Original subtitles

I remember buying it, the day I bought it.

At home, I had two big speakers on either side of my bed.

I was in college and got in the right frame of mind and blasted it.

And it scared me.

That was my first reaction, was that... There's something...

These guys have maybe gone off the deep end,

there's something going on under this thing that's...

I wanna go there but I don't know if I'll survive it.

My friend Angelo, he's a massive Stones fan.

He's like, "Have you ever heard Exile?"

And I was like, "No". I hadn't heard it.

And the first thing he did was show me the artwork

and I was like, "Oh, wow! This is nasty!" You know?

And then he played it for me and every song was just...

To me... I mean, they were writing songs that were anti=religion at times

or questioning their faith,

and every one of the songs sounded like a church song to me.

I mean every song had the boogie...

That kind of stuff or just really bluesy slow.

Just kind of interpretation, you know. Beautiful.

And when I heard this, it changed everything I thought about the Rolling Stones.

I would go to, like, old record stores

and shop and just pile up my catalogue.

And this was one of them, you know? From the artwork to the music.

And it was a Rolling Stones record that wasn't...

you know, the big popular album.

So, if I had this in my collection,

it symbolised that, you know, I was ultra... I was mega=cool, right?

And, you know, when you're 18, 19 years old,

and you have your little backpack of records...

Now, kids are walking around with, you know...

It's weightless, you know? You're just flipping through things.

But if you had a backpack with just all the cool mega=stuff, you didn't care...

Now, these kids are walking around with a whole record store. Full of content.

But if you had the mega=ness in your backpack...

"What? You got that Rolling Stones record?" "Yeah, yeah."

And this record in particular, was the first one

that I felt like they finally had 100% confidence to just say, "Fuck you".

And they had the songs, they had the hits, so...

I mean, the record label couldn't say anything to them.

They had the songs but if you listen,

intertwined in every song there is a big "fuck you" in some way.

I must have been 24, 23, and I was...

I had no television, you know, I had no phone. I was living in this apartment

and all I did was listen to Exile On Main St. over and over again, obsessively.

And it was so satisfying. It was such a...

As a work, it's still my absolute favourite album of all time, ever.

It's my, you know, desert island, deathbed album.

Because it's just so satisfying in every... Musically, emotionally, lyrically.

The stories that are told, the grandeur, the ruination.

You know? It's all there.

For me, Exile On Main St. is the rock and roll bible.

I think it's a perfect marriage of...

electric blues with a tinge of country and soul music.

I think it's the height of the Rolling Stones for me,

because I love Mick Taylor.

You can just feel kind of what was going on in their lives and in that atmosphere,

while they were making that record.

There is an undercurrent to this thing that I can't put my finger on,

even as someone who makes records. I have no idea where this comes from.

And that's that foreboding, evil undercurrent.

I don't know that they intended that,

I don't even know that that's what was going on with them,

but there's something. From the photos on the cover, right?

You know, the minute you have a tactile connection to that record,

there is a dark message to it.

Yeah... It's a mystery. I don't know what that's about.

You know, hit the cover and you'll get to hear like, you know...

= Like a sample of it. = A sample of the songs.

You were going off of the art, you know?

When the art of a record, you know,

gave you a vision of what it might sound like.

Nobody knows what that means but it offends everyone for some reason.

Everything, like, has this vulgar and sleazy...

in like a great way, made every...

In my opinion, made me a guy who was, you know,

for a part of my life I was scared of rock and roll

cos I thought it was the opposite of what was real and what was right.

And when I heard this record, it made you feel good about it.

I miss the hair. They had great hair back then.

If you had that hairdo and you were from England, it was a good hairdo.

If you were from America, it was a mullet. Never understood that.

It's all about the freaks. It's all freaks and that's how they felt.

They were the freaks. They were these huge rock stars but they were freaks.

And that's how they felt and that's how they walked through, like a freak show.

I mean, I know a little bit about fame and you do feel like a freak.

To me, that's that point of view, as you said, the narrative in the entire album.

It's like being... It's like looking through the eyes of a freak

as they're looked at by everyone else.

I just... God! The stories just crush me!

My impressions of what's going on in the stories of that record

are all about being both sort of king of the hill

and completely alienated from mainstream.

