Viewer Discretion Advised: Out Of Exile, Into The Light
posted in: Features • Rock
There are few things I can think of that could possibly be cooler than a group of rock stars fleeing to France, holing up in a crumbling mansion and retreating into a cloud of smoke to record what would become one of the greatest rock albums of all time. One imagines drug-fueled nights that bleed into days and then nights again, wiry men clad in shredding rags hunched over instruments and loose leaf with wine and ink stained fingers drumming to imaginary beats.
That’s exactly what the Rolling Stones did in 1971 when the band owed more taxes than they could pay off. The British tax system was sucking up a whopping 93% of the income in their tax bracket and letting them bleed dry. Mick Jagger fled to Paris with his new wife, the beautiful (and pregnant) Bianca, and Keith Richards settled in the villa Nellcote in Villefranche-sur-Mer near Nice. The rest of the band followed, and when a recording studio worthy of their next album couldn’t be found, the Stones decided they would use the luxurious villa and the band’s remote recording truck to lay down their next masterpiece.
The equipment from the recording truck was simply lifted into the basement, a dark, sweaty utilitarian bunker subdivided by walls. Shady characters and scantily clad women floated through the mansion day after day, and makeshift tables fashioned from amps and regal dining areas alike overflowed with drugs (attributing to Richards’ heroin addiction at the time). But the Stones’ time in exile was more than just a drug-fueled recording session. It marked a time of transition for a group of aging men. No longer following the “mission” of the ’60s, the band was on the verge of destruction, directionless but free to reinvent their chaotic brilliance into the epicurean ’70s.
Exile on Main Street is a perfectly messy reflection of that. Smashing and thrashing their way through the basement walls and out of exile in dual with the literal and spiritual. And while for 38 years tracks like “Loving Cup” and “Tumbling Dice” have fascinated the cult following within, the album has seldom been able to speak for itself, rather though those who have scandalized its origins.
Now, through the release of Stones in Exile, an hour long documentary of the making of Exile on Main Street, the album is given the opportunity to speak for itself. A combination of vintage archived footage and photos, mixed in with more recently filmed shots, commentary and interviews, Jagger and Charlie Watts revisit the basement where it was all born.
The group provides few anecdotes regarding the origins of songs, but those that they do contribute are lovely and poignant images in time. Jagger laments over a hotel maid that loved to gamble and taught him how to throw dice. A humble beginning for such an epic track. Richards provides another biting moment when he discusses his beginnings with drugs, “to hide from fame. With a hit of smack, I could walk through anything and not give a damn.”
Exile‘s exquisite dark and dense madness twists itself into an exhilarating and cathartic burst of freedom with tracks like “Stop Breaking Down” and “Shine A Light,” and with the release of Stones in Exile, we can finally see for our own eyes as opposed to ears where the Stones clawed their way back to life. Anita Pallenberg described Nellocote in the film as a wonderful place, very romantic. It was like a dream. And of the Stone’s rock and roll masterpiece? It was really an extreme labor of love, I think.
Stones in Exile premiered to a frenzy at the Cannes Film Festival this past May, and is now available out on DVD. Below you can view the trailer.