The result was a singular amalgam of barbed soul, mutant gospel, tombstone blues and shambolic country, as thrilling in its blend of familiar sources as works by contemporaries Roxy Music and David Bowie were in the use of alien ones. Yet with control ceded to the nonchalant, disaster-prone Keith Richards – the kind of person a crisis would want around in a crisis – they somehow harnessed the power of pandemonium. The Rolling Stones at the recording studio in Villa Nellcote, Villefranche-sur-Mer, France, 1971. Songs like Gimme Shelter, the harrowing Sister Morphine, and Sway, which broods on Nietzche’s notion of circular time, exuded the kind of weary grandeur that would define Exile. Yet amidst all this the Stones produced Let It Bleed (1969) and Sticky Fingers (1971), two devastating albums that wrapped up the era like a parcel bomb addressed to the 1970s.
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Then, as the decade ended in a rush of bleak portents, they played host to the chaos of the Altamont Speedway Free Concert, a poorly organised, massive free concert, which ended with four dead including a murder captured live on film. First, recently sacked member Brian Jones was found dead, drowned in his swimming pool. was both the culmination of a five-year productive frenzy and bleary-eyed comedown from the darkest period in the Stones’ history.īy 1969 the storm clouds of dread building around the group had become a full-blown typhoon. Although initial critical response was lukewarm, it is now considered a contemporary music landmark, the best work from a band who rock critic Simon Frith once referred to as “the poets of lonely leisure.”Įxile on Main St. In May of 1972 the Rolling Stones released their 10th British studio album and first double LP, Exile on Main St.