a kind of majesty

Exile on Main Street  1972

[excerpt:  Life, by Keith Richards]-------------- What we brought to LA from France was only the raw material for Exile, the real bare bones, no overdubs.  On almost each song we'd said, we've got to put a chorus on here, we've got to put some chicks in there, we need extra percussion on that.  We were already planning ahead without noting it down....

For four or five months in LA in early 1972, we mixed and overdubbed Exile on Main St.  I remember sitting in the parking lot of Tower Records or Gold Star Studios, or driving up and down Sunset, listening at precisely the moment when our favorite DJ was teed up to play an unreleased track, so that we could judge the mix.  How did it sound on radio?  Was it a single?

We did it with "Tumbling Dice," "All Down the Line" and many others, called up a DJ at KRLA and sent him a dub.  Fingers burning from the last cut and we'd just take the car out and listen to it.  Wolfman Jack or one of several other DJs in LA would put it on, and we'd have a guy standing over him to take it back again.

Exile on Main St. had a slow start.  It was the kiss of death to make double albums, according to the lore of record companies and their anxieties about pricing and distribution and all that.  The fact that we stuck to it, saying, look, that's what it is, that's what we've done here, and if it takes two albums, that's what we're going to do, was a bold move, and totally against all business advice.

At first it seemed that they'd been proven right.  But then it just kept going and going and getting bigger and bigger, and it always had incredible reviews.  And anyway, if you don't make bold moves, you don't get f---ing anywhere.  You've got to push the limits.  We felt we'd been sent down to France to do something and we'd done it, and they might as well have it all.  -------------------- [end excerpt]

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[from Rolling Stone magazine review of Exile]----------- ...[Mick Jagger's] performances here are among the finest he's graced us with in a long time, a virtual drama which amply proves to me that there's no other vocalist who can touch him, note for garbled note.

As for Keith, Bill and Mick T., their presence comes off as subdued, never overly apparent until you put your head between the speakers....

...It's left to "Tumbling Dice" to not just place a cherry on the first side, but to also provide one of the album's only real moves towards a classic....The song builds to the kind of majesty the Stones at their best have always provided. ...

May 12, 1972
-- Lenny Kaye

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