Exile on Main Street

Exile on Main St. is an album by the English rock band The Rolling Stones. It was released as a double LP in 1972 and drew on influences from rock & roll, blues, country and soul. Initially “Exile” was greeted with lukewarm reviews, but is now widely considered among the band’s finest work and one of the defining masterpieces of the rock era. In 2003, the album was ranked number 7, the band’s highest position, on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

Exile on Main St. is an album composed of outtakes and tracks written and recorded over the period of four years, from 1968 to 1972. On those earlier songs, singer Mick Jagger said in 2003, “…After we got out of our contract with Allen Klein, we didn’t want to give him ,” as they were forced to do with the songs “Brown Sugar” and “Wild Horses” from Sticky Fingers. Most were recorded between 1969 and 1971 at Olympic Studios and Richard’s Stargroves country house in England during sessions for Sticky Fingers.

By the spring of 1971, the Stones chose to abandon their home country of England to avoid the amount of taxes the British government expected the band to pay. The Stones would have to leave by 5 April, or the government would have seized their assets. After much consideration, the Stones chose to settle in France at Villefranche-sur-Mer, near Nice, where guitarist Keith Richards had rented Nellcôte, the “Gestapo headquarters during the Second World War,” according to Richards, complete with swastikas on the floor vents. It was here that the Stones would begin work constructing their next album.