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Rolling Stones' Exile: Torn, Frayed & Tarted Up
Imagine if the Rolling Stones decided it was high time to finally, formally release Robert Frank’s notorious, oft-bootlegged 1972 tour documentary C---sucker Blues, in all its groupie-shagging, smack-shooting, Keith nodding-out-backstage glory. Now imagine if Mick Jagger felt the cinema verite grittiness of Frank’s original was unsatisfactory, and had opted to digitally place new images of himself in 2010 into the director’s 40-year-old frames. Contemporary Mick dancing, singing and playing amid a 1970s backdrop.
Excerpt from Robert Frank's C---sucker Blues
Ridiculous, right? Inappropriate, illogical, vain, deceptive. It would never happen. So why have the Stones slipped in songs completed just last year into their much ballyhooed reissue of the album they recorded around the same time C---sucker Blues was filmed – Exile On Main Street?
Let’s be clear, I think Exile On Main Street is one of the Stones’ great achievements. Bootleg collectors know outtakes, rehearsals and alternate versions from those sessions have been trading for many years. The prospect of a comprehensive reassessment of the album – undervalued in its day and frequently disparaged by Jagger, it should be added – was tantalizing. And so we have the beautifully remastered and repackaged original album newly released, with this second disc of … what? Alternate takes of “Soul Survivor” and “Loving Cup,” which are great.
But also, apparently, some unfinished basic tracks which feature new overdubs, including newly composed lyrics and newly recorded vocals by Jagger. Long-departed guitarist Mick Taylor was reportedly also brought back to lay down new parts. Recently-recorded vocals on the bonus track “Plundered My Soul” have been acknowledged, but the presence of current Stones touring backup singer Lisa Fischer, on a couple of songs and an overall co-production credit for Don Was on the bonus material, suggest there was more than a little latter nipping and tucking on the original tapes debuting here.
I’m not suggesting Jagger and company aren’t entitled to take old, incomplete tracks and lay down new parts. In fact, there is a history across the Stones’ catalog of reviving songs from earlier sessions and sprucing them up on later releases. And if Jagger had taken “Plundered My Soul” or “Pass The Wine (Sophia Loren)” (the latter has a groove similar to Eric Burdon & War’s similarly-named hit “Spill The Wine”) and used those as the basis for a brand new Stones album, I would declare it the group’s strongest work in 20 years. But there's a game of musical three-card monte being played here.
When asked by Britain’s Uncut magazine directly about the degree of latter-day track tinkering, Jagger declined to give specifics and that lack of transparency is disappointing. The Beatles, rather famously, reunited to overlay new music onto some unfinished John Lennon demos, but that effort was heavily publicized and the music was presented as a new recording. Sliding newly completed material into the midst of Exile is particularly objectionable and portrays a real lack of understanding about what made the record great – maybe not a surprise given Jagger’s stated distaste for the original collection.
The qualities of the original record – the murky mix, the offhanded lyrical turns, the elliptical just-press-play-keep-rolling-tape vibe of some of the music – are indelibly wound up in the manner in which it was recorded. As tax exiles emerging from personal and financial chaos, the Stones decamped to Richards’ rented pile Nellcote, in the south of France, to live, party and record. As Jagger seemed to ease in to a greater celebrity profile (his tabloid-ready marriage to Bianca Jagger was coincidental), Richards reportedly plunged deeper into the throes of heroin addiction, and it’s reasonable to hypothesize that the atmosphere infected the music. All of that mess is audible in the resulting recordings. Although the sound could not be much more different than, say, The Band’s eponymous second album, the idea that the music was largely generated in a specific location in specific circumstances – basement of a rundown French mansion for the Stones, the pool house of Sammy Davis Jr.’s Los Angeles home for The Band – is the frame that hangs around both records. To airbrush something new and contemporary into that setting is to disrespect, or to completely misunderstand, the essence of your own work.
When asked by Uncut if he intended to give deluxe reissue treatment to other Stones’ classics, Jagger said: “Let’s see how well this one does, shall we? If it does shit, I’m not going through all this again.” I don’t wish commercial misfortune upon the reissue of Exile On Main Street, and I’d love to see someone do a bang-up job of tricking out Sticky Fingers, Beggar’s Banquet and Let It Bleed. But if Jagger intends to continue to play fast-and-loose with the integrity of his own history, maybe he should just let it be.
PS: I mentioned C---sucker Blues off the top. Swiss-born Frank, who in recent years has lived a somewhat reclusive life in the tiny community of Mabou, Nova Scotia, in Canada, was also responsible for the indelible Exile album cover, surely one of the greatest examples of a single photographic image capturing the essence of a record's sound. It's probably worth noting that elements of C---sucker Blues, plus the '72 concert film Ladies & Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones, are combined with new footage in the documentary Stones In Exile, which is being released on DVD in June.
