Stones in Exile

Great band. Great album. Mediocre documentary.

This is a patchwork of stills, video, and voice overs looking at the iconic album Exile on Main Street.

The beginning was excellent staging the setting of how the Stones were forced out of England due to tax issues. Taking up residence in the South of France would lead them to cut this great album.

But that is when the documentary began to drift. The story was cut with lots of recreations. Truly. Grainy black and white video with actors who are supposed to resemble the Stones are frequently cut in.

What I would like to have seen (heard) is more music. Seriously.

Perhaps gathering the band together, not scattered as they were (save Mick and Charlie) would have permitted more dialogue and insight into the creative process.

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.

'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.

As a promo for the re-release of Exile, the film does its job. But as other posters have noted there's not much of real substance here. Any Stones fan basically knows the background of the album and it has been covered although briefly in other bio-pics like 25 by 5, and in interviews. I was wanting a little more and by that I don't mean what Don Was and Will.a.am think of the recording. It would have been nice to see the writing process of a song through from beginning to end. The whole creative recording process from first germ of an idea to the final mix of the song. It could have been done too with the very same combination of stock footage, still shots , and interviews. Oh well the album is still great. And wow was Anita Pallenberg ever sexy then.

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.