It's surprising that the Rolling Stones, a group known for making consistently great singles, who always had a hard time getting the album format right, would create their best one as a double platter. Critics are unanimous that 'Exile on Main Street' is their masterpiece. It came off three very good but all slightly flawed albums; 'Beggar's Banquet', 'Let It Bleed', and 'Sticky Fingers'. The creation was notoriously messy, with Keith Richards falling deeper into heroin addiction. Yet in the face of adversary, they came up with a nasty masterpiece.
I suspect that a lot of the success of the album was due to finally getting out from under the yoke of Allen Klein, who was too busy destroying the Beatle's empire at the time. Klein was the ultimate robber baron of rock, bouncing from act to act, unlocking unpaid royalties but singing the same acts to deals just as band or even worse. Before the Stones, he went through Sam Cooke, the Animals, the Kinks, and the Who. After the Stones, the only act left was the Beatles.
Klein came along just when the band were being set adrift by Andrew Loog Oldman, the band's notoriously young and thuggish manager, who didn't want to stick around for the aftermath of the 1967 drug trials hanging over three members of the group. Klein promised to make every member of the group a millionaire, so they happily signed on the dotted line. They were millionaires, at least on paper. In reality, money was being funneled through Klein, each band member getting a monthly allowance. And Klein's enterprise still completely owns all the music rights before 1970 to this day, a deal worth literally billions.
There is a famous story that Paul McCartney called Mick Jagger up and asked about Klein when the shark was circling Apple Corp. Jagger spilled the beans, spending hours detailing the legal but unethical deals and the loss of artistic property. Paul asked Mick to show up to the next band meeting, yet when there, Jagger barely said two sentences and excused himself. The feud between Paul and Mick lasts to this day over the incident.
Even more famous is the tale of the last single owed to Klein by the Rolling Stones. They didn't want to give him anything more, but he insisted. So they recorded 'Cocksucker Blues', backed by 'Sweet Virginia', and sent the master tape. Needless to say, something that obscene wasn't released, although it is a favorite on the bootleg market. After that incident, the band were free to steer their own course, signing to Atlantic Records and setting up their own subsidiary label.
But things inside the band were not good, particularly between Mick and Keith. Getting Mick Taylor as a replacement for the fading, soon to be dead Brian Jones was a masterstroke. The band now had a legitimate lead guitarist, from the same school as Eric Clapton and Peter Green, to go along with Keith Richard's world class rhythm parts. But a rumored affair between Anita Pallenberg and Jagger on the set (supposedly having sex in front of the cameras!) of 'Performance' sent Richards into a emotional tail spin and into the arms of sister morphine.
Pallenberg was a controversial figure. Some say she was responsible for destroying Brian Jones during their two year affair, leaving him a drug-addled emotional wreck. Certain heroin was awash in the Stones camp, with Marianne Faithful, Jagger's long-time girlfriend, deeply addicted, even trying to commit suicide in Australia with Mick was filming 'Ned Kelly'. And Anita brought in Satanists such as Kenneth Anger, whose film 'Lucifer Rising' originally had appearances by Faithful and Pallenberg as well as a moog soundtrack by Jagger.
Add to that tax problems from the way Klein distributed the final payments of his deal, and the band famously had to leave England or lose 95% of their profits. If you had the opportunity to watch the original version of 'Live at the Marquee' from 1971, not the re-edited one released a few years ago, you would have witnessed four Stones ready to play at the assigned time, the crowd anxious, the group bored, Jagger increasing angry. Richards finally appears three hours late, not having bathed in days, barely able to stand. After a few songs, he's fine, but they were treading a fine line back then. The very next day, they packed his bags and he moved, with Anita, to the south of France.
Ironically, Keith and Anita moved to the very heart of the European smack trade. Things were notoriously decadent at the villa they rented. Supposedly, the band recorded the entire album in the labyrinth of wine cellars below, but in fact many of the songs were outtakes and leftovers from the last three albums. There had been quite a few sessions at Stargroves, Jagger's dilapidated mansion that was also used by the Who and Led Zeppelin as a studio.
Some of the songs had actually been played live by the Stones during the opening stages of their 1969 tour, such as 'Loving Cup.' Still, a lot of recording took place in France whenever they could entice a smacked out Richards out of bed. Once on his hind legs, he was good for twelve hours. The band had long given up trying for perfection, instead quickly running through many songs, looking for a good band vibe. Once they captured the groove, time to move to the next one. It worked great for a band so deliberately sloppy as the Rolling Stones.
