Just my opinion here, but by what I've read about "Exile on Main St." & quotes from Mick, there isn't alot in the way of favorable reviews from him.

I read many time's how he knocks the album, even going so far to say that it is THE album he would most like to remix ( Now is his chance, funny how things work out)

I wonder if his dislike of the album is because he wasn't as involved in the album, as Keef, and he was always flying to Paris to be w/ Bianaca.

I don't think anyone would really raise a disagrement here , that this is bascially Keith's album, as is "Dirty Work"

So my basic point here is this masterpiece is knocked by Mick due to jealousy.

"Well my heavy throbbers itchin' just to lay a solid rhythm down"

He's entitled to his opinion isn't he?
The production values are very different on Exile than other Stones' albums, so it's perfectly rational for him to draw the distinction and then it's a matter of taste.
Personally, I rate Exile least amongst the 'Big Four' of the great albums (it's still a great album) because the vocals sound so 'muddy' and I prefer them to be more distinct. Others love the ambiance. It's just a matter of taste.

I agree, and good point. My point was the way he knock's it... is it due to jealousy?

"Well my heavy throbbers itchin' just to lay a solid rhythm down"

btw I read an interview w/ Jimmy Miller saying Exile coulda been made into TWO double albums from all the material recorded at Nellcote. Hope the re-issue is worth the wait, with limited changes.

"Well my heavy throbbers itchin' just to lay a solid rhythm down"

I think there are major differences between Mick's involvment in Exile and Dirty Work.
I think most would agree that Exile contains some of his greatest vocal performances.I don't hear someone just reluctantly adding to Keith's contributions .EXILE IS A ROLLING STONES ALBUM.
There is no comparison IMHO.

sc uk

YEs, and Mick was the most involved after the Nellcot sessions He took over and saw it through until the end. I think those comments come more from some interesting mix of egocentric and defensive behavior. He is none too pleased with his job at the mixing desk, and he likes to disagree with the critics and bag the album because it feeds his ego as well.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-01-30 12:14 by whitem8.

"this is bascially Keith's album"
Imho you're wrong :
early 72 in this L.A. studio, when Mick listened to the 100's of hours of tapes recorded at Nellcote under Keith's "helm" he realized there was a lot of typical Keith stuff : loose music, unfinished songs = hardly enough material to release as is.

So I guess he had to work his ass off to actually give birth to this LP and create form from void. He knew the US tour couldn't be postponed till winter so he had a gun on his head.
Imho he should also receive credits for making amazing what was great (the extras brought in in L.A. : Dr John, the black female singers etc). Still I guess he lost against Keith at the mixing stage.

Hence the bad memories when everybody says "it's Keith's masterpiece"?
Keith built the legend of the album but Mick was in the engine room.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-01-30 13:29 by dcba.

I agree Doxa. Good post. It was a group effort of the Glimmer Twins, Mick Taylor, and Charlie. Bill is more curiously absent, than Mick Jagger! Anyhow, so much of the album is older ideas anyways that are put together in a more refined form. A great mix of decadent Nellcot with decadent LA. Gloriously strung out affair with Mick jetting back and forth because he got to bored for the junkies to start working. Mick is a coke whore and probably ADHD, and needs to be constantly spinning, so no surprise he jets to LA with the tapes under his arms and lots of ideas for the final touches. His stamp if you will.

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whitem8
YEs, and Mick was the most involved after the Nellcot sessions He took over and saw it through until the end. I think those comments come more from some interesting mix of egocentric and defensive behavior. He is none too pleased with his job at the mixing desk, and he likes to disagree with the critics and bag the album because it feeds his ego as well.

Quite much was done outside Nellcot, so it is not a Keith album like Dirty Works - see below (it is from WIKI, but quite much reflects the truth):

"The basic band for the Nellcôte sessions is believed to have consisted of Richards, Bobby Keys, Mick Taylor, Charlie Watts, Miller.Wyman did not like the ambience of the Richards' villa and sat out many of the French sessions. As Wyman appeared on only eight songs of the released album, the other bass parts were played by Taylor, Richards, and, on four tracks, upright bassist Bill Plummer.