That's what Exile On Main St. Means to me.

That they are sort of rock stars so they're grand,

they're above everything, so they're in it but they're not of it.

And so they're walking around,

Iooking at everything through the lens of alienation and, you know...

There's a lot of Ioneliness and there's a lot of heartbreak.

There's a lot of soul in the record.

It's a great thing... It's an inspiring thing to see

how hated it was when it came out and how revered it is now.

That's inspiring to know, you know, when you're releasing records yourself.

But... Yeah, it's just not accessible. It's not poppy and accessible at all.

Like, it didn't have any poppy hits on it

and I think that was confusing to people at the time, coming from the Stones.

But it was them at their best. I mean, the Stones, when they're at their best,

are an incredible blues band and this is them doing that.

So... it's a perfect portrait of them.

When I heard this, it was 1994.

And I already knew, you know, the logo of the Rolling Stones.

It was imprinted in my brain. When I thought of the Rolling Stones, I thought of the logo.

I thought of Mick, you know.

You know, I thought... The band, you know?

And this was, you know...

If it wasn't for this record, I would have thought the Stones just did this.

But this is like peaks and valleys of creativity and expression, you know.

There's education. Cos it is '93 now, right?

This is an old record. As well as all their other ones, you know?

But what it showed me was...

to be an artist isn't just about, you know, popular songs,

it's about a body of work, you know?

Eclectic, odd, avant=garde,

straightforward, you know,

on topic, off topic. That's what groups are supposed to do.

Yeah, man, this whole record is just...

From the artwork to everything about it,

you could tell they were just kind of at a point where they were going for it

and didn't care if they were going to offend the masses.

It sounds like they had fun when they made the record.

You rarely hear a record that the people actually sound like they're having fun.

I don't talk to anyone about this record and I don't want to talk to people about it.

Like, it's my record. It's my special, personal, private record.

With my boyfriend, he'd be like, "Let's put it on!"

I'm like, "No! I can't do that with you."

He probably wanted to have sex to it or something and I'm like, "No!"

You know what I mean? Like that just can't be done for me.

Like I wouldn't put it on while... I wouldn't be able to eat dinner with this record on.

It would feel sacrilegious to me. It would feel wrong.

That's a record that I can come to when I'm feeling like king of the world,

or when I've just had my heart broken, or when someone just died,

or when I need to, you know, find my musical bearings again.

It's a journey of sound.

Nowadays, we can go on and just click, you know, like a smorgasbord.

"I just want corn today."

And the chefs like, "Really, try this fish. It goes great with the corn."

"No, no, no, I'm just gonna get the corn."

"But I prepared this wonderful fish that just... Taste=wise...

"The spice and the fish goes great with the sweet corn."

"No, no, keep your motherfucking fish, I just want the goddamn corn." Right?

And they have the opportunity to do that

and they're missing out on a great meal, a great body of work, you know?

And this is one of them,

where you put it on through the whole way and have it colour your time.

I love that record because it's something that could really confuse a journalist,

sort of make him rethink his whole career,

because he can't box the Stones in any more.

I mean, there's 15 directions going on at once.

I just love when they're befuddled like that.

They'd moved past the blues

and gone into other areas of southern American music, gospel and country.

I think they listened to the best of what American music had to offer.

They managed to combine, as I said,

this sort of R&B and this electric blues with country music

and with real deep southern soul music.

And even Mick's ability to portray an old black bluesman

in the way he delivered his singing was kind of amazing, you know,

for a scrawny little English guy.

I listen to it and I think it's the best of where I came from, you know,

right along Route 66 and growing up on the Mississippi.

They managed to really draw from that and bring it into their English soul music.

I was born in Memphis and so I used to go down to Beale Street.

You'd hear guys on the corner just playing and you'd think,

"Man, those guys are better than anyone you could ever hear on the radio."

But you'll never hear them on the radio.

And then you have a band like this that just, you know,

they worked really really hard and then just started to get where they could play.

They had the world at their fingertips

and they could just play whatever kind of music they wanted.

In a lot of ways, with their music, they were trying to represent

the people that were never going to make it on the radio.

America just, you know, didn't care about its true musicians,

its true home=grown musicians. They never cared.

