Exile on Main St. is the tenth studio album by The Rolling Stones.

Released as a double LP in May 1972, it draws on many genres including rock & roll, blues, co untry and soul and calypso. Exile on Main St. was initially greeted by reviewers with condemnation or high praise, but it has since become almost universally re garded as a masterpiece.[1] A remastered version of the album was released in Europe on 17 May 2010 and in t he United States on 18 May 2010, featuring 10 new tracks, including "Plundered M y Soul", "Dancing in the Light", "Following the River" and "Pass the Wine" as we ll as alternate versions of "Soul Survivor" and "Loving Cup".[ Recording Exile on Main St. is an album composed of songs written and recorded between 196 8 and 1972. Of the earlier songs, the band's singer Mick Jagger said in 2003, "A fter we got out of our contract with Allen Klein, we didn't want to give him [th ose earlier tracks]," as they were forced to do with the songs "Brown Sugar" and "Wild Horses" from Sticky Fingers. Most were recorded between 1969 and 1971 at Olympic Studios and Jagger's Stargroves country house in England during sessions for Sticky Fingers. By the spring of 1971, the Rolling Stones, who owed more taxes than they could p ay, left England before the government would seize their assets. Mick Jagger set tled in Paris with his new bride Bianca, and guitarist Keith Richards rented a l uxurious villa, Nellcte, in Villefranche-sur-Mer, near Nice. The other members se ttled in various places in the south of France. After unsuccessfully looking for a recording studio in France that would be suitable for the next Rolling Stones album, it was decided they would record at Nellcte using the band's remote recor ding truck brought in from England. Nellcte Recording began in earnest sometime near the middle of June. The bassist Bill Wy man recalls the band working all night, every night, from eight in the evening u ntil three the following morning for the rest of the month. Wyman said of that p eriod, "Not everyone turned up every night. This was, for me, one of the major f rustrations of this whole period. For our previous two albums we had worked well and listened to producer Jimmy Miller. At Nellcte things were very different and it took me a while to understand why." By this time Richards had begun a daily habit of using heroin. Thousands of dollars of heroin flowed through the mansion each week in addition to a contingent of visitors that included William S. Burr oughs, Terry Southern, Gram Parsons and Marshall Chess (who was running the Roll ing Stones' new label). Parsons was asked to leave Nellcte in early July, 1971, t he result of his obnoxious behaviour and an attempt by Richards to clean the hou se of drug users as the result of pressure from the French police. Richards' substance abuse prevented him from attending the sessions that continu ed in his basement, while Mick Jagger and Bill Wyman were often unable to attend sessions for other reasons. This often left the band in the position of having to record in altered forms. A notable instance was the recording of one of Richa rds' most famous songs, "Happy". Recorded in the basement, Richards said in 1982 , "'Happy' was something I did because I was for one time early for a session. T here was Bobby Keys and Jimmy Miller. We had nothing to do and had suddenly pick ed up the guitar and played this riff. So we cut it and it's the record, it's th e same. We cut the original track with a baritone sax, a guitar and Jimmy Miller on drums. And the rest of it is built up over that track. It was just an aftern oon jam that everybody said, 'Wow, yeah, work on it'". The basic band for the Nellcte sessions consisted of Richards, Bobby Keys, Mick T aylor, Charlie Watts, Miller (a skilled drummer in his own right who covered for the absent Watts on the aforementioned "Happy" and "Shine a Light"), and Jagger when he was available. Wyman did not like the ambience of Richards' villa and s

