Stones in Exile

'Exile on Main Street' is widely regarded as one of the Rolling Stones' best albums; this documentary tells the story of how it was made, when the band were quite literally in exile, albeit for tax reasons. It begins unpromisingly, with a host of startlingly un-relevant talking heads popping up to offer their unenlightening take on the record; but mostly, we here from those actually involved, which is much more interesting, albeit unsurprising. In short, the truth confirms the legend: the band gathered at Keith Richards's house, took a lot of drugs, and jammed for a summer. What's more interesting, perhaps, is the film's portrait of what a band actually does on a day-to-day basis; the Stones were stars, but still musicians and people, and we get some insight into what this meant in practice. And the fact that (at least three of) the band are still together, almost forty years on, presumably says something about their shared love of making music together.

It must be said that the Stones have brilliantly drummed up a buzz about the re-release of their classic "Exile On Main Street" album, with a combination of press interviews, personal appearances and now this high-gloss patchwork documentary but you have to concede that it's pretty much worked - the album re-topped the charts in the UK and US some 38 years after its original release.

So does this new documentary serve the music satisfactorily, well, yes and no, in my opinion. Naturally there are limited sources available - this was 1971 - 72 after all and so the producer has to cobble together only a little verite video of the sessions themselves, mixing this with latter-day interviews with the band, famous fans and others of their entourage, segments from the bootleg "Ladies and Gentleman...The Rolling Stones" concert film of their 1972 US tour (including the infamous incident where a blissed-out Keith and horn-player Bobby Keys throw a TV out their hotel window) and still photo montages of the band at the time. Of course one would wish for more actual footage of the band actually recording the album (although several inserts of tape recordings of the sessions are teasingly included) - for instance, quite annoyingly a great take of "Loving Cup" is interrupted half-way through in the rush to keep the talking going, surely a mistake, but the end result still serves the album well and gives a fascinating insight into the band's M.O. at the time (basically a drink/drug fuelled jamboree by the sounds of things).

Out of all this emerged a superb double album of adrenalised, debauched rock and roll, with smatterings of country, gospel and blues, which to paraphrase a line used by Keith seems to have drained the band to the extent that they never hit this artistic height again. There's also little doubt from the evidence here that Mr Richards was the creative heart and soul of the album and this obviously not just down to the album being largely recorded in the basement of his house at the time.

Pros and cons, well, on the plus side, every song gets an airing of some kind, it was nice to hear contributions from past Stones Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor and it was cool to hear a previously unheard title song for the album played over the end credits. On the down side, there's a pretty unnecessary visit by Mick and Charlie to their old London Olympic studio, ditto the footage shot in America and especially the fact no entry at all was apparently allowed to the scene of the crime itself, Richards' Nellcote mansion in the south of France.

Yes, this movie has that Jagger-ised polish you would expect from control-freak Mick and one might have wished that this had been the Stones' "Let It Be" with film cameras set up to record the sessions 24/7 but under the circumstances, I still enjoyed the film and have been playing the album constantly ever since. Job done, I'd say!

Stones in Exile (2010)

*** (out of 4)

Nice documentary covering The Rolling Stones' 1972 album EXILE ON MAIN STREET, which today is considered one of the greatest albums ever made. We learn that the "exile" in the title was very appropriate as we learn the Stones were pretty much forced to get out of Britain due to the high taxes they were having to pay, which pretty much left them broke. We learn that they took their families to France where they began work on the album. This documentary is pretty much hit and miss but in the end there are enough good moments to make it worth viewing for fans. One part of the good news is that it contains footage from their CO**SUCKER BLUES documentary, which up to this point had only been available from bootleggers. The footage here looks a lot better than we've seen before so hopefully an official release of that will come at some point (even if the film is pretty bad). We also get some footage from LET'S SPEND THE NIGHT TOGETHER, another true gem that needs to be released. We also get about fifteen-minutes or so of new footage with Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Billy Wyman and Mick Taylor looking back on this period. We even get to see Jagger revisit the location of where the album was recorded. The biggest problem with the film is that it only runs 45-minutes so there's not too much footage here and one really hopes that at some point an extended edition comes out. The documentary starts and ends with a few thoughts from various fans including Martin Scorsese, Sheryl Crow, Benicio Del Toro, Will i Am and various others.