They had some white guy redo it, which I guess this is the same thing,

and then it was OK and it was fabulous.

But those, you know, early blues, the Deep South, those musicians,

they never made the money they should have nor got the credit,

nor got the accolades...

till they were 90 or dead, you know what I mean?

That's kind of a depressing thought,

that it took Englishmen to come in and kind of say,

"Hey, I think you might be onto something here", you know?

And there's something beautiful about the way they saw America

and what parts of America they cherished, which was the... you know,

Deep South, African=American, I like to call black, but, you know,

music that just was truly American.

You can see the impact of blues through other genres and through other cultures,

and then siphoned through and filtered through the Stones' sort of camera.

It's interesting to learn about yourself through somebody else's viewpoint

and I think America was probably doing that

but it just took a long time to allow that to take root, you know, with this record.

When people say devil music, that's devil music right there.

Damn fucking devil!

Sounds so good.

I Just Want See His Face is like... The first time I heard it, I was scared to death.

I was like, "Oh, no. I'm gonna get struck dead", you know?

"I don't want to talk about Jesus, I just wanna see his face."

Then they all talk about dropping to those knees and thanking God and it's like...

They pretty much covered everything.

And you know those black girls singing, "I just wanna see his face"?

They do not agree with that. They believe in Jesus, very much so.

There was a couple of things that took me by surprise

and I thought were maybe done wrong

but then they came back and they sounded incredible to me.

One was at the beginning of the track Ventilator Blues,

after the first guitar licks happen, there should be a kick drum.

It should be..."When your...

"Spine is cracking..."

There should be a kick drum right there and there's not.

And that pissed me off when I first heard it

and the drum start on the up, on the snare...

But now I love that, that's my favourite part about that.

You know, I always cock my head when that part comes in.

I think I'm gonna do Loving Cup. I think that's one I like a whole lot.

That always made me wanna be... Like I wanna, you know...

I remember, I would feel that... Are you really gonna play it?

= Yeah! = Hilarious! This is awesome.

Doesn't it just remind you of late nights and like...

You guys must have gone through the bar phase of your life,

where you have no pride, you know? I just love that.

Been through? I could still be there, I don't know...

Listen to his vocals.

There's so much abandon in the vocal performances and in the guitar.

There's so much abandon. They're so unself=conscious, they're just letting it out.

It just feels like something folding out, like an elephant's trunk...

It wasn't, you know, just a joke that it might change the world.

It might actually sweep a youth culture into a new state of mind,

like you actually had the potential to do that.

Don't you miss bands that actually disturb the social fabric?

Don't you miss that there was a social fabric to disturb?

What disturbs our fabric any more? Nothing. Nobody does anything like that any more.

There aren't any rock stars any more.

I love Rip This Joint just cos it's so raucous

but I would say that Sweet Virginia is probably the jam song of all time.

Like, if you don't know Sweet Virginia, then you need to go home.

And it is probably the one song that whenever you're sitting with a band,

you can all play that song because it is part of our genetic history,

as far as music is concerned.

Right. Now, is everyone settled?

I don't want anyone moving around. I am a very nervous person.

What happened with Exile On Main St. was totally different.

And I think that the...

There's no doubt that they had this mantle of...

representing the entire culture of rock and roll.

And they had to change, I think.

Or they felt they had to or wanted to change

or felt they were searching for some other way to become...

How were they going to develop? Where was their music gonna go?

How was it gonna develop into anything new?

And it was retaliation against everything that had come before, I think.

Not that they were repudiating any of their work,

but they had to think differently and it seemed like a terrible struggle.

I was aware of the mythology

surrounding the making of Exile On Main St.

really from the time it came out.

And over the years, especially once I started recording with them,

you know, I asked a lot of questions, I got a little clearer picture about it but...

The mythology had a huge impact on me in 1972.

Just the little bit of information that came out was kind of life=changing.

The drugs had changed...

That's a major factor in this, OK?

It went from this happy giggle stuff to something else.

And the politics had changed, man. Nixon was levelling Cambodia and Laos...

It was a weird time.

In '72, I'd just written a paper about Joseph Conrad for class at school.

And then these guys put this album out.

And I'd always looked to them as leaders, you know?

And the message I got was...

