Reissue of Rolling Stones' 'Exile on Main St.' glosses over best story
Read interview with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Check out pictures from the recording session for the original "Exile on Main St."
"Exile on Main St." is widely regarded as the Rolling Stones' masterpiece. It's also an album surrounded by so much dark myth and debauched legend that if the working conditions were really that out of control, it's a wonder it was even made.
The latest re-release of this iconic album will be available Tuesday, and it's the most ambitious repackaging yet. It includes a deluxe edition with bonus tracks, a documentary DVD and a hard-cover book, but it doesn't focus on the grungier aspects of the album.Instead, it preserves the mystery by presenting the original album intact with liner notes and documentary footage that skims the surface of just what went on in Keith Richards' villa-turned-recording-studio in the summer of 1971. The 10 previously unreleased tracks shed little new light on the past; instead most of them feature freshly overdubbed vocals by Mick Jagger, a misguided attempt to update an album that needs no updating.
The good news is that the original album has never sounded better. Remastered in a way that amps up its clarity and power without sacrificing its hard-swinging griminess, "Exile on Main St." remains a towering achievement, the capstone to one of the great four-album runs in rock history (preceded by "Beggars Banquet" in 1968, "Let it Bleed" in 1969 and "Sticky Fingers" in 1971). The Stones were turning into a band divided, jaded rock stars who would never be as good again, but they had one final burst of brilliance in them.
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