In 1971, facing tax problems and an uncertain future, the Rolling Stones decamped to Villa Nellcôte on the Côte d’Azur, where they partied with various celebrities, musicians, girlfriends, wives, kids, animals, drug-dealers and hangers-on for several hedonistic months. Recording in the damp, labyrinthine basement with a mobile studio parked outside and musicians seemingly turning up at random, they somehow produced Exile on Main St, a rough-hewn, sprawling, eclectic, 18-song double album that is widely regarded as their creative peak. Here, as it turns 50, stars salute its enduring greatness.
‘Among the grit and dirt, there’s a Rimbaud-like romance’
Chris Robinson, the Black Crowes
We were American hardcore punk kids, but when we discovered Exile we called it the Bible. In our infancy, we wanted to capture that magic and mystery. It’s English guys looking at American blues, country rock, soul and gospel through their own aesthetic of drugs, satin shirts and sparkly shoes. The Stones had the guts to remove themselves from society and live outside the law, but among the grit and dirt, the overdoses and arrests, there’s a romanticism that goes back to Baudelaire and Rimbaud. We recently covered Rocks Off. I love its romantic decadence: “I was making love this time with a dancer friend of mine. / I couldn’t seem to stay in step, but she comes every time that she pirouettes on me.” It’s a holy relic, so playing it felt like walking with John the Baptist.
‘Shake Your Hips enters my body and my butt starts moving’
Cat Power
Exile feels slanted and open-ended with human error, which makes it gorgeous. There’s mystery and mythology – tax exiles, drugs coming into the house, living free as fuck. All sorts of people coming and going, but somehow holding it together enough to record these songs, outside of the recording studio. They broke the mould with that album. Shake Your Hips goes right into my body and my butt starts moving. Exile is the outlaw of their catalogue.
‘They’re unburdened by being the world’s biggest rock band’
Martin Fry, ABC
It’s my favourite Stones album, such a bizarre and funky record with so much diversity, from Tumbling Dice to the almost gospel of I Just Want to See His Face. There’s a carefree magic unburdened by their status as world’s biggest rock band. It’s not particularly commercial, but it’s elegant and beautiful. Mick Jagger’s lyrics are fantastic. It’s not a good times record. It’s questioning and paranoid. It sounds like they’ve been through a kaleidoscope. In that period people obviously took a lot of drugs, and some would just show up and forget they played on it. I’m still trying to unravel it.
‘Exile speaks to today’s opioid crisis in America’
Valerie June
I heard Shine a Light on a mixtape on a road trip and went: “What is this? Is there more?” As someone raised in the African American south, the gospel and blues influences are so rich for me. I love the slow build of Shine a Light and the bass [played by Mick Taylor, not Bill Wyman]. The song’s about Brian Jones but also about drug addiction. To me, 50 years later, it speaks to today’s opioid crisis in America and shines a light for them.
‘Why don’t we call ourselves the Rollin’ Stones?’
Dick Taylor, the Pretty Things
Mick, Keith [Richards] and I were in Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys, then we met Brian Jones at the Ealing jazz club. I remember us playing Muddy Waters’ Rolling Stone Blues, then standing in front of the fireplace in the Bricklayer’s Arms in Soho when someone said: “Why don’t we call ourselves the Rollin’ Stones?” – without the “g” at that point. After I joined the Pretty Things, I followed the Stones’ progress. By Exile they’d been through the British blues explosion, the…
Read More: ‘People took so many drugs, they forgot they played on it’ – stars on Exile on