"Follow us, we're going the wrong way, against the current, up the river

"and we're gonna be hanging out with Captain Kurtz."

And that was... And the pictures that filtered through

of them recording the album bore that out there, like...

I'd have to go back and see them but my image of it is...

It looked like the prisoners of the POWs in Hanoi, you know?

These real stark black and white things.

And they'd gone off to some distant place, maybe it's like Lord Of The Flies, you know?

Just this... They were not gonna abide by the laws and they were saying,

"Get out while you still can. The ship's going down."

It was apocalyptic.

It's dark and foreboding

but at the same time, it was quite alluring, man.

They were having fun. And it was totally cool.

It was a scary record.

It was an exraordinary decade, there's no doubting it, and it had to end.

It had to come to an end. Why should we put it on the Rolling Stones that it ended?

It was coming to an end anyway.

I don't mean just because it was changing from 1969 to 1970.

The 60's really ended, I think, in about '73 or '7 4, really.

And so they had to strike out for something new.

And also I guess to search for other ways of telling a story with music,

which means all the different influences that they had over the years, right?

I mean, blues, rock, gospel, everything together.

It's a touchstone for a lot of musicians, I think.

Because there's a unity between how you play and how you live your life

in that record, man, you know? And that's different from other things.

The looseness, the lack of self=consciousness, the confidence...

The confidence towards the world and also in your own playing.

"I'm not gonna get lost,

"don't worry about whether we're speeding up or slowing down."

It's about feel, it's about being in the moment.

It's a Zen record like that, man.

It's all about being in the moment and enjoying the moment.

There's probably not a better example of that out there.

And so, for musicians, it's not just, "I wanna make music that sounds like that."

It's, "I wanna live my life like that."

Main St. Is downtown LA.

You can't get more main than that, it's real down and out.

I had moved to LA in the early 70's, by '72, I was living in LA.

By '73, I was shooting Mean Streets,

some of it in New York, the rest in LA, on Main St.

And it was the down=and=out area.

It was like being on skid row on the Bowery where I grew up, actually,

on the Lower East Side, in the old Italian area.

It's a sense of being the outcast, of being on the edge of society,

on the fringes I should say, not the edge. People that don't count.

Supposedly don't count, yet they're still there.

Look at this. I mean, you know... The incredible photography of Robert Frank.

Also taking in the side show.

The desperation of the side show performer, you know?

And all these elements, I think, come to play.

And Main Street, you had to know it a little bit.

And also the fact that Main Street is a term that's used for...

How should I put it?

...the white picket fence, small=town Americana,

but Main Street in Los Angeles and New York, you know, different place.

They were, I guess...

Maybe they fostered the image of

the outcast to a certain exent, and the rebel, obviously.

They all did in rock and roll, all rebels, but these guys were something else.

This was some other existence that led the way.

I think this album was kind of a turning point,

kind of a letting go of everything before this record.

And this and Let It Bleed, for me, and Sticky Fingers...

It certainly set me on a course as an artist.

I would say that they probably are the most influential rock artists in my life.

And the record really represents a freedom

and a stepping away from the conventional and from the norm.

A freedom in letting go of your surroundings

and, as I said, that has a lot to do with...

What happens in your art is leaving all the familiarity behind

and bringing your circus on the road with you.

Another thing about this record is that I have never googled the lyrics.

I don't really want to know the actual lyrics.

I am very attached to what I think the songs are about

and there are so many words in these songs

that I've caught obviously many snippets.

I know basically what's being said

but I do not want to know actually what's being said.

Cos it's very powerful.

This is a special record that way and I bet a lot of people feel that way.

They think they know what it's about

and they're gonna go to their grave believing that.

I mean, what does it really mean?

It really means...

It really means what's at the core of all the rock stardom, that whole...

Let's face it, at the bottom of a lot of bravado is just basic insecurity

and I feel like this record...

is a perfect portrait of, like, the essence

of what made them rock stars in the first place.

As a kid, growing up,

I imagined the Stones as being absolutely intimidating and raucous

and it all being about sex and drugs. And when you listen to the record,

although that may be the environment of the record

or the sonic environment of the record,

the musicianship on it is seminal, you know?

You had some of the greatest drumming in rock history with Charlie.