Stones in Exile, which is decidedly much more about Richards but also about the group of the Stones at large, is perhaps just a little too short. It runs at a very brisk 60 minutes, which might be fine if one is looking for just the basic scoop ala-TV-documentary time. And maybe that is what it was meant for and is okay at. But this is a grand, epic story that got just the right amount of coverage in the books that have been released on that fateful summer of 1971 where the Stones left to France after England kicked their asses with over-taxes. You think it's tough here in the States, try getting an 83% tax rate!

Maybe it's because it's a book versus a movie, or maybe there isn't enough that the Stones, all of whom including retired members like Bill Wyman and ex-lovers like Anita Pallenberg, agreed to let out due to being interviewed. Hell, even Richards's oldest son Marlon, who got a good deal of mention in Richards' memoir, gives some scoop on what little he could remember of the period. Or maybe it's more of a specific stylistic choice that is a little irksome in the doc: there is precious little actual interview footage shown of the Stones- we do see Jagger and Charlie Watts wandering around the old grounds of the basement recording studio at Nellcote- as it's mostly just voice-over and narration over still images and some limited rehearsal footage.

There are a few talking heads- Martin Scorsese, Jack White, Benicio Del-Toro (?!)- but they're book-ended at the start and finish. I guess the one complaint is that it's not enough of a good thing, like a quarter of a filet mignon instead of the whole frigging slab of meat. And yet what is thrown to us is just fine, and if you have absolutely no knowledge of how the album was made (that is a novice Stones fan or maybe a curious visitor to their catalog) it is a good primer. We get to see some of the process, the long laboring to make just one song that could take days, and the peculiar and sometimes frustrating set-up at the Nellcote mansion of setting up musicians in a kitchen or a closet or bathroom just to get a particular sound. And, of course, other hassles like the distance-gap for Charlie Watts (a 6-7 hour drive round trip from his place to Richards' mansion!) and Mick Jagger's hyped marriage.

Oh, and Richards' heroin addiction, which is given some mention but not to the extent that one could see in some of the books, certainly by Richards' own admission (after the summer he actually had to go to a special rehab in Switzerland just to get one of his many future cold turkeys). But it is a fun process to watch in the documentary, filled naturally and thankfully with every song from the album (save maybe for "Let it Loose" if I'm not mistaken). It's a tale of exiles making a record that is filled with great sounds and experimentation, and it gets better on every listen as its little idiosyncrasies and mix of hard-rock and blues and western and even gospel ("Just Wanna See His Face") make it so eclectic as to be one-of-a-kind. As for the documentary... not so much.

It was a surprise to see this on Australian TV. It was unheralded but worth staying up late to see the way that the chaos of Keith Richards life was translated into an album of rare if unself-conscious depth. I am constantly amazed by how good the Stones look in retrospect compared to many of their contemporaries. I think Keith is the key to much of it but the link between his ideas and Charlie Watts drums and Bill Wyman's bass playing is another factor that is highlighted here. Mick Jagger's casual admission of the cut and paste way that the lyrics flowed together is another revelation. Mick Taylor's input is of course a highlight. I would have enjoyed seeing him jam with the the other band members for a contemporary take on a couple of the songs.

I was particularly intrigued to hear the out-take of a song called Exile On Main Street at the end of the film. It seems to be a pastiche of bits of lyrics from other songs on the album.

A delightful peek into a world we all wanted to be part of back in the heady days of the early 70's and into an album that is dense with unexpected rhythms and marvellous slide and saxophone work and a great series of lyrics, made from the detritus of the Stones love affair with America.

The comments made by the band members and hangers on for this 2010 film are worth the price of admission. The Stones now seem to be able to poke fun at their youthful excess and their more preposterous behaviour and all without a taste of regret or pomposity.