There was a big single off the album, 'Tumbling Dice', but just one. The rest of the double platter consists of one deep cut after another. Even the one true throwaway track (and there's always at least one on a Stones album), 'I Just Want to See His Face', worked in the sequencing, a jazzy groove in the middle of all the hard rock. There are a surprising number of effective ballads like 'Shine A Light' and 'Torn & Frayed'. Like the Beatles' 'White Album', every time you back to listen to it, you hear something new and different.
Mick Taylor, around for more of the overdubbing, gets some real highlights on this one. His slide work on 'All Down the Line', another single that could have come from the album, is impeccable. He also gets to tear it up on 'Ventilator Blues' and particularly on 'Stop Breaking Down'. Never has a guitar player sounded so good on a Stones album.
Mick Jagger was doing most of the heavy lifting, but he mixed his vocals very low, creating the famous murky sound that the album is so famous for. Who knows if they even bothered with separation during the recording sessions. The point was to all be in the same room, creating the same noise at the same time, bouncing off each other. They were trying to capture that elusive something that happens when a great band clicks, and they do on every cut, an impressive feat.
Unfortunately, they lost it completely on the next album, 'Goat's Head Soup'. Recorded in Jamaica, everyone seemed too stoned to write really good songs. Richards barely shows up on that album and the next, 'It's Only Rock 'n Roll', where Ron Wood, who could sound eerily similar, subbed for him on many of the songs. It was his guitar ghosting on that album when Mick Taylor, addicted to thousands of dollars of coke a day, left the group in 1975. He was afraid that he was following in the footsteps of Brian Jones, the second guitarist to die in that band.
Richards finally got off the smack and recovered somewhat, becoming the familiar, stereotypical rock 'n roll wreck we all know and love today. By then, Jagger and he weren't really friends any more, just business partners. But the Stones keep rolling, plenty of good music ahead of them. Ron Wood, always criminally under-rated, proved to be the perfect player for that band. And Charlie Watts remains perhaps the greatest straight rock drummer in history.
Things weren't so sunny for the ex-Beatles at this point. George Harrison had come out of the gate hard with 'All Things Must Pass', two albums of great, epic songs with a third album of throwaway trash. Many of the songs were left over from the Beatles, aborted attempts at getting more material on albums dominated by Lennon and McCartney, In fact, one very popular bootleg from the 'Let It Be' sessions has Paul trying to convince John to rehearse "All Things Must Pass'. John was completely uninterested.
What is most interesting about the album is how nothing else that George did for the next thirty years of his life sounded at all like that album. He went from seemingly a prolific songwriter to spanning years between projects. As soon as the Beatles money was available in 1977, he more-or-less gave up on his musical career, instead having a good streak as a movie producer, re-invigorating the British film industry. Harrison had a great career, just not necessary in music. He just didn't seem very interested.
Both George and John had jumped at the chance to do completely experimental, some would say unlistenable, work for the Apple Records subsidiary Zapple. George's 'Electronic Music' is even more disjointed and pointless than 'Wonderwall'. One has to assume that the label was named in honor of Frank Zappa, making what happened between Frank and John later seem more curious. Lennon's work for the label was even more horrendous, three albums without a speck of music; 'Two Virgins', 'Life With the Lions' and 'The Wedding Album'. The cover of 'Two Virgins', with the new inseparable couple doing a full frontal, about says it all.
Without Beatle income, Lennon did settle down to produce the two albums on which his solo career's reputation stands; 'Plastic One Band' and 'Imagine'. The first album is raw, stripped down, and alternately tender and tough. It works because of the uncompromising honesty. The second, Lennon's only big seller, ironically sounds more like a McCartney album, even though in 'How Do You Sleep', John takes cheap jabs at his old writing partner. He would soon regret that move.
'Some Time in New York City' is perhaps the most effective argument against any artist ever releasing a double album. It is that bad, whether it is the studio material, all political diatribe with a time span of six months or less, or the live stuff, mostly noisy Yoko yodeling. Lennon moved to NYC and immersed himself in the radical left, then typically felt compelled to tell the world. Also typical, his heart was in the right place while his head was up his ass. For all intents nd purposes, it was so bad that his solo career was over, despite appearances on American television and a few under-rehearsed live appearances.