And although we think of the Rolling Stones as being...

the recordings being steeped in looseness

and sort of being a rock and roll shambles, if you will, it's really not.

I mean, it's some of the great, I think, pop craftsmanship

and some of the great rock recording,

just as far as the arrangements are concerned, of all time.

And I think that, you know, you get into music now,

you listen to some of what's happening

and in almost every great rock band, you hear the influence of the Stones.

Exile was the record that really made me go,

"All right, these guys are going to be around forever.

"They're gonna be 95, on the stage, wearing Nikes..."

I've seen you, Mick. He wears Nikes, that's awesome.

When I came to this... But I was a freak at that time.

And when I made my record off of their record...

By the way, I met Mick once in LA.

They were, I don't know, doing some record release party

which is nex level record release party,

like everyone, journalists flew in, you know what I mean?

And he looked at me...

The guy, the producer I was working with, introduced me and said,

"Oh, she made Exile In Guyville."

And he looked at me like he actually forgave me

for doing something so awful as to make my record.

And, like, had he known how much I loved this record

and that really it became symbolic of a male persona for me.

Like, I actually had a relationship with the guy who is singing all these stories.

And that was my boyfriend and I was either saying, "Oh, please love me",

or "You dick!" or whatever I was saying to this guy,

this imaginary guy, was what this record meant to me.

It was all the men that I had loved and thought were flamboyant

and stood out from the crowd in our rock and roll scene in Chicago,

and didn't give me the time of day, or they did,

or they toyed with me or whatever it was,

I was deep in a personal relationship with this record.

And I was not critiquing it. I was yelling at my imaginary boyfriend.

Nobody really ever asked me about Exile On Main St.

when I was making or when I came out with Exile In Guyville,

except to say, "Is it really a song by song response? Because I don't hear it."

And, frankly, I think that's just sexism

because you'd have to be a girl to understand what I was doing.

Men would be like, "Well, you have no horns."

You know? "There's no brass." You know? They just didn't get it.

See, I'm not sure what prompted the decision.

But I just got a call from Mick, early in 2009,

saying, "We're thinking of reissuing Exile

"with a few exra previously unreleased tracks.

"Would you be interested?"

"Yeah, OK."

So, nex thing I know...

I got the equivalent of 200 boxes of tape, maybe more.

It was all on hard drives at this point.

When I first started on the thing, I got a fax from Keith. A stern one.

Saying, "Don't try to make it sound like Exile. It already is Exile."

And that was very wise and he was absolutely right.

The task was to not get in the way of it.

Don't fix it up.

You know, it really is archival, as much as anything.

Part of the consideration was...

Don't just put out the same stuff that's been bootlegged to death

if you're gonna add something new to it.

And let's try to find those gems, like Sophia Loren, that no one has heard.

Like, no one's heard, that's never been bootlegged. That was a joy.

Aladdin Story, which has been heard and covered by Death In Vegas.

I don't know if you ever... It's amazing...

They did a recording of it, and very faithful, too.

But no one's ever heard it with the vocal. So that's something that's cool.

It was really... to try to make something interesting for people,

something that would hold together.

We were really just looking for three or four tracks.

We ended up finishing 1 1,

and to be honest with you, there's more there.

And it'd already been pillaged, too, for Tattoo You and for Goats Head Soup.

And there's a lot of great stuff to be left off because it didn't fall into that period.

The lines between when Exile begins

and where Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers end, it's a little grey.

So some of the reels

that might have had something relevant to Exile also had other stuff.

The first thing I put on, it said Honky Tonk Women and I was, "What"?

So, I put that reel on first and...

It was the nine takes leading up to the final take of Honky Tonk Women.

And they should just put that out. You can chart the thing...

It starts with Country Honk and they took that as far as they could

and that wasn't where it was supposed to go,

and I think nex day they start over

and lan Stewart's playing honky=tonk piano.

And Keith's playing in the holes of this thing that's filling up all the air.

And somewhere around take nine, they pull the piano out

and you got this angular rhythmic thing that he's doing,

which makes total sense if you hear the piano,

but when you first heard that, it was like, "Wow!"

How does anyone...

I've never heard anything like that, like the beginning of Honky Tonk Women.

From that tuning just to the angular rhythm of it.

