Stones in Exile

When Exile on Main Street was released in1972, some critics and fans were puzzled. Much of the double LP by the RollingStones, unrivaled as the world’s greatest rock ’n’ roll band once the Beatleshad dissolved, struck them as a bloody mess, but a closer listen uncovered awonderfully unkempt garden of creativity. Legends have grown up around therecording of Exile, spurred as muchby the romance of rock when the stars were really as bright as the musicitself. Nowadays Exile on Main Streetis acclaimed as a classic, one of the great albums of the rock era.

The documentary Stones in Exile is a photo album ofmotion pictures from the era and the album, interspersed with recollectionsfrom the Stones and their entourage plus celebrity commentary. Producer Don Wasthinks the album “altered the vocabulary of record making” and Martin Scorsesesays the music echoed the “sense of being exiledyou can’t go home.”

Right they are,but the home-movie snippets from the session, ragged and disordered as themusic they capture, are the real reason for watching. Director Stephen Kijakkept a tight focus on his loosely gathered material; Stones in Exile is a snappy, informative 60-minute film with nofluff (except perhaps for a couple of the contemporary celebrities).

The album’s titlereferred to the Stones’ money troubles; breaking with their manager anddismayed over falling into a 93% tax bracket in the United Kingdom, the band slipped into a comfortable sojourn inthe south of France.Exile on MainStreet was recorded in the basement of Keith Richards’Mediterranean villa, a dark warren of rooms where the power often failed andthe humidity put the guitars out of tune. The sessions ran for months at anyhour of the day or night in a process of gradual accretion and happy accident.For Richards, the lazy, druggy evolution of the tracks felt ideal. He was athome, literally and metaphorically. But one suspects that Mick Jagger begandrumming his fingers after a while, impatient to find the final chapter. AsRichards wittily put it, “Mick is the rock, I’m the roll.”

After a while,Richards must have been the only participant having a good time. Charlie Wattsfound the session increasingly “stressful.” According to Richards’ lover AnitaPallenberg, “the whole thing disintegrated when we got heavily into drugs”(i.e. heroin). Bill Wyman complained that someone snuck into the villa, stolethe guitars, “and no one noticedthat’s how loose and stupid it was.”

But the decadencein the decaying mansion by the sea resulted in great music, enabled not so muchby drugs as the Stones’ deep absorption into the roots of rock ’n’ roll inblues and country. The careless atmosphere encouraged sparks to fly, and manyof them caught fire. Stones in Exilereflects the heat of those moments.

8:30 p.m. June 21, Times Cinema. Free admission.