The re-release of Exile has sent me down memory lane and some wonderful memories occured. I grew up in a home where both parents had a passion for music, well above average. My father and I shared a passion for the Stones, whereas my mother and sister were Beatles-fans.
After the release of "Sticky Fingers", my father and I were ecstatic, and he found it apropriate to invest in a new stereo. We were not wealthy, so a huge stereo was not the obvious choice for a young family, but he went out and bought it. No protest from mum... But I discovered she took om extra work at the hospital to help pay the bills. Yes, it was a huge system that stereo.
Then came Exile, days before we were going to celebrate my confirmation day with a huge family gathering. Cousins - all between 20 and 8 years old and all boys - gathered gazing at the new stereo. Proudly my father put on "Exile", and their faces just lightened up! Before long the first floor turned into a youth club, with music on an incredible volume, kids dancing, grand parents complaining and my dad saying: This is my kid's day - and she gets to decide the volume. If it's too loud, please feel free to enjoy your coffee outdoors.
I never even considered turning the volume down. That would have disappointed my father, who was incredibly proud of his purchase. The memories of this day are still very vivid for the entire family (those still alive) and some of my cousins are still Stones fans.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2010-05-21 15:43 by Addicted.

First time i heard Rocks off with that "feel so mesmerized...." bridge......... i'm still ectasic after 15 years

buying the remastered cd the day it came out in 1994. if i would of waited a few days i could of bought the special version that looked like a mini lp but i couldn't . i was amazed how much better the sound was compared to the cbs version i actually threw a small party with friends to celebrate. though exile is more of an album to play the day after a party as you recover.

Exile always reminds me of leaving home at 16 and moving to London to live with my brother. We spent the summer making music, playing gigs and hanging out with Exile and Sticky Fingers on constant rotation. We even got to meet Rons brother by a total freak coincidence....

My best Exile memory is the release of it!
My best Exile moments is to listen to it again with the new tracks, especially "Following the river" which is a reallly, really great song!

Thanks Stones & UA for this gem!

Been Stoned since 1964 and still am!

Addicted - what a great story! I love your parents.

My earliest memories of it was going to the record store in high school and looking at the album cover. I was building up my record collection at the time and didn't have a lot of money so i could only buy one each trip. I kept putting that one off because the only 2 songs I recognized were Tumbling Dice & Happy.

I was still kinda young and to be honest, it didn't hit me the way LIB or BB did. In fact, I hardly ever played it. Then when I was about 22 or so, my friends invited me on a sailing trip to Provincetown. It was a beautiful day out of Boston and my friend Jimmy put on his cassette of Exile. We had great wind that day and were really booking it. The music was so loud and we all started singing Sweet Virginia. The boat was reeling on it's side and when you leaned over the ocean spray would hit your face - we were doing that to Loving Cup. It just sounded so good and it beauty of that album finally hit me. Now I can't imagine not feeling it, can't explain it. I guess you could say it wasn't love at first sight, but grew into true love.

Wasn't looking too good, but I was feeling real well.

I remember "listening" to Let it Loose for the first time in fathers apartment on the upper west side of manhattan. I thought jagger was singing "Betty Lou" instead of "Let it Loose".

On a brighter note. I became such a fan of the stones & in particular, Exile, that later on, while backbacking thru Europe, I recalled reading (from various books but also Exile liner notes) ...Thanks to everyone at Nellcote & Villefrance. So on a down day in Nice, I made a solo trip by train to Villefrance. Out of sheer dumb luck (and A for effort) I found Nellcote. As I did/do not speak French, I recall just polietly asking asking a few locals ...Rolling Stones?? To no avail. Then I looked around and recalled from various pictures I had seen, where generally I thought the house would be..and started walking. Found it a short time later. This was in the days before digital cameras. Wish I had taken a few more pictures ..just have a few bad b&w ones that are not even worth uploading.I ended up going back to Villafrance & sleeping on the beach as, if my memory serves me well, the Nice train station being closed at a inopprotune time.