So, it's a very interesting trip. But there was all kinds of stuff.

Although I do believe that the take of Loving Cup

that's on the bonus tracks is...

That's my favourite thing, to be honest with you. It's...

It represents...

When we talk about having loose rock and roll without it being sloppy,

how far from the centre of gravity can each individual pull the thing

and still keep the centrifugal force going...

This version of Loving Cup absolutely takes it to the limits

and it's fantastic, man.

It's just... And Mick's vocal on it.

It's just such an attitude, you know?

Like it just requires a guy of that age

who does whatever he wants to do to sing with that attitude.

And it's so... I think that really captures the spirit of this.

I love that track. And it's different.

It's guitarcentric as opposed to being pianocentric.

It's not a gospel song, which it is on this.

But outside of the choice of takes on that, they did the right thing here.

I think it's just fun. Fun to listen to.

You've heard all the Beatles stuff

and you've heard a whole lot of the Dylan stuff.

And, you know,

I don't think there are too many people that mean that much to you,

where the sound has emotional triggers that transcend the notes.

That's the thing about the Stones.

When you hear that five=string tuning when Keith plays that,

or when you hear Mick's voice,

or even when you hear Charlie lifting up off the high hat

on the two and the four like nobody else does... When you hear those things,

whether the Rolling Stones like it or not,

it's got all sorts of emotional triggers for people that transcend the records.

So that's an essential component of this.

It took years and, ultimately,

it took playing music with the Rolling Stones,

actually playing bass with them

just during sessions and between songs and everything like that,

to understand what goes on in that band.

The Rolling Stones really listen to each other.

They're quick to react, as they are in conversation.

It's a highly conversational band.

The exchange, musically, between the players is...

...it's jocular

and it's loose and it's quick.

And just as their conversational repartee is like that, so is their playing.

And whatever goes on interpersonally between any of them,

I believe it evaporates when they start playing.

And they're loose. It reminds me so much of Miles Davis.

Miles Davis was the jazz example.

That band that he had around that same time, that had Herbie Hancock

and Wayne Shorter and Ron Carter and Tony Williams,

was loose, was floating on this incredible drum thing that's happening,

and confident and a little cocky.

It's the way you should play rock and roll.

Without self=consciousness, without being stiff, without showing off.

It's not a show=off record. It's not filled with "look how fast I can play".

It's a really soulful record.

You can't overstate the importance of Mick Taylor.

That's something else I learned from listening to this stuff.

He's a great foil for Keith's playing.

It's different from what he's got going with Ronnie,

where they talk about the weaving of the guitarists.

This is two very separate approaches

that bounce off each other in a really unique way.

It's a real strong characteristic of the Stones' recordings from that period.

Something else that I really got hip to

was just how great a bass player Bill Wyman is.

He's a crazy, genius bass player.

I'm a bass player, I can learn his parts note for note,

but I could never come up with them.

He sort of thinks like a guitar player

and he's playing in holes where a guitar player might play

with a very melodic kind of thing

and the tone of the bass doesn't have a big low register,

it's almost nasally sounding,

it's almost like it's the seventh string of the guitar.

But then, he'll throw in some James Jameson kind of thing,

some totally funky fill that's just like...

It's quite sophisticated.

He's an enigmatic musician...

but such an important component in this stuff.

If there's one thing, one big overall thing,

that I learned about Exile from listening to all this stuff...

it's that maybe everything that you heard about actually happened,

but when they were recording...

they were on their game.

You couldn't possibly write all these songs

and record all these songs and play them as well as they did,

and not be at the top of your game.

So, the mythology's got to include some superhuman strength

and has got to acknowledge

that they're really professional, they're really a great band.

There's nothing shitty about Exile On Main St.

When you really get into it,

there's a looseness but that should not be mistaken for sloppiness.

There's nothing sloppy about Exile. And there's a lot of really good stuff.

Plus, in the things that weren't included on the album,

you can see the link, you can see the link to...

Like Aladdin Story, for example, which is called something else now...

That's the link to Between The Buttons and Exile. But there is one.

So, a lot of these things...

In fact, if you just listen to these 18 songs,

it's like "Wow, where did that spring from?"

But there actually is some lineage and connection.