Released 1972
Rocks Off
Rip This Joint
Shake Your Hips
Casino Boogie
Tumbling Dice
Sweet Virginia
Torn And Frayed
Sweet Black Angel
Loving Cup
Happy
Turd On The Run
Ventilator Blues
I Just Want To See His Face
Let It Loose
All Down The Line
Stop Breaking Down
Shine A Light
Soul Survivor
Exile was a nice tour of morgues, courthouses, sinking ships, claustrophobic rooms, deserted highways; the whole album was a breakdown, one long night of fear - Greil Marcus
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When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. It doesn't matter if Exile was written and recorded in a lavish French villa (albeit in the basement) and at Sunset Sound in L.A. It doesn't matter if the band was untogether as hell during the sessions. It is cinema. It is illusion.
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Close-up of the wall of tattoo parlor,so they say. The film is noir-ish and grainy. A low-budget, 1950's crime film. William S. Burroughs' Junky or The Man With the Golden Arm beside the bed, in a ratty, hot hotel room, on the sleazy side of the Naked City. Sex and dirt; even the opening chords sound sleazy. He sings in a slur, his voice is buried in the murk. The images rise out of a blues/soul/rock fog. I only get my rocks off when I'm dreaming. She comes every time she pirhouettes over me. Harder, faster. Like fucking. Driving harder towards a climax (this soon?). Rockabilly style. Southern white hellraiser music. Bobby's screamin' on the sax. Dick and Pat Nixon have some drugs for ya. Then slowing down. All slinky, rattling blues groove. Don't move your head, don't move your hands, don't move your lips, just shake your hips. Whaddaya know? There's Slim Harpo. Slower still. The hot night. A smoky bar/nightclub'casino (boogie). Wounded lover - got no time on hand (this is my favorite track on the album). Stomp. Then I hear a kind of winding guitar lick, and its gospel time. Fever in the funkhouse now. As they hit the finale ... got to roll me ... got to roll me ... and the guitar just keeps playing that riff over and over, hypnotic-like, and Charlie('s good tonight, inne?) starts hitting it harder and harder and harder and then rolling it down while the gospel girls tumble around him, like dice. If they never made another piece of music - if they'd never made one before this - they still paid for their ticket to heaven right there.
From `68-`71 the Stones, with Jimmy Miller behind the boards, had refined and mastered a sound. A steaming gumbo of Chicago blues, delta blues, soul, Chuck Berry, British hard rock, country, and whatever else might be left lying around among the debris of the late 60's. They had lost their innocence. Brian was dead. Their music was more explicit, sleazier, more violent, than anything that had gone before. By `72 they had perfected it. They had it down. They wielded it effortlessly.
Let's sit down on the front porch and play, while mosquitoes bang away at the screens. Country style. Gram's here - or his ghost is. Got to scrape that shit right off your shoes. The guitar player looks damaged. His coat is torn and frayed (this is my favorite track on the album). Just as long as the guitar plays. A little Caribbean lilt. Ain't someone gonna free the sweet black slave? Then its romance time. Break out the piano. Soul music. Post-Aretha. I can run and jump and fish, but I won't fight you if you want to push and pull with me all night (this is my favorite track on the album).
Wags complained. It was too long. They couldn't sustain it over four sides. Are you kidding me? Where's the filler? It was like a catalog of everything they did, everything they could do. And it held together and it told a story (did I mention all the great albums tell a story). Take out one song and its taking a scene out of the movie.
Time for a fast one. Never kept a dollar past sunset. Then its blues time again. Fast delta shuffle. Diamonds rings, vaseline, you gave me disease. Then harder. Howlin' Wolf hard. Up against the wall in a dark alley. Feel like murder in the first degree. Calling on Jesus - just wanna see his face - all groove, not-quite-laid-back. Lonely ballads. Sitting in the bar, drink in hand, all over a woman. Bedroom blues. Ain't in love, ain't in luck.
I can get lost in Exile. It belongs on the shelf next to Touch Of Evil. Gun Crazy.
______
From `68-`71 the Stones, with Jimmy Miller behind the boards, had refined and mastered a sound. A steaming gumbo of Chicago blues, delta blues, soul, Chuck Berry, British hard rock, country, and whatever else might be left lying around among the debris of the late 60's. They had lost their innocence. Brian was dead. Their music was more explicit, sleazier, more violent, than anything that had gone before. By `72 they had perfected it. They had it down. They wielded it effortlessly.
______
Let's sit down on the front porch and play, while mosquitoes bang away at the screens. Country style. Gram's here - or his ghost is. Got to scrape that shit right off your shoes. The guitar player looks damaged. His coat is torn and frayed (this is my favorite track on the album). Just as long as the guitar plays. A little Caribbean lilt. Ain't someone gonna free the sweet black slave? Then its romance time. Break out the piano. Soul music. Post-Aretha. I can run and jump and fish, but I won't fight you if you want to push and pull with me all night (this is my favorite track on the album).
______
Wags complained. It was too long. They couldn't sustain it over four sides. Are you kidding me? Where's the filler? It was like a catalog of everything they did, everything they could do. And it held together and it told a story (did I mention all the great albums tell a story). Take out one song and its taking a scene out of the movie.
______
Time for a fast one. Never kept a dollar past sunset. Then its blues time again. Fast delta shuffle. Diamonds rings, vaseline, you gave me disease. Then harder. Howlin' Wolf hard. Up against the wall in a dark alley. Feel like murder in the first degree. Calling on Jesus - just wanna see his face - all groove, not-quite-laid-back. Lonely ballads. Sitting in the bar, drink in hand, all over a woman. Bedroom blues. Ain't in love, ain't in luck.
______
I can get lost in Exile. It belongs on the shelf next to Touch Of Evil. Gun Crazy.
______
Time to clear your head. Hit the road. Open up the throttle, bust another bottle. There's a girl out there. Won't you be my little baby. Just for awhile. I'll show you. Stop breaking down. Stuff I got'll bust your brains out, baby. Robert Johnson knows. He knows sad and lonely nights, too. Stretched out in room ten-oh-nine, with a smile on your face and a tear in your eye. God bless you. You're gonna need it. Drowned in her love, the bell bottom blues, gonna be the death of me. The ship is breaking on the rocks. Fade to black.
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