Exiled in May

Exile On Main Street is all the music news that fits during this month of May 2010. When it was originally issued it ushered an end to a third chapter in the Rolling Stones volatile and continuing book of life and song. 

When I think back forty plus years, I remember my first girlfriend really hating the Rolling Stones. She hankered for The Bob and all those folk tunes and artists that were beginning to fade in the last years of the 1960s. Simon and Garfunkel were her last refuge at the time, although the Jefferson Airplane's softer moments offered her some solace if the right smoke could be produced.

When she and I first hooked up in 1967 The Bob was recovering from the mysterious accident, and folk was for that-moment-in-evolution a combination of rock being exploited for all it was worth with a 12-string ring on an augmented chord in nearly every recording studio. She dug The Bob from the days of Freewheelin' to Another Side. For all the great sounds of The Byrds and Arthur Lee's Love your ears bled from the way-too-many manufactured stringed-clones in the pop universe at the time. Folk-rock was so pervasive even a sideman like the young Glen Campbell could  walk from the set of Shindig to record Mr. 12 String Guitar for World Pacific Records with all the hits of the day covered in breathtaking mono. It could have been a Sears exclusive.

In the early 1960s mainstream pop music was a lot like most of the mainstream pop music of today, but instead of American Idol it was Teen Idol time. Elvis was Hollywood, and reigned over the Fabians, Bobby Rydells, Neil Sedakas, Wayne Newtons on the male side of the platter while Lesley Gore and big-hair-bouffant girls from the stables of Phil Spector and Shadow Morton with names like the Ronettes and Shangri-Las dug out their flip-sided claims with  those Supremes' girls of Motown to balance the airwaves.

The Beatles and the Rolling Stones in 1964, along with the other British Invaders, wiped away most of those manufactured idols of  the early Sixties with a new raw attack that owed their sound to the rock and blues artists of the 1950s. But, by 1967 most American pop radio music was coming from Detroit at the hit house of Berry Gordy's Motown Records, and the West Coast with the bands that populated the Bay Area and Los Angeles. From across the water in England, an American in London, Jimi Hendrix, along with Cream now captured youthful imaginations. The Rolling Stones had suddenly become a faded page from their own Yesterdays' Papers song, just like so many of the first wave of British Invasion acts, while the Beatles soared on with Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

The Rolling Stones anti-Beatles stance had worn thin with the public by 1967. Tunes like Under My Thumb and Stupid Girl alienated nearly all of the girls I knew during that period, and the move to a more psychedelic sonic ornamentation on records like Between the Buttons and Their Satanic Majesty's Request left "all the young dudes" baffled and put-off.

Most kids in the US had no idea at the time of the travails the collective individual Stones were having in England. The British authorities had begun to crackdown on the pesky drugs of choice for 1960s youth. As the Summer of Love shone on London, Los Angeles and San Francisco with emerging new bands like the Doors, Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead and Pink Floyd, the Stones were being hauled into jail as examples to impressionable teens that cannabis intake would not be tolerated. As a historical piece of minutiae, Donovan was the first to get busted in Britain, but the Stones got all the headlines and much of the blame. In 1967 my girlfriend did not care, maybe they would just go away.

It seems odd today that the band stood on the brink as 1968 came around. They could not tour due to legal issues and seemed on the verge of collapse. Their rivals, The Beatles, had given up touring and were a studio and marketing machine during the last years of the Decade of Change. Both groups, for very differing reasons, brought in new management in 1967 to help deal with all the unpleasant shit- the business end of the music business.

Andrew Loog Oldham got the boot first as the Rolling Stones manager in 1966, and then in 1967 as their record producer. Their Satanic Majesty's Request was self produced by the band with less than desired sales results. Allen Klein picked up the manager mantle and Jimmy Miller would become the band's producer beginning with Beggar's Banquet. 

When Exile on Main Street first saw the record bins on May 12, 1972 most every guy I knew dug the record for the obvious collection of strong songs included on the two long playing vinyl records. It was not The White Album, however a lot of critics in their reviews that spring and summer referred back to The Beatles ultimate release in some effort to compare breadth, and to maintain some media chatter of interconnectedness between the two iconic British rock bands. Tremendous songs from Tumbling Dice to Soul Survivor are sprinkled liberally on every side. Resignation found its way on many of the tracks, but with a fierce determination and swagger to counter weigh against the permeating doubts of dislocation. 

The inclusion of what sounded like rough takes and unfinished mixes, particularly on Side 3 between Happy and Let It Loose took the steam out of the record for a lot my buddies and party-mates. Several girlfriends in my frenetic 1972 just did not groove to Turd On The Run, although they loved to "scrape the shit right off your shoes" in harmony when Sweet Virginia found its way on any sound system. The Stones were now so entrenched in the culture of the world after the success of the previous three classics, Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers that ladies just gave the band's audacity and overt sexual stance a grudging pass. They were just, well, The Stones.

 In the blinding speed that passes/passed for pop culture history, when this record found its first needle in 1972 Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison had all arrived and passed away from the first point in time that the Rolling Stones stood in the mouth of pop music oblivion in 1967. The Stones had lost Brian Jones to a murky death at his own home over this period, and the Beatles were no more. Cream was now a historical footnote, and three bands removed from Eric Clapton and his growing addiction.  Jimmy Miller would produce only one more Rolling Stones album. The young guitar virtuoso, Mick Taylor, who had quickly replaced Brian Jones in 1969, had just two records left with the band before moving on to obscurity.  Young girls bopping with the young boys in 1972 to Let It Loose and Stop Breaking Down had no clue who did Under My Thumb, and did not care.

The band plays on with various bass players, keyboardists and their 1975 found Rolling Stone guitarist, Ron Wood, all these years after the May 12 1972 release. They discovered a new, inventive and very sympathetic producer, Don Was, to keep their tracks fresh sounding, if not quite as shocking in this age of 24/7 pornography. There are a truckload of great tunes they have produced since these fellows were caught in Exile on the European continent almost forty years ago sweating out the music amid the basement steam and drug use.

The best parts and the worst parts of this newly polished and reissued with obligatory-bonus-track-material gemstone hears the band capture so viscerally our beauty and flaws here in the west. We can be beautiful, profane, scarred, passionate, brutal, forgiving and resilient all in the moment of life. These characteristics define our humanity, and maybe this was some crowning achievement to squeeze that truth out and  Shine A Light for the rest of us to embrace, and be okay knowing it is just who we are- imperfect one and all. It was never a concept album, but over all these years really became one.

If you've never owned the LP, or the Cassette, or the CD of this album do yourself a favor and get the new spit-shined grooves on CD. Listen to the whole damn thing a few times to get the context. Find a copy of Melvin Van Peebles' movie Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song to view while listening to the album, then kickback and discover the spirit of the 1970s, which seems a lot like today.

Thanks for stopping by and for the read.