Additional basic tracks (most probably only "Rip this Joint", "Shake Your Hips", "Casino Boogie", "Happy", "Rocks Off", "Turd on the Run", and "Ventilator Blues")[4] were begun in the basement of Nellcôte and taken to Sunset Sound Recorders in Los Angeles where numerous overdubs (all piano and keyboard parts, all lead and backing vocals, all guitar and bass overdubs) were added during sessions that meandered from December 1971 until May 1972. Some tracks (such as "Torn and Frayed" and "Loving Cup") were freshly recorded in Los Angeles.[4] Although Jagger (who had recently wed Bianca Jagger) was frequently missing from Nellcôte,[5] he immediately took charge during the second stage of recording in Los Angeles, arranging for keyboardists Billy Preston and Dr. John and the cream of the city's session backup vocalists to record layers of overdubs.[4] The final gospel-inflected arrangements of "Tumbling Dice", "Loving Cup", "Let It Loose" and "Shine a Light" were inspired by Jagger and Preston's visit to a local evangelical church.[4]

mick is very intelligent and just right when he says exile is not that great.

if there was no exile the stones would still be the stones and would have had the same carreer.

that is not the case with other, mostly earlier records, that are better and more important and sound better.

As a matter of fact, Mick did not knock Exile. He said only that he didn't like how it was mixed, and he was the one in LA supervising the job. The jealousy argument is BS.

C

It seems after reading "Exile on Main Street: A season in Hell with the Rolling Stones" by Greenfield that the making of that record wasn't an enjoyable experience for Mick Jagger. His relationship with Keith started to detariorate(Bianca,Gram Parsons) the recording at Nellcote was a mess,the french cops were on their backs, and the final mix of the album didn't come out easily. It's possible that Mick associates "Exile" with all the BS attached to it. But Exile is a commun effort of the band so I don't think there is a reason for jealousy; Jagger worked hard on that record as did Keith and the rest of the band.
Rock and Roll,
Mops

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mtaylor

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whitem8
YEs, and Mick was the most involved after the Nellcot sessions He took over and saw it through until the end. I think those comments come more from some interesting mix of egocentric and defensive behavior. He is none too pleased with his job at the mixing desk, and he likes to disagree with the critics and bag the album because it feeds his ego as well.

Quite much was done outside Nellcot, so it is not a Keith album like Dirty Works - see below (it is from WIKI, but quite much reflects the truth):

"The basic band for the Nellcôte sessions is believed to have consisted of Richards, Bobby Keys, Mick Taylor, Charlie Watts, Miller.Wyman did not like the ambience of the Richards' villa and sat out many of the French sessions. As Wyman appeared on only eight songs of the released album, the other bass parts were played by Taylor, Richards, and, on four tracks, upright bassist Bill Plummer.

Additional basic tracks (most probably only "Rip this Joint", "Shake Your Hips", "Casino Boogie", "Happy", "Rocks Off", "Turd on the Run", and "Ventilator Blues")[4] were begun in the basement of Nellcôte and taken to Sunset Sound Recorders in Los Angeles where numerous overdubs (all piano and keyboard parts, all lead and backing vocals, all guitar and bass overdubs) were added during sessions that meandered from December 1971 until May 1972. Some tracks (such as "Torn and Frayed" and "Loving Cup") were freshly recorded in Los Angeles.[4] Although Jagger (who had recently wed Bianca Jagger) was frequently missing from Nellcôte,[5] he immediately took charge during the second stage of recording in Los Angeles, arranging for keyboardists Billy Preston and Dr. John and the cream of the city's session backup vocalists to record layers of overdubs.[4] The final gospel-inflected arrangements of "Tumbling Dice", "Loving Cup", "Let It Loose" and "Shine a Light" were inspired by Jagger and Preston's visit to a local evangelical church.[4]

great information ,thanks ,i'm sometimes dissapointed with the mixes (no wonder jagger is), namely the near mono mixes of all down the line and sweet black angel . i mixed the latter with bent green needles and the guitars really stand out then.

Why Mick doesn't like whatever Stones albums:

They didn't sell well, they didn't go to number one and or they didn't have a number one single.

That's it. His beef is consistent. His talk about remixing Exile is just silly. The album sounds fine. He's probably more unhappy with the album being a double album and having not trimmed down some of the tracks to tighten up into a much better album. Or whatever else.

Funny he says things about remixing Exile when he's been allowed to release such trash as Let's Work and various other poorly written and produced solo songs and then the Stones shitbombs like Winning Ugly, Back To Zero, Sweet Neo Con, Rock And A Hard Place and Streets Of Love and a few others.

If Mick is so intelligent and knows greatness (I don't know how intelligence has anything to do with greatness) how come his solo stuff suck?

