Any doubts created by the subsequent 18-month gap in releases were dispelled by the release of Brown Sugar in April 1971 (another US #1), followed in May by Sticky Fingers, possibly the strongest Stones album to date, and one that showcased the guitar interplay between Keith Richards and Mick Taylor, alongside some great songs, including Sway, Wild Horses and Bitch. Honky Tonk Women went to #1 in the UK and the US in July 1969, followed by the Let It Bleed album in December, another triumph. His first sessions were for the Let It Bleed album, overdubbing guitar on Country Honk and Live With Me plus some pivotal parts for the Honky Tonk Women single on the 1st June session that ended at 3:15AM. The Stones had recruited the sensitive 20-year old Mick Taylor in 1969 from John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, where he became the third stellar lead guitarist to play the blues in Mayall’s band, following Eric Clapton and Peter Green. With reference to Exile, the most prominent use of the 5-string open-tuned guitar is on Rocks Off, Happy, Ventilator Blues, Tumbling Dice and All Down The Line. Even now, the first chords of either of the above will pack a dance floor anywhere in the UK. It also allowed the mega-riffs of the Mark 2 Stones’ biggest hits: Honky Tonk Women and Brown Sugar, which underpinned new member Mick Taylor’s melodic country/blues lines, melding to create a whole new style.
Crucially, the guitar is tuned to a chord, but in Keith Richards’ book Life, he describes how he discarded the 6th (lowest) string, giving the lowest string (now a G) the role of a drone, quite appropriate to the blues. The guitar sound is largely due to Ry Cooder, whose involvement in the sessions of 1969’s Performance soundtrack, showed the possibilities of the ‘open G’ tuning on the guitar. However, the SPIRIT of the basement prevails throughout and it is the murky swampiness of the whole endeavour, extending to Mick Jagger’s all but indecipherable vocals, that have seen it acclaimed as the Stones’ most complete statement and possibly the most rock album the band ever made. Some of the other recordings predated the trip to France, having been recorded in the UK, at Olympic Studios in Barnes.
The legend persists that it was all created in the dank basement of the former Nazi headquarters in Villefranche-Sur-Mer in the Summer of 1971, although a large portion was overdubbed in sessions in Los Angeles, where other songs were created from scratch. First manager Andrew Loog Oldham said in the sleeve notes to the Stones’ first album: ‘The Rolling Stones are more than a group, they are a way of life’, and of no album is that truer than Exile On Main Street.
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