Excerpt from Robert Frank's C---sucker Blues
Ridiculous, right? Inappropriate, illogical, vain, deceptive. It would never happen. So why have the Stones slipped in songs completed just last year into their much ballyhooed reissue of the album they recorded around the same time C---sucker Blues was filmed – Exile On Main Street?
Let’s be clear, I think Exile On Main Street is one of the Stones’ great achievements. Bootleg collectors know outtakes, rehearsals and alternate versions from those sessions have been trading for many years. The prospect of a comprehensive reassessment of the album – undervalued in its day and frequently disparaged by Jagger, it should be added – was tantalizing. And so we have the beautifully remastered and repackaged original album newly released, with this second disc of … what? Alternate takes of “Soul Survivor” and “Loving Cup,” which are great.
But also, apparently, some unfinished basic tracks which feature new overdubs, including newly composed lyrics and newly recorded vocals by Jagger. Long-departed guitarist Mick Taylor was reportedly also brought back to lay down new parts. Recently-recorded vocals on the bonus track “Plundered My Soul” have been acknowledged, but the presence of current Stones touring backup singer Lisa Fischer, on a couple of songs and an overall co-production credit for Don Was on the bonus material, suggest there was more than a little latter nipping and tucking on the original tapes debuting here.
I’m not suggesting Jagger and company aren’t entitled to take old, incomplete tracks and lay down new parts. In fact, there is a history across the Stones’ catalog of reviving songs from earlier sessions and sprucing them up on later releases. And if Jagger had taken “Plundered My Soul” or “Pass The Wine (Sophia Loren)” (the latter has a groove similar to Eric Burdon & War’s similarly-named hit “Spill The Wine”) and used those as the basis for a brand new Stones album, I would declare it the group’s strongest work in 20 years. But there's a game of musical three-card monte being played here.
When asked by Britain’s Uncut magazine directly about the degree of latter-day track tinkering, Jagger declined to give specifics and that lack of transparency is disappointing. The Beatles, rather famously, reunited to overlay new music onto some unfinished John Lennon demos, but that effort was heavily publicized and the music was presented as a new recording. Sliding newly completed material into the midst of Exile is particularly objectionable and portrays a real lack of understanding about what made the record great – maybe not a surprise given Jagger’s stated distaste for the original collection.
The qualities of the original record – the murky mix, the offhanded lyrical turns, the elliptical just-press-play-keep-rolling-tape vibe of some of the music – are indelibly wound up in the manner in which it was recorded. As tax exiles emerging from personal and financial chaos, the Stones decamped to Richards’ rented pile Nellcote, in the south of France, to live, party and record. As Jagger seemed to ease in to a greater celebrity profile (his tabloid-ready marriage to Bianca Jagger was coincidental), Richards reportedly plunged deeper into the throes of heroin addiction, and it’s reasonable to hypothesize that the atmosphere infected the music. All of that mess is audible in the resulting recordings. Although the sound could not be much more different than, say, The Band’s eponymous second album, the idea that the music was largely generated in a specific location in specific circumstances – basement of a rundown French mansion for the Stones, the pool house of Sammy Davis Jr.’s Los Angeles home for The Band – is the frame that hangs around both records. To airbrush something new and contemporary into that setting is to disrespect, or to completely misunderstand, the essence of your own work.
When asked by Uncut if he intended to give deluxe reissue treatment to other Stones’ classics, Jagger said: “Let’s see how well this one does, shall we? If it does shit, I’m not going through all this again.” I don’t wish commercial misfortune upon the reissue of Exile On Main Street, and I’d love to see someone do a bang-up job of tricking out Sticky Fingers, Beggar’s Banquet and Let It Bleed. But if Jagger intends to continue to play fast-and-loose with the integrity of his own history, maybe he should just let it be.
PS: I mentioned C---sucker Blues off the top. Swiss-born Frank, who in recent years has lived a somewhat reclusive life in the tiny community of Mabou, Nova Scotia, in Canada, was also responsible for the indelible Exile album cover, surely one of the greatest examples of a single photographic image capturing the essence of a record's sound. It's probably worth noting that elements of C---sucker Blues, plus the '72 concert film Ladies & Gentlemen, The Rolling Stones, are combined with new footage in the documentary Stones In Exile, which is being released on DVD in June. Views: 32
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Comment by richard on May 22, 2010 at 4:51pm -
SPOT ON. I've been thinking the exact same thing since picking it up last week.
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Comment by Easy Ed on May 22, 2010 at 5:36pm -
Last week on the Larry King "Exile" special, Jagger was asked how all of this came about and I think he was pretty honest in his answer. He explained that Universal has taken control of their catalog and asked them to come up with something special to help launch it. Keith and he told them there wasn't anything of value left in the cans but they looked anyway and found what he described as unfinished threads and some instrumentals.
Should his new lyrics, new music and new vocals be packaged with a remastered Exile? I think it's not the most honest thing to do but in this day and age, it's not shocking either. It's not like they
brought in Jay-Z to lay a rap down over "Tumbling Dice"...which knowing the rocket scientists left in the music industry these days wouldn't have surprised me either. In fact, I can pretty much guarantee there was at least one meeting to discuss just that.