The aura of Exile on main street is that it was made at the basement in Nellcote, with the mobile underneath Keith and Anita's drug world. It's a "no rules" album as " we are going to play the music we like" which this might be the single most strongest proof that Keith Richards was in charge with the material recorded and probably by accident it turned out to be an incredible piece of work. The whole thing was not recorded in Nellcote but people think it was, although I am sure , like J Miller said there are probably a bunch of 4 in the morning Keith sessions hidden in the can. So was Mick jealous? Who knows... maybe he didn't have total control and could nt fight the madness. And Bianca well Bianca... thank god. I don't know what my life would ve been without the music on this album.

I really hope sir Mick re mixes it to prove my point. He might hire Don Was to do it.

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stoneswashed77
mick is very intelligent and just right when he says exile is not that great.

if there was no exile the stones would still be the stones and would have had the same carreer.

that is not the case with other, mostly earlier records, that are better and more important and sound better.

But that would require Mick to delve in the past, which of course he doesn't do at all with the set lists...

"I don't know how intelligence has anything to do with greatness"

Oh boy. How come rock fall on head?

Wyman noted in his memoir Stone Alone that there was a clear dichotomy between the band members who freely indulged in drugs (Richards, Miller, Keys, Taylor, engineer Andy Johns) and those of whom abstained to varying degrees (Wyman, Watts, and Jagger).



I am a Frenchie ,as Mick affectionately called them in the Old Grey Whistle Test in 1977 .

You have to be intelligent to be great?

What if one has great intelligence instead of intelligent greatness?

Intelligence - like "God", just another human invention.

Marhsall's opinion is sound in my opinion!

I don't ever recall Jagger singing the praises of the album and as Keith came up with the riff for "Satisfaction" which is one of the greatest Stones songs and one of the greatest works in the history of popular music (in case you didn't know!), his jealousy wouldn't allow him to sing the praises of one of the greatest - if not the greatest - albums in the history of popular music because it's got Keith's stamp all over it.

Talking of jealousy, he said that was the reason for Keith going "bananas" when he accepted his knighthood. What utter rubbish!

It is simply Mick's personal preference on how he wants albums to sound. The inference is that MJ was not as involved in the EOMS production process as he later wished. To answer the original question, these opinions are not based on jealousy.

I would also believe that Mick is somewhat mystified by the album's popularity and elevation to legendary status.

Of course, if one were to ask Keith, his response would probably be "it is what it is".



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 2010-01-30 19:52 by bassplayer617.

Mick has stated why he's so mystified - it didn't have any hits on it. As in, no number one single. Tumbling Dice is as big as it got. There really aren't any singles on the album. Tumbling Dice is a great song but single wise it's too slow.

That's what Mick has always talked about, has stated over the years.

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straycatuk
I think there are major differences between Mick's involvment in Exile and Dirty Work.
I think most would agree that Exile contains some of his greatest vocal performances.I don't hear someone just reluctantly adding to Keith's contributions .EXILE IS A ROLLING STONES ALBUM.
There is no comparison IMHO.

sc uk

Agree. I also think it was Jagger's best lyrical effort, which he is not given nearly enough credit for.

Great Lyrics and Vocals by Mick, but as well as Keith, I think this is Keith's most vocal album. You hear him everywhere . great background vocals

"Well my heavy throbbers itchin' just to lay a solid rhythm down"

to answer the point of this thread,imo, it wasn't jealousy in the matter of Mick's take on the Exile release. Simply a matter of what he liked and disliked. I can imagine he felt a little detached as he wasn't in the druggie league, but I don't think that is jealousy.

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skipstone
Mick has stated why he's so mystified - it didn't have any hits on it. As in, no number one single. Tumbling Dice is as big as it got. There really aren't any singles on the album. Tumbling Dice is a great song but single wise it's too slow.

That's what Mick has always talked about, has stated over the years.

What do you prefer: Tumbling Dice or Mull of Kintyre? To me Tumbling Dice.

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Marhsall
I wonder if his dislike of the album is because he wasn't as involved in the album, as Keef, and he was always flying to Paris to be w/ Bianaca.

I don't think anyone would really raise a disagrement here , that this is bascially Keith's album, as is "Dirty Work"

So my basic point here is this masterpiece is knocked by Mick due to jealousy.

half the album was worked on or cut before the Stones left England, let alone went anywhere near a basement studio in Villefranche, and a considerable amount of work was done afterwards in LA to make what was recorded worthy of release. The whole 'Exile was cut at Nellcote' thing is a bit of a myth, to be honest.

Keith's album? Not even close. Its a tremendous group effort.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2010-01-31 01:36 by Gazza.

Just saying what Mick has said over the years. I LOVE Tumbling Dice.