similar the picks are.

Laura and I listened to the album together, discussing the album as we went along. Her submission:

Exile on Main Street is the greatest rock album of all time. I wouldn’t cut one note from its soulful, bluesy, joyous, gorgeous mess. It doesn’t matter to me where it was recorded — whether in a sweaty basement in the south of France or a shiny L.A. studio — because what came out is perfection. The rules say I must lose half of this perfection, so I chose some songs that I guess I could live without if I had to. But I never want to. My Half Off Exile looks like this:

Rocks Off
Rip This Joint
Tumbling Dice
Happy
Let It Loose
All Down The Line
Stop Breaking Down
Let It Loose
Soul Survivor

One difference from my picks: She went with “Rip This Joint” and ignored all of Side 2. Her notes indicate these songs just missed the cut: “Tumbling Dice”, “Torn & Frayed”, and “Ventilator Blues”. “Stop Breaking Down” and “Soul Survivor” were on the bubble for a while.

Laura will pick every second album in this series. She says we should concentrate on our favourite records of all-time because those are the hardest to cut in half. I believe she has chosen The Band’s second album (“the brown album”) for our next Half Off.

On Tuesday, November 29, 1988, I was walking down Broadway around noon and passed a line of maybe 20 people lined up outside Tower Records at West 66th Street. I asked someone what was going on. I was told Keith Richards was going to be in the store around 2:00 pm. (Keith and the X-Pensive Winos were playing at the Beacon Theater that night, the fourth date on the Talk is Cheap Tour. We had tickets.)

Whatever I was on my way to do . . . I didn’t do it. Going back home and getting something for Keith to sign would take too long and the line would be much longer when I got back. So I went into the store, bought a fresh copy of Exile on Main Street (we owned three or four copies already), came back out, and got in line.

When I was on-deck to approach Keith’s table, a woman behind me asked if I would take a picture of her and Keith. Of course . . . could she take one of me and Keith? Pictures were taken, albums were signed. I gave the woman my address and went home. Some time later — two or three weeks? — a photo arrived in the mail.

November 29, 1988, Tower Records, Broadway & West 66th Street. Waddy Watchel, noted session guitarist and member of the Winos, is also at the table.

What Keith signed:

Random Notes

I’m no less impressed in 2023 that Keith wrote “Love to Allan” than I was in 1988.

Jagger was correct when he said Exile “does have a particular feeling” — and it’s a feeling that turns out to be all-but-impossible to duplicate on stage. Most of the time, the band didn’t even bother. Six songs (fully one-third of thew album) have never been played in concert: “Let It Loose”, “Just Wanna See His Face”, “Soul Survivor”, “Turd On The Run” and Slim Harpo’s “Shake Your Hips”. A seventh song, “Ventilator Blues”, was played at the opening show of the 1972 tour (in Vancouver) before it was dropped forever. They were also playing “Loving Cup”, but dropped it after three shows.

Exile is usually ranked pretty high in every “Best Rock and Roll Albums Ever” list. Amazingly, the Stones are still touring more than 50 years (!) later — and they have never played 33% of it. Is there another classic album like that?

A cassette given to piano player Nicky Hopkins (the Stones’ secret weapon in 1971-72), featuring instrumentals of four Exile songs, circulates. It might have been a practice aid before the 1972 tour. The songs are rough mixes and there are instruments not heard in the album mix, such as Mick Taylor’s slide guitar in “Rip This Joint” and various other aural goodies. Other songs: “Rocks Off”, “All Down The Line” and “Soul Survivor”.

My love for the 1972 tour is unconditional, but the Stones were even better in early 1973, during a series of shows in Australia. They push “All Down The Line” about as fast as it’ll go. You feel like it could go off the rails at any moment, but of course it doesn’t, because these are fuckin professionals. When it ends, Jagger even sounds impressed. Later in the show, they attack “Rip This Joint” like a punk band.

“All Down the Line” was part of the 1975 tour, but the unrelenting driving force of the song was absent. Once Jagger started enunciating his lyrics after 1978 (or maybe 1981; I’d have to listen to some boots), forget it. None of Exile’s songs other than “Tumbling Dice” maybe really work live now. And why oh why did Jagger change that song’s opening line — “Women think I’m tasty, but they’re always tryin’ to waste me” — to “Women think I’m crazy”? How could anyone think “crazy” is a better word choice than “tasty”? Amazingly, he had already begun singing “crazy” by early 1973!

I was in close proximity to Keith Richards on one other occasion, 1996-ish. I was working as a legal secretary in 500 Fifth Avenue (at 42nd Street). It was a little after 5:00 p.m. and I was coming down in the elevator. I turned to walk into the lobby and there he was — walking with a woman who I assumed was Jane Rose, his manager (it certainly wasn’t Patti Hansen). They passed me and went to the bank of elevators I had just left 5-10 seconds earlier. I paused, wondering if I “forgot” anything upstairs, but I decided against it and headed to the subway.