'Exile On Main Street' At 50 .... And Still The Greatest Stones Album!

I've blown hot and cold on this album over the years. A lot of the material on the album is just kinda second rate. Undifferentiated blues and boogie numbers that I can't remember in any specific way. They kinda go in one ear and out the other for me without leaving much of a mark. I've heard the album a million times over decades and still I can't remember half the songs on the album and when I read the titles on the track list I can't call the songs to mind. A record chock-a-block with just plain ol' forgettable stuff.

And even the good material on there isn't great material. I don't think there's a single song on there that I would call one of the Stone's greatest original songs. "Tumbling Dice" maybe comes closest, great groove, great sound, great feel, but what the hell are those lyrics about? Happy? Another great groove and feel, but a pretty slight song.

The album winds up playing better then the sum of its parts because of the sound and swagger you mention, and the atmosphere and mythos surrounding the album. It just sounds good. As a whole it's much better than any of its individual parts are. Maybe my favorite thing, in the end, from the entire sessions showed up on the 40th anniversary edition album, "Plundered My Soul."

I've gone through periods where I hated it, and periods when it was my favorite Stones album. These days it sounds to me like proof that, in rock and roll, you don't necessarily have to write great songs, you can get by on sound and style.

 

Exile is a strange album for me. It's obviously excellent and there's no real bad songs on there but I'd only the rate the following four as all time classic Stones tracks.

Rocks Off
Tumbling Dice
Happy
Let It Loose

It's definitely an album where the whole is greater then the sum of parts but if I'm being honest I would it rank 4th in the Stones 1970's output behind Sticky Fingers, Some Girls and Goats Head Soup.

 

Exile is not for the casual Stones fan. It needs and rewards repeated listening. It takes time to absorb its rich, soulful pageantry.

I love it, though I don't call it best.
For me, BB, LIB, SF, and EOMS collectively are the Stones best.

Sonically, it may be the worst. I've had multiple issues, from the original LP to the SHM-SACD and it doesn't matter what gear you play it on, it always sounds like a cheap transistor radio.

 

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.

 

It’s funny how we all hear things so so differently - for me, the album is super varied but also super cohesive. I don’t hear two songs the same (or even close), a charge i could accept against the three frenetic rockers on Some Girls, perhaps.

Anyways, you’re obviously not alone in being non plussed by the album - even Jagger has *mixed emotions* and obviously no one can dispute the fact that Exile doesn’t have a single, truly iconic ‘Stones ‘anthem’ on it - nothing which continues the golden Hot Rocks lineage of “Sympathy”, “Jumpin Jack Flash”, “Street Fighting Man”, “Gimme Shelter” or “Brown Sugar” etc … but in a funny way, one of those would have spoiled the album, because it’s kind of not about that.

As an aside, I’ve also never really understood (beyond it being a single) why “Tumbling Dice” gets particularly elevated above the rest of Exile in an attempt to add it to that ’iconic’ category.

So I’d agree it’s more than the sum of its parts, but on their own terms, those parts are glorious too for some of us.

 

Never Was Greatest Stones Album !!!

 

I was about thirteen when I bought Exile and I fell in love with it immediately. I loved everything about it. The artwork set a mood which completely matched the music. I loved the variety and quality of the songs and all the horns and piano. At that age the album seemed somewhat mysterious and dangerous to me, which added to it's allure. Almost 50 years later, I still love it. To me it's not just the best Stones album but the best rock and roll album - period. If I could only have one album on a dessert island, his would be it.

 

The greatest rock album of all time. The way the record captures country and the blues to produce bursting rock n roll makes it a peerless rock record imo. I have six copies on vinyl and the DSD. The DSD and the OG USA are the best sounding imo. Some disappointing vinyl reissues.

I recently listened to every Stones record in chronological order and it really made me appreciate the bands trajectory and the artistic development that led to this record. Wonderfully musical and, I’d even suggest underrated by some. I add that the later career records are very much underrated.

As an aside, without over thinking it, I consider the top rock records of all time to be EOMS, Sticky Fingers, Darkness on the Edge of Town and Back in Black. As an Aussie I will also throw into the mix Cold Chisel’s incredible Circus Animals record.

 

Almost word for word word feelings on the album.

I slightly disagree on "Tumbling Dice", I think it is a top tier Stones song. I'm pretty sure the lyrics are him using the analogy of a dice to say that he's unpredictable and can't be trusted to behave himself.

 

What makes the likes of "Respectable" or "When the Whip Comes Down" more memorable to me than, say, anything on side one of Exile -- are that those songs have catchy lyrical refrains and stories and themes and in one case humor. Makes those songs memorable. I literally can't remember all those bluesy numbers on Exile. They're generic and they don't have anything to say. There's nothing about them that sticks in my mind. I've heard the album a gazillion times since the '70s and, it's remarkable, I find that stuff so evanescent that I literally can't call it to mind. I look at the song titles and I think, which one is that again? What does that sound like? Can you hum a few bars for me? I guess maybe I kinda remember that one. And not only do I find all those blues and boogie numbers kinda generic, I never really loved hearing the Stones play blues most of the time anyway, and there's a lot of it on this album.