at 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 fou r tracks, the upright bassist Bill Plummer. Wyman noted in his memoir Stone Alon e that there was a dichotomy between the band members who freely indulged in dru gs (Richards, Miller, Keys, Taylor, the engineer Andy Johns) and those who absta ined to varying degrees (Wyman, Watts and Jagger). Los Angeles Additional basic tracks (probably only "Rip this Joint", "Shake Your Hips", "Cas ino Boogie", "Happy", "Rocks Off", "Turd on the Run" and "Ventilator Blues") wer e begun in the basement of Nellcte and taken to Sunset Sound Recorders in Los Ang eles where 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 (such as "Torn and Frayed" and " Loving Cup") were freshly recorded in Los Angeles. Although Jagger (who had rece ntly wed Bianca Jagger) was frequently missing from Nellcte, he took charge durin g the second stage of recording in Los Angeles, arranging for the keyboardists B illy Preston and Dr John and the cream of the city's session backup vocalists to record layers of overdubs. The final gospel-inflected arrangements of "Tumbling Dice", "Loving Cup", "Let It Loose" and "Shine a Light" were inspired by Jagger and Preston's visit to a local evangelical church. The extended recording sessions and differing methods on the part of Jagger and Richards reflected the growing disparity in their personal lives. During the mak ing of the album, Jagger had married which was followed by the birth of their on ly child, Jade in October 1971. Richards was firmly attached to his girlfriend A nita Pallenberg, yet both were in the throes of heroin addiction, which Richards would not overcome until the turn of the decade. Even though the album is often described as being Richards' finest moment, as Exile is often thought to reflec t his vision for a raw, rootsy rock sound, Jagger was already expressing his bor edom with rock and roll in several interviews at the time of the album's release . With Richards' effectiveness seriously undermined by his dependence on heroin, the group's subsequent 1970s releasesdirected largely by Jaggerwould experiment i n varying degrees with other musical genres, moving away from the roots-based so und of Exile on Main St. Release and reception Preceded by the UK and US Top 10 hit "Tumbling Dice", Exile on Main St. was rele ased in May 1972. It was an immediate commercial success, reaching #1 worldwide just as the band embarked on their celebrated 1972 American Tour. Their first Am erican tour in three years, it featured many songs from the new album. "Happy", sung by Richards, would be a Top 30 US hit later that summer. Many critics judged Exile on Main St. to be a ragged and impenetrable record at the time of its release. Lenny Kaye, writing in Rolling Stone magazine, was typi cal of contemporary critics who did not consider the album as anything special.[ 13] According to Kaye, "[t]here are songs that are better, there are songs that are worse, and others you'll probably lift the needle for when the time is due." Kaye concludes by assuring his readers that "the great Stones album of their ma ture period is yet to come". On the initial critical and commercial reaction, Richards said, "When [Exile] ca me out it didn't sell particularly well at the beginning, and it was also pretty much universally panned. But within a few years the people who had written the reviews saying it was a piece of crap were extolling it as the best frigging alb um in the world." Other critics praised the album's rawness and different styles, from blues to co untry to soul. The music critic Robert Christgau concluded in 1972: "Incontrover tibly the years best, this fagged-out masterpiece is the summum of Rock 72. Exile

explores new depths of record-studio murk, burying Mick's voice under layers of cynicism, angst, and ennui." In 1994 Exile on Main St. was remastered and reissued by Virgin Records. The original double album contained 12 black-and-white postcards featuring the R olling Stones in the company of two unidentified women. Band appraisal At the time of Exile's release, Jagger said, "This new album is fucking mad. The re's so many different tracks. It's very rock & roll, you know. I didn't want it to be like that. I'm the more experimental person in the group, you see I like to experiment. Not go over the same thing over and over. Since I've left England , I've had this thing I've wanted to do. I'm not against rock & roll, but I real ly want to experiment. The new album's very rock & roll and it's good. I mean, I 'm very bored with rock & roll. The revival. Everyone knows what their roots are , but you've got to explore everywhere. You've got to explore the sky too." In 2003, Jagger said, "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 ti me Jimmy Miller was not functioning properly. I had to finish the whole record m yself, 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 concerte d effort or intention." Jagger also stated he didn't understand the praise among st Rolling Stones' fans because the album did not yield very many hits.[Accordin g to the Rolling Stones, the Rolling Stones, Chronicle Books, October 2003.] Of the album, Richards said, "Exile was a double album. And because it's a doubl e album you're going to be hitting different areas, including 'D for Down', and the Stones really felt like exiles. We didn't start off intending to make a doub le album; we just went down to the south of France to make an album and by the t ime we'd finished we said, 'We want to put it all out.' The point is that the St ones had reached a point where we no longer had to do what we were told to do. A round the time Andrew Oldham left us, we'd done our time, things were changing a nd I was no longer interested in hitting Number One in the charts every time. Wh at I want to do is good shit--if it's good they'll get it some time down the roa d." Greeted with decidedly mixed reviews upon its original release, Exile on Main St . has become generally regarded as the Rolling Stones' finest album. Part of the reason why the record was initially greeted with hesitant reviews is that it ta kes a while to assimilate. A sprawling, weary double album encompassing rock & r oll, blues, soul, and country, Exile doesn't try anything new on the surface, bu t the substance is new. Taking the bleakness that underpinned Let It Bleed and S ticky Fingers to an extreme, Exile is a weary record, and not just lyrically. Ja gger's vocals are buried in the mix, and the music is a series of dark, dense ja ms, with Keith Richards and Mick Taylor spinning off incredible riffs and solos. And the songs continue the breakthroughs of their three previous albums. No longer does their country sound forced or kitschy it's lived-in and complex, just like the group's forays into soul and gospel. While the songs, including th e masterpieces "Rocks Off," "Tumbling Dice," "Torn and Frayed," "Happy," "Let It Loose," and "Shine a Light," are all terrific, they blend together, with only c ertain lyrics and guitar lines emerging from the murk. It's the kind of record t hat's gripping on the very first listen, but each subsequent listen reveals some thing new. Few other albums, let alone double albums, have been so rich and mast erful as Exile on Main St., and it stands not only as one of the Stones' best re

cords, but sets a remarkably high standard for all of hard rock.