In the spring of 1971, the Rolling Stones decamped Britain to avoid an impending battle with the taxman.
Exiled to Keith Richards' Villa Nellcote on the French Riviera, they began work on their 10th studio album, a sprawling four-sider that would shine despite the decadence and disharmony that surrounded its creation.
Exile On Main St (1972) validates the Stones' reputation as a great rock band. Its oily concoction of blues, country, gospel and soul oozes a confidence based on experience and raw emotion more authentically than did the bluff and swagger of their earlier works.
It asks the listener to put aside notions of Richards and Mick Jagger as pop stars, instead promoting the group and its collaborators as one egoless vehicle for the celebration of rock 'n' roll, in all its guises.
Which is not to say ego didn't play its part. As the weeks at Nellcote drew on, divisions grew between the heavier drug-and-alcohol users (Richards, Mick Taylor, engineer Andy Johns) and the more abstemious characters (Jagger, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts).
Piecemeal recording sessions without one or more band members were commonplace as a retinue of party-minded hangers-on passed through, and tracking was not completed until May 1972, following further sessions in Los Angeles.
The resulting dense, gritty double album requires repeated listening to best appreciate. Jagger's words are all but buried in a tangle of guitars, brass, piano, and gospel-inspired backing vocals, spotlighting the animalistic essence in his barking and howling. Richards is in his element, establishing simple but gut-felt core riffs that rise, like cream, to the surface.
The ballsy boogie of Rocks Off, the raucous rockabilly of Rip This Joint, the coiling blues of Shake Your Hips and the steady driving of Tumbling Dice provide early high points on this trip through the Stones' rock 'n' roll heartland, but others follow. They've seldom sounded more at home than on Exile.