My Dad was a saint and he got caught up in my passion for the Stones...let's say he indulged me! Every Christmas he bought me a BOX full of records and sometimes there were Stones albums in that box! Even though I always bought the Stones albums immediately when released, I was collecting some of the older albums like AFTERMATH and 12X5 that I might have missed along the way. Anyway in May of 1972, EXILE came out and I had been reading all about it and the Tour that was to coincide with EXILE. I wanted to see the Stones LIVE so bad I could taste it! So, I got EXILE and played it non-stop, day and night! That spring I could tell that he was up to something and I wasn't sure what but one day in June he came home with a surprise....2 tickets, very good ones at that, to see The Stones at the Boston Garden! I nearly passed out!! I was 18 and he remembered that I'd missed the '69 Tour because he thought I was too young...I was crushed back in '69 so he made it up to me with great seats. They cost $8.50 each!!
On the day of the show we packed up the red volkswagon mini-van...my Mom, Dad and Paul, the boyfriend and our Irish Setter and headed to Boston. I read LIFE Magazine with Mick on the cover in the white jumpsuit all the way to Boston. I was running on pure adrenaline, up all night because this show was night #2 and the Stones had just been released from jail..remember Keith hitting the photographer in Warwick, RI?? Mayor White had to beg the police to let Mick & Keith out of jail as fans waited, nearly rioting at the Garden. I didn't know until very late that the show was still on! I think that first show started around 2:30AM.
Anyway, my parents let us off in front of the Garden, the show was pure magic..I won't review it here...but after the show my Dad told me they'd seen 2 men drop a body into the Charles River while they were parked having a snack in an adsjoining parking lot near the river. He said he was sure it was the mafia because the men opened the trunk, no trunk light came on...odd...and the men lifted a heavy long object covered in a rug and placed it in the water. They drove off, again with no lights...My Dad went to check it out after they left....nothing there! He was pretty shaken up but sure of what they'd seen!
Here's the clincher..one year later, Boston police reported finding the remains of a decomposed body on the banks of the Charles...we all read it in the Boston Globe...no one was ever arrested as far as we knew! So, how's that for an EXILE story?

This is one of the best Stones mini-dramas I have ever read . Thanks for sharing .

My abiding memories are feelings that carry on to this day...it is the single most uplifting album I can put on in times of trouble, sadness, diffidence, insecurity...you name it... that will almost immediately make me feel great again.

When I hear that first burst of guitar on Rocks Off I know again that the world ain't such a bad place, that I can put right whatever is bringing me down, imbibe me with new energy, give me a shot of confidence.

On the other hand it can also dramatically enhance feelings of well-being, be the perfect background for an evening of drunken revelry, be the album you put on before going out on the town. To put it simply, there is no other record quite like it.

And at the heart of its magic is an amazing earthiness, from the gospel voices in the background, to the steely guitar sounds, the country twang on (the old vinyl) side 2, and above all, feelgood lyrics that are both tough yet reflective.

Of course my first memory is Tumbling Dice because it was the first single. I remembered how dirty it sounded. It made me realize that the Stones were still rocking in Summer of the singer-songwriters. When the LP came out, we went to Poobah's in Pasadena and bought it, brought it back to the crib and wore it out. it was like nothing that we had ever heard before, especially the middle part in Rocks Off. Of course seeing them, which I did at the Hollywood Palladium play some of the songs in person was icing on the cake. Great show, they opened with Brown Sugar and Bitch and at that time they really were the World's Greatest rock and Roll Band. Still are. Exile was a masterpiece, every day you hear rock and roll bands (Deadstring Brothers etc) try to get that sound but it so damn elusive. They never even sounded like that again. Summer of '72 was one of my favorite Summers and Exile helped me make it through.

My best "Exile" memory was finding a "lost" track.

You see, I was given the LP when I was about thirteen years old. And for me, it was an enormous inconvenience to run up to the living room and put on the headphones each time I wanted to listen to the record. So I did what everybody else did in those days, I copied it to a tape and stuck it in my yellow clumpy Walkman and thought I looked really cool.

Now lets back up a little. You might remember those days with cassettes. The early eighties. The tapes ran thirty or forty-five minutes per side so when copying a long LP you basically had to turn the tape over mid-song and keep recording (losing a verse or so) or pause the record in between tracks, turning the tape and continue from the top of a new song. Ah, those days...

Anyhow, when I was thirteen years old and copying "Exile" to tape something unforeseen happened. I don´t know what of course. Perhaps the Genesis-fan next door phoned or I had to eat. The point is, at the time I didn´t realize that the tape had ran out before side two had completed, and I mistakenly swapped sides and started taping afresh from side three.

The short story is that I had that tape for about six years, listening to it about 200 times, before I realized that one song was missing. It wasn´t until I bought my first copy of Exile on CD I noticed and for the first time heard the little composition called "Loving Cup". Imagine my bulging eyes.

Cleveland 2002, one of my best show : 5 songs from that album played in a row

I was 14 years old. Cut 2 yards to get the money ($6.99 I think it was) to buy the double album I had been waiting for anxiously for months counting down the days. I had an older friend who worked at the record store across town and he calls me a couple of days BEFORE it is released and says he could sell it to me early! I go nuts!

I am useless all day in school...jump on my bike after school...ride all the way across town to buy the record...ride all the way home...slap that album on and listened to all 4 sides...and HATED it. It seemed like a load of tuneless noise. I actually cried after being so excited and then so let down! I was PISSED.

After dinner (making the family fully aware of my foul mood) I decide to give it another complete run-through and I began to warm up to it quickly. It wasn't long until it assumed it's place as my favorite album and didn't leave my turntable for weeks! School was out a couple of weeks after and Exile was the soundtrack of the summer of '72. I got to see them live at The U of Alabama later in June...hell of a summer!

Ross