Well, of course, we all like different things. I love the loose but tight, ragged but right, front-porch, homemade feel of the music on the album. That's the kind of Stones sound I love. I just don't find the material all that compelling. Of course for me a listener most of the time, when I'm listening to music with a lyric, the first thing that sticks in my mind is "what is the song about." And I find Exile really doesn't reward that kind of listener.

 

Pretty good analysis. For me, at age 12 when it was released, I heard it from its release because my older brother bought it. I knew it as a tactile product - the gatefold sleeve with those mysterious lyric excerpts. The dirty sound and vibe seeped in. I don't need it as a desert isle disc because it is burned into my DNA. The summer of 1972, my family was coming off a year in Europe and took the Volkswagon camp-mobile to the French Riveria and drove through Villefranche-Sur-Mer. The Stones were touring North America and Keith had vacated Nellcote, no longer welcome in his adopted country. Such personal connections, no matter how minor, just sealed that album for me. Greatest rock n roll record ever to me. Best appreciated as vinyl when you had to turn the sides over and play them and the distinct flavour of each side was better apppreciated. Best moment - "Ventilator Blues" (Bob Dylan's fave Stones track) with the off-kilter rhythm Bobby Keys had to clap out for Charlie to play along to, followed by "Just Wanna See His Face" - Tom Waits's fave Stones track and for good reason - his career from Swordfishtrombones on seems to be based on that song's sound.

 

Always been my favorite for the mere fact that the songs on it haven't been played to death. Really only one song, Tumbling Dice, ever got significant airplay and significant might be an overstatement. Therefore the songs always sound fresh to me.

 

I think you’re right about the lyrics - except he’s also suggesting the women are also cheating, gamblers too, with a neat sequencing touch of running that metaphor next to “Casino Boogie”.

The Stones doing what they do - debauched, decadent and amoral, yet, full of feeling and emotion, Jagger is the absolute best at conveying a kernel of vulnerability amidst the swagger, to keep us on his side, and just the right side of machismo.

Similarly, re the earlier poster commenting finding it bizarre that “Soul Survivor” is about a shipwrecked pirate … well it’s a metaphor about about a failing relationship (obviously!!)

 

There was no controversy because it was years before anyone figured out what they were singing.

 

Spot on summary. After all these years I still find this album to be a mystery every time I listen to it.

 

I love the lyrics on Exile (accepting that for years I would have been guessing a good chunk), and what I like is that they’re oblique at times. But really, for most of the songs, it’s seems pretty clear to be what they’re about, except sometimes the “about” is an emotion or a feeling, rather than a narrative.

The music transmutes tradition into a unique and new Stonesy brew, it doesn’t feel generic to me at all, but you’ve heard it a bunch, so you’ve given it a fair go.

Few minds are changed on SHF after all!

 

It's the greatest album ever made. I think one thing that hurts it is that there are no 'hits' for people who care about 'hits.' If I were to introduce a newbie to the Stones, I would start with Sticky Fingers because ....Hits! But if someone wants to know the greatest album ever made, Exile, hands down.

 

Personally, I probably could have created the “best” album of all time by making a double out of Sticky Fingers and EOMS. Sticky Fingers has the continuity and production quality a group of rockers at the pinnacle of their career can make. And then the bottom seemingly was poised to fall out.

EOMS seemed to me to be a reflection of the uncertainty of the future, self medicating over loss, injustice and finally a who gives a f*** attitude. Unsophisticated, as analog as it gets, unfiltered blues. No Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah bulls***. And for that I appreciate it as a complete statement of where they found themselves at that time. Raw and untamed side sliding on the verge of spinning out is what makes EOMS compelling. It’s also what polarizes it and makes some people unimpressed. It was an unexpected gem that never lost its appeal for me.

 

Replace Let It Loose by Shine A Light and i'm with you.

 

What's "Tumbling Dice" about? Like much of the album, it's about living life like a gambler and often losing - not just in the casino but with romance/women/sex/drugs. Basically, burning the candle right down. Sums up the whole album really.

 

Like Lester Bangs and at least one other poster in this thread, I was disappointed in Exile at first and it took me a while to love it so much so that when I heard Goats Head Soup I was disapponted in it and my estimation of that record has improved only very moderately over the years.
Exile On Main Street is a great sprawling mess that distills American music and makes me smile every time I hear it.

 

#2 on my album list behind The Beatles (or The White Album)....

#1 on my country/western album chart..

i didn't do drugs, i'm kinda halfway there naturally, so maybe that's a reason for Sticky Fingers not ringing quite as true ???

 

Lol! Everything he mentioned that's what I love about it! They never did this American roots stuff as convincingly again imo.

 

That is Sticky fingers in my opinion. That is a stellar album

 

Murky, Sprawling, decadent and brilliant. I'm not into ranking albums so much, but this was the end of a classic run that began with Beggar's Banquet and had them labelled the world's no.1 Rock & Roll Band. Compared to the other members of this classic run, there was no killer, standout classic track like Sympathy, Gimme Shelter or Brown Sugar, and the lead-off single, Tumbling Dice wasn't in the class of those and wasn't a huge hit, (although even as a kid at the time I thought it was great). But I can't think of one bummer track, even the ones I didn't rate at first I now love, and some, like 'Let it Loose', Rock Off & Tumbling Dice are among my all time fave Stones tracks. Fantastic album, and incredible at 50 years we're all on here discussing it. I wonder if there were some old guys in '72 discussing 1922 music like this? Al Jolson anybody?