The best thing about the album, in retrospect, is the feud that developed between Zappa and Lennon over a live tape. John suddenly showed up in 1971 at the Fillmore East where the Mothers were playing, asking to sit in. Since Zappa recorded virtually everything, an arrangement was made to share the tape between the two artists. Instead, producer (and convicted murderer) Phil Spector absconded with the master, releasing a heavily edited version on the second disc of 'Some Time in New York City'. It took Zappa twenty years to get the tape back, but he had the last laugh. His version of the night was titled, 'A Small Eternity with Yoko Ono'. Ouch!
More curious things were happening in the McCartney camp during this time. Always the most commercially astute of the band, the most tuneful member found himself having the hardest time establishing himself as a solo artist. Lennon had announced his departure from the group during the 'Abbey Road' sessions but kept it a secret. McCartney, furious at Klein's interference and a scheduling conflict with his solo album - the last member of the band to release a solo record, by the way - told the world that he was out of the Fab Four. Everyone turned against him, it seemed. It took decades to get the critics back on his side.
It wasn't that Paul didn't do decent work during this period. His first album, 'McCartney', while almost sounding like a series of demo recording, has a home spun charm and a couple of great songs. 'Ram', called 'suburban muzak' by Rolling Stone magazine at the time, is now considered perhaps his greatest accomplishment, an attempt at creating a musical tapestry to rival 'Pet Sounds' by the Beach Boys, Paul's favorite album of all time. The critics trashed him in a classic damned-if-he-does-damned-if-he-don't situation. In retrospect, it looks like he lost his self confidence for a couple of years.
McCartney still did the sensible thing, like he always did, forming an actual band, not surrounding himself with session players like the rest of the ex-Fabs. Playing little clubs and small universities unannounced, traveling around Europe in a bus, Wings was trying to become a band out of public scrutiny. The first album, 'Wild Life', was recorded cheaply and quickly, with a relaxed and spontaneous atmosphere not usually heard on McCartney records. It was panned on release, not being a bad record at all, just a little undercooked.
There were also a couple of strange flop singles at the same time. I can't help but wonder if 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' was a reaction to good friend Donovan releasing his second children's album at the same time. 'Give Ireland Back tot he Irish' was as political as anything by Lennon, and just as bad. Since both George and John had done double platters, it was time for Paul to do the same, just as he had to have his wife in the band, too.
It is unthinkable by today's standards that a record company would refuse to release a McCartney album, but they sent the double vinyl version of 'Red Rose Speedway' back, telling Macca to cut it to a single disc. The twin version was legendary, constantly booted, never in really good quality. Paul did cut it down to an unsatisfactory single, but no one was happy. I can't help but think that the defection of two members of Wings right after had to do with all their best moments being removed.
McCartney had the last laugh, since he was at the same time about to mount a stunning comeback. 'My Love', the single from the project, was his first Beatle-size hit. 'Live and Let Die', recorded at the same time, was another monster hit, nominated for an Oscar, arguably the best James Bond theme song. With 'Band on the Run', his next album, it was off to the races, becoming the Guinness Book of World record holder in just about any category concerning music.Hhe also managed to produce, write and play on two albums with his brother Mike McGear a the same time as well as produce and play most of the instruments on a Denny Laine solo album tribute to Buddy Holly.
By the 1976 mammoth American tour of stadiums, it was clear who the dominating ex-member of the Beatles was going to be. The critics continued to pan him while the public continued to love him. Ironically, by becoming exactly the cold, calculating and commercial artist that he had always been accused of but wasn't early in his career, he flourished. But gone were the days of quickly dashed off albums. Too bad; today, they sound under-rated.
The greatest irony of this very sardonic tale is that this year, forty five years after the fact, the double LP version of 'Red Rose Speedway' is finally available on vinyl. Part of the McCartney Archive collection, that album, with a ton of both studio and live unreleased material, gets the most deluxe treatment of any of the solo Macca records. There is even a 5.1 surround mix, the first ever by Paul of any of his songs. There must be a special resonance for McCartney to lavish so much attention on a project that will probably just about break even.
Paul had to good fortune to out-live his critics as well as most of the rest of the Beatles. He holds the most venerated spot in music today, a virtual giant, legendary in all aspects. Still touring, he released yet another new album this year. Finally content with his legacy, he has let the public in to his more intimate music, especially on the superlative four CD 'Pure McCartney' set, highlighting his unparalleled melodic gift. He is a world treasure, and when he is gone, it truly will be the end of an era.
And Ringo, to the best of my knowledge, never did a double album.
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