Main menu
Fretplay home Submit tabs

The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones tabs The Rolling Stones discography

Channels
Guitar channel Bass channel Guitar videos Reviews

Message Forum
Guitar forum Bass forum Bands and artists Promote your band Recent discussions All categories

Fretplay.com

The Rolling Stones guitar tabs

CD reviews

Exile on Main St.

The Rolling Stones - Exile on Main St. Audio CD

A fair review of the The Rolling Stones "Exile on Main St." Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all The Rolling Stones reviews here, or go back to the The Rolling Stones tabs.

Band: The Rolling Stones
Title: Exile on Main St.
Rating:

Release Date: 1994-07-26
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: Rocks Off 2: Rip This Joint 3: Shake Your Hips 4: Casino Boogie 5: Tumbling Dice 6: Sweet Virginia 7: Torn and Frayed 8: Sweet Black Angel 9: Loving Cup 10: Happy 11: Turd on the Run 12: Ventilator Blues 13: I Just Want to See His Face 14: Let It Loose 15: All Down the Line 16: Stop Breaking Down 17: Shine a Light 18: Soul Survivor

1972 Stones Record on CD.
This is a good Stones record, you get a good mix of The Stones, exploring different musical directions, featuring Mick Taylor on Guitar as well as some excellent bass work from Bill Wyman.

Greatest Pure Rock Album Ever Made
is not only The Rolling Stones' masterpiece but The Rolling Stones themselves are probably the single most important band in rock history and to not put a record that features Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Mick Taylor, Bill Wyman, and Charlie Watts all in their prime as the greatest record of all time is a crime that almost every "Best Of" list is guilty of. Exile On Main St. This album started out as essentially a collection of outakes but the end result is a sprawling album of eighteen songs that feature such full-bodied blues rock that is so loud that even Mick Jagger cannot scream his way out from behind it to country-inspired songs that are so pitch-perfect that even the weakest song of the album ("Torn And Frayed") is still stronger than what most bands could ever conjure up. The sound of Exile On Main St. is dirty, heavy, and has a smoke-filled bar quality about it. It is the very essence of rock mixed in with blues and country.

I could go on and on about Exile On Main St. --how "Let It Loose" is one of the greatest songs I have ever heard; how "Tumbling Dice" and "Happy" are two of the Stones' strongest and most overlooked singles they have ever released; how "Rip This Joint" is filled with so much power and energy that I cannot believe there are people who do not like it; how "All Down The Line" is all the evidence you will ever need as to how great Mick Taylor was; how awesome this album is in spite of the fact that horns are used in many tracks; how "Soul Survivor" is one of the greatest songs to ever end an album; how "Sweet Virginia" is the greatest country song the Stones have ever done and how it immediately makes me turn the volume up higher when it comes on. But the simple fact is this: if you have never heard Exile On Main St. before you should listen to it. You may hate it or you may love it or you may think of it as just average. To me, this album was the equivalent of The Shawshank Redemption in that I remember exactly where I was when I heard it all the way through for the first time. To me, there has never been a better pure rock album ever produced, just as there has never been a better two and a half hour movie made that I could watch everyday for a month straight like The Shawshank Redemption.
.

It Has To Grow On You But It's Worth The Wait
I would disagree with that but I can see where that observation comes from. This album is lauded by critics as the Stones best. It is definitely the most imaginative and original album that the Stone ever made. It isn't crawling with hits like Let It Bleed or Some Girls, but it has the best flow of any of their albums period. The album is purposely produced to sound like low-fi blues as it is intended as a chronicle of American blues music and the people that surround it. The cover looks like a collage of pictures taken during a trip through rural America where some of the most colloquial and interesting characters to be found there were photographed. The album as a whole pulls the listener into that world and puts you in a special vibe that is hard to describe and that they never captured before or since. I think that they tried the same with Beggar's Banquet but succeeded there to a much lesser degree. Once you absorb the enormous sprawl that is this album it becomes an increasingly enjoyable listen and I would list it as one of my all-time favorite Stones albums. I would rank them as follows.

Let It Bleed
Some Girls
It's Only Rock And Roll
Exile On Main Street
Sticky Fingers

The rest of their catalog is hard to categorize because it is so varied and my preference for all their other albums changes frequently. This one is definitely one of the best rock albums ever made, but it is almost like a concept album with its intentional avoidance of mainstream music and is a delicious acquired taste.

This is probably not a good album to introduce someone to this band. It would be better to start with their Forty Licks greatest hits package, but any of the other above mentioned albums is solid enough to please any fan of rock music.

Highly Recommended (For people who are already fans of the Stones) .

There's filler on Exile On Main Street and not The White Album?
Exiles is not my favorite Stones album (that's Let It Bleed or Sticky Fingers) but at least it doesn't have the filler that's on THE WHITE ALBUM - Ob-La-Di,Ob-La-Da, Wild Honey Pie, Bungalow Bill, Piggies, Rocky Raccoon, Don't Pass Me By, Why Don't We Do It In The Road, Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except Me And My Monkey, Revolution 1, Honey Pie or Revolution 9.

Don't bother looking - there's NO BETTER ANYWHERE!
It confused a lot of people in 1972 because, while the Rock and Roll was, as always, the finest available, it was kind of like. Unquestionably - The Stones GREATEST album,cd/whatever. . . ummmm, maybe better check beneath the surface here. And though Mick Taylor would be a Rolling Stone for two more years, neither he nor they would ever produce anything better. MY only quibble is that now, with the new "remastered" blah-blah-blah available - really - isn't a "cleaned up" "Exile On Main St" kind of a contradiction in terms? C'MON! - LEAVE it muddy & murky, that's what grabbed us in the first place!.

You can see a complete list of all The Rolling Stones discography, or go back to the The Rolling Stones tabs. There is also a good guide on how to read guitar tabs here.