Product Description

Regarded as one of the greatest albums in rock 'n' roll history and one of the most defining of the Stones' catalogue. Upon its release more than three decades ago, 'Exile on Main Street' innovatively wove varying musical genres, instruments and even artists into a compelling rhythmic masterpiece. The original 18-track double-album was recorded in various stages at multiple locations, including Olympic Studios in London, Keith Richard's mansion Nellcote in France, and in Los Angeles where the literal "Main Street" influenced the album title. These atypical circumstances surrounding the recording process greatly affected the album's outcome which was highly reflective and influenced by the sociopolitical turbulence that marked the late `60s and early `70s. The Stones nixed the influences of a flower-child era and directed their creative process with the edgier, excessive, "more is more" approach of the `70s. Exile reveals a sprawling mix of genres with undertones of blues, country, R&B and gospel mixed with lyrics that fervently demand for release and liberation. The 2-CD version is a 3-panel digi-pak, 2xCDs with a 12 page booklet. The Digipak is printed in reverse board double white to keep an 'uncoated' feel like the original LP release. The 2nd disc features 10 tracks originally recorded during the Exile era including 'Plundered My Soul', 'Dancing in the Light', 'Following the River' and 'Pass The Wine' plus alternate versions of 'Soul Survivor' and 'Loving Cup'.


Customer Review
By John Stodder "a.k.a. Juan La Princi"

For decades, it has been a truism that Exile on Main Street is the greatest album the Stones ever made, and that after this album, their career has gone slowly but exorably downhill. Lately I've seen posts on this and other sites challenging "Exile," saying essentially that the album is wildly overrated, and doesn't have the songs that other Stones albums have--"Beggars Banquet," "Let it Bleed" "Sticky Fingers" "Some Girls" and even "Goats Head Soup" getting the nods from these revisionist thinkers.

They have half a point, these folks. There is nothing that hits the incredible highs of "Gimme Shelter," "Street Fighting Man," "Brown Sugar," "Angie," "Beast of Burden," "Wild Horse" or "Shattered" on this album. The two hits that this album generated, "Tumbling Dice" and "Happy" are much-loved, but didn't have the impact of the above singles. And against their earlier 60s hits like "Paint it Black" or "Satisfaction"--forget it.

All that's granted. If someone wanted to be very reductive, much of "Exiles..." just sounds like a boogie album typical of its era--in the early 70s there was sort of a roots revival going on, so lots of bands were doing a sort of combination of blues and gospel with lots of tambourines shaking, pianos rolling, and backup women singers. Stretches of "Exile..." certainly have that Delaney and Bonnie feel. Other songs sound like attempts to emulate early Little Feat, or Gram Parsons, who famously partied with Keith throughout the making of some of this album.

So what makes this album their greatest?

It's hard to describe, but here's my best shot: It's about "feel." Never before or since did the Stones manage to create such a consistent and compelling mood that lasts from the first song to the last. It is a very naked album, both musically and lyrically. I know it was worked and worked, but the result is an album that sounds like the Stones are playing not in some French basement, but in YOUR basement. And, on this album like no other, they are singing their lives. The songs are grooves over which Mick and Keith simply testify as to what's rattling around their heads--encounters with women, thoughts on life as a rock and roller, spiritual, moral and political questions, from the sublime to the obscene. In its own way, this is a "confessional" album like Joni Mitchell's "Blue" or Neil Young's "Harvest," except unlike those two artists who equate honesty with a quiet and stripped down musical approach, the Stones say what's in their hearts to a rocking beat. And, they don't glorify it. "I only get my rocks off when I'm sleeping." They are nostaglic, isolated, scared, bored, tired, loaded, wondering what will happen to them, recognizing that this life they are leading is artificial and perhaps even dangerous, but a mystery. So they lean on that backbeat and those fat chords, and seemingly just spill all of it, in an almost stream of consciousness way.

To me, "Exile on Main Street" is really just one long song that carries the album's title, a self-contradicting phrase (like "Hide in Plain Sight") that evokes a peculiar sense of paranoia that only a bunch of guys who became international superstars would feel, that sense that here you are in plain sight for everyone to see, but you're gone, you don't live in the same world as your fans anymore, the pleasures of ordinary life have been ripped away and replaced with something that may be much better in some ways, enviable, yes, but also frightening and hard to decipher.

Musically, when you compare "Exile..." with other Stones albums, the main difference I find is that most other Stones albums are highly eclectic. Take "Sticky Fingers." You get some great rock songs, but you also get a jazzy, Latin-tinged jam, some country songs, some orchestral numbers--the mood changes radically several times, and in the end, it's just a collection of great songs without any particular theme. Ditto with "Let it Bleed," "Beggars Banquet" or "Goats Head Soup"--Fantastic albums with lots of great songs, but somewhat randomly assembled musically. I go to those albums for songs that I want to hear, and don't always track them all the way through. But lovers of "Exile..." usually start at the beginning and just follow it all the way through, like a movie. And man, it delivers. And today, 30 years on, it still sounds very fresh.

In my personal little list of the greatest rock albums, this is one of the top 10, along with "Revolver," "John Wesley Harding," "London Calling," "St. Dominic's Preview," "Pet Sounds," "Songs in the Key of Life," "Blood on the Tracks," and the aforementioned "Blue." And like all of them, "Exiles..." comes from the heart, and that's what makes it great.