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Comment by Ron Frankl on May 22, 2010 at 6:12pm -
Nice piece, Paul. My response was similar. Adding newly-reworked tracks under the label of an expanded "Exile" feels like a desecration, particularly given the ho-hum quality of the songs. And I know for a fact that there are more interesting outtakes from the "Exile" era that could have been used.
I also have some reservations regarding the 'new and improved' audio quality. Sure, they've improved the sound, and details emerge that I've never heard before. But, for me, part of the appeal of "Exile" was the murk and mystery; it sounded exactly like it was recorded in the basement of a ruined chateau. That aspect, for better or worse, is gone from the new version.
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Comment by RP N10 on May 23, 2010 at 12:20am -
Thanks for this. It's addressed all the doubts I had about this, so that's £12 saved. I passed on the Yayas deluxe last year for the same reasons. Disappointing in both cases for the missed opportunities. Perhaps the Stones should do their own bootleg series instead of selling the same recordings over and over with new packaging.
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Comment by Erich Stegmaier on May 23, 2010 at 8:08am -
I agree, there is much better material out there that they could have used. Aside from Soul Survivor, Loving Cup and Good Time Women (which I already had), none of the tracks on the second disc sound "authentic".
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Comment by Paul Cantin on May 23, 2010 at 9:31am -
Ben Ratliff has an excellent piece in the Sunday New York Times where he speaks to both Jagger and Richards (separately). Well worth a read here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/23/arts/music/23stones.html
Most interesting, to me, is how Keith absolutely believes the Nellcote experience is essential to the shaping of the album. Whereas Mick goes out of his way to dismiss the mythology built up around the album. That schism makes sense within the history of their relationship, and makes sense of how this project came together -- Richards the conservative believer in honoring The Moment wanted to leave it as is; Jagger believes the mythology is bunk and the music can be monkeyed with.
It occurred to me while reading this, maybe the problem as I perceive it is Exile is essentially a Keith album, which in this manifestation, is being curated by Mick?
Jagger's view seems to be that because parts of Exile were recorded before Nellcote in London and after Nellcote in Los Angeles, the purist view of casting the Exile sessions in southern French excess is an exaggeration. Perhaps. But the making of a record is a process of decision making and honing. It's complicated to revisit those 40-year-old decisions and recalculate why they were made and how we ended up with the album we have. It goes beyond the physical point of creation into the realm of decisions (conscious or unconscious) and artistic selection. So the question perhaps ought to be what roll did Nellcote play in making the Stones, as a band, end up with the album they have? My guess would still be it was enormously influential. After all, they never went back to Nellcote, and they never made another record like Exile.
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Comment by Marshall Preddy on May 23, 2010 at 10:18am -
I've read quite a bit about this re-issue, and I've not seen anyone suggest they re-recorded any part of the original Exile. They've added parts to other stuff recorded around the same time, and that doesn't bother me at all, given that it's all included on a bonus disc. Clearly separate from the original recording.
Is this what you're upset about? The desecration of stuff you've never heard? I don't get that at all. The remastered original sounds pretty damned awesome to me.
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Comment by Ron Frankl on May 23, 2010 at 10:41am
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It's not "included on a bonus disc." It's sold as part of a deluxe package that nearly doubles the sales price. And as to stuff we've never heard, who says? Outtakes of "Exile" sessions have circulated for many years, and some of it is better than what is included here.
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Comment by Paul Cantin on May 23, 2010 at 10:55am
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Marshall, I thought it was pretty clear. Nobody is suggesting they went in and added parts to the original Exile album as we've known it for 40 years, and I certainly wasn't suggesting I took issue with the remastering of the original album. And I'm not even suggesting there is anything wrong with adding new stuff to some old tracks -- something the Stones have done occasionally on numerous albums, taking unfinished songs from one session and completing them on a new album.
The operative word, for me, is "new." Parachuting recently recorded material into what is supposed to be a reissue of a classic recording is, I think, dumb. Especially when early on there was a certain lack of candor about recording dates (I see Jagger has been a little more forthcoming since the calculated vagueness of his Uncut interview). If you think there's nothing wrong with reworking the unreleased, unfinished songs and jamming them into Exile, cool. But based on what Keith Richards says in the Times today, he would disagree. From the article (which I hadn't read when I wrote my post). Evidently, Jagger won the debate:
Mr. Richards contributed little to the extra tracks on the bonus disc and distrusted altering even the outtakes and unused tracks; as he said to another reporter earlier this year, “I didn’t want to interfere with the Bible."
"My job was to enforce the no-fiddling rule,” he told me. “I didn’t want to play around with it at all.”
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Comment by Joe Maynard on May 25, 2010 at 4:31am -
FYI...I watched csbs on YouTube in 8 min segments
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