The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main St. 50th Anniversary [Guardian Article]

duotone

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/may/09/drugs-exile-on-main-st-rolling-stones-sprawling-masterpiece-50-rocks-off-cote-dazur

Caffeine_Vampire

My favourite album of all time.

Funkfingers

The "sloppiness" and sprawl are what make it good. 

The bonus tracks on the 2010 boxed set and re-issue are interesting but it is difficult to imagine where they could have fitted into the running order of the original double LP.

rlw

Not a patch on Beggars Banquet or Let it bleed.

I enjoy it but it’s a lot of indulgent nonsense on the whole IMO.

mudslide73

The run from Tumbling Dice through to Happy is about as good as rock gets imo. I love their other albums but this one has the most consistent brilliance imo. 

chrisj1602

One of my favourite albums for sure.

Tannin

rlw said:

Not a patch on Beggars Banquet or Let it bleed.

Just so. There is some great playing hidden there but the production is awful and straining to hear things through that swirling, turbid mix just becomes unpleasant. If we restrict ourselves to the golden years when they were at or near their best, Exile was one of the worst Stones albums. 

stickyfiddle

I hated it when I first bought the 40th anniversary reissue. I’ve since seen the error of my ways and Tumbling Dice is probably my favourite Stones song.

I agree BB and Let It Bleed are better albums but there’s no doubting Exile’s importance 

Caffeine_Vampire

I have to respectfully disagree about the production, I love the feel of the whole band gathered round a single mic in a damp basement way after bedtime, a little sleepy, coming down from a high and playing on fumes.

BB and LiB are phenomenal but Exile has something rarely captured.

Fretwired

Always loved this album .. Richards (or somebody else) called it the first grunge album.

idiotwindow

I used to love this album when I started getting into the Stones in the early '80s (right at the fag end of the creative part of their career). At the time it seemed like a piece of fairly old Stones history but it is weird to think that the album was only about 10 years old then. It's obviously still a great album but I do think it is eclipsed by Let it Bleed and Sticky Fingers (imagine if those two had been one double-album ).

I remember being fascinated by the artwork and photography. It was only later when I became interested in photography that I realised how great an artist Robert Frank was.

Lodious

It was one of the first CD's I bought. I was a skint student and I think it was like £11.99 (so equivalent to about 17 pints in the SU bar) I wouldn't be getting another CD for at least another month so despite the fact I thought it was shit, I kept on playing it.

One sunny afternoon it was playing in the background while we were having a few beers and all of a sudden it clicked. Its just  perfect...the cover, the production, the attitude, the songs. Amazing album. 

mart

Lodious said:

...
One sunny afternoon it was playing in the background while we were having a few beers and all of a sudden it clicked. Its just  perfect...the cover, the production, the attitude, the songs. Amazing album. 

How did you feel about it after you sobered up?