Shomudro: The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main St. [1972]

Saturday, November 24, 2007

The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main St. [1972]

Labels: english_songs Posted by Shomudro

The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main St. [1972]

The Rolling Stones Amazon.com essential recording From the swaggering frustration in the first song (”I only get my rocks off while I’m sleeping,” Mick Jagger sings in the hyper “rocks Off”), the Stones speed through familiar neighborhoods of country, blues, and R&B on Exile. They never even bother to stop when they’ve crashed into something. They don’t leap into new worlds so much as master the old ones, turning Slim Harpo’s blues obscurity “Hip Shake” into a harp-and-piano steamroller and setting spines a-cracking in “Ventilator Blues.” Both “Tumbling Dice” and Keith Richards’s “Happy” have become hits, but the 1972 album is most notable for its overall murky adrenaline. –Steve Knopper

Amazon.com Before Keith Richards’s bad habits took over for a time in the mid-’70s, his work ethic was quite high. Stories abound of the long, if somewhat off-schedule, hours he spent working on this classic album in the basement of his home in France. Hanging together as much because of great songwriting (”Rocks Off,” “Soul Survivor”) as its fabled grungy atmosphere, Exile caps the Stones’ great 1968-’72 run with a force that belies their supposed spiritual tiredness. What some of these songs are about is anybody’s guess–Keith claims “Ventilator Blues” was inspired by a grate, while the song plays like an ode to a pistol–but that’s just part of this album’s hazy game. –Rickey Wright.