How the Rolling Stones overcame heroin addiction to make ‘Exile’
nypost.com“Exile on Main St.” album.In fact, the drug-fueled debauchery had Keith Richards — in the throes of a heroin addiction — going MIA within his French villa where the Stones recorded the sprawling double LP, which was released 50 years ago on May 12, 1972. “Keith had his son Marlon with him, and he would say, ‘Oh, I’m gonna go put Marlon to bed.’ And then you wouldn’t see him for a day and a half,” said Anthony DeCurtis, who wrote the liner notes for the 2010 reissue of “Exile on Main St.” as well as the 2021 book “The Rolling Stones: Unzipped.” “And I think that that was beginning to create issues in the band.
One of your main songwriters and, in many ways, the musical driving force of the band is somebody who’s having drug problems.
And I think that comes up in the lyrics.”But the Stones overcame Richards’ addiction and other troubles — while taking their notorious excesses to new levels in the South of France — to make what is widely considered the best album of their legendary catalog.“In many ways, ‘Exile on Main St.’ is for the Rolling Stones what the ‘White Album’ was for The Beatles,” said John Covach, professor of music at University of Rochester, whose course “The Music of the Rolling Stones: 1962-1974” is available online at Coursera. “It’s a double album, it’s got tons of material, it ranges across a number of different styles … The album is considered sort of the classic Stones record.”“This is a pretty pure creative statement,” added Alan Light, co-host of SiriusXM Volume’s “Debatable.” “It’s really much more of a deeper fan’s kind of record.”Even for them, the Rolling Stones were feeling particularly rebellious when they fled their native England to avoid hefty taxes in 1971 while making “Exile” in the.
Read more on nypost.com
