Archives for March 2021

Certain Songs #2072: The Rolling Stones – “Let It Loose”

March 31, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Exile on Main St.
Year: 1972

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A big rambling gospel-soul ballad, “Let It Loose” is quite possibly the most underrated song on Exile on Main St., yet another example of the unholy alliance of the basement-recorded basic tracks recorded in France and vocal (and other) overdubs recorded later in Los Angeles.

One of the more striking things on “Let It Loose” — and the first instrument you hear — is a guitar that doesn’t really sound like a guitar, even though it attacks like a guitar. That’s Keith, of course, running his guitar through a Leslie speaker, giving it a swirling, off-kilter feeling that goes with the lyrics.

Certain Songs #2071: The Rolling Stones – “I Just Want to See His Face”

March 30, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Exile on Main St.
Year: 1972

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A track like “I Just Want To See His Face” is why double albums were created in the first place.

While it’s a song that is too weird and off-brand to have ever made the cut on a single album, it’s perfect for the second disc of a double album, where some of the weirder songs tended to live back when double albums were originally a thing.

Certain Songs #2070: The Rolling Stones – “Happy”

March 29, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Exile on Main St.
Year: 1972

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Maybe it was a coincidence, but I love how the first disc of Exile on Main St. ended with Mick’s greatest love song and the second disc picks right up with Keith’s greatest love song.

And, of course, “Happy” isn’t just Keith’s greatest love song, but Keith’s greatest Keith song, to boot. And on some days, maybe my very favorite Rolling Stones song, a song that is exactly as advertised: an unrepentant burst of ecstasy in song form. “Happy” was written just after Keith found out that Anita Pallenberg was pregnant with their second child, Angela, and he was so anxious to get it out that none of the other Stones even play on it.

Certain Songs #2069: The Rolling Stones – “Loving Cup”

March 27, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Exile on Main St.
Year: 1972

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“Loving Cup” is one of the oldest songs on Exile On Main St. — they played it at the Hyde Park show in 1969 — having first been attempted during the Let It Bleed sessions, and then ignored until they figured out how to make it work in Keith’s basement.

And that’s just as well, because while “Torn and Frayed” is the song that got me into side two of Exile on Main St., I think I love “Loving Cup” even more, and am here to say that it’s easily Mick Jagger’s greatest love song.

Certain Songs #2068: The Rolling Stones – “Torn and Frayed”

March 26, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Exile on Main St.
Year: 1972

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If side two of Exile on Main St. is the key to understanding the full album, then “Torn and Frayed” is the key to understanding side two of Exile on Main St.

Or so it seems to me. Because that’s basically what happened with me: at some point after listening to Exile on Main St. a few times, I fell deeply in love with “Torn and Frayed,” and suddenly the rest of the side, and subsequently the rest of the album, fell right into place. And now, I consider it the best of all of their country songs, including “Sweet Virginia” and even “Dead Flowers.”

Certain Songs #2067: The Rolling Stones – “Sweet Virginia”

March 25, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Exile on Main St.
Year: 1972

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I still remember listening to Exile on Main St. the first few times I bought it back in 1981 and being puzzled by side two, which didn’t feature any out-and-out rock and roll songs. It was one of those tracklisting decisions that seemed risky but, of course, turned out to be an absolute stroke, as its now impossible to imagine it sequenced any other way.

Certain Songs #2066: The Rolling Stones – “Tumbling Dice”

March 24, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Exile on Main St.
Year: 1972

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One of the things about discovering Exile on Main St. back in the day — and I’m guessing that it’s still kinda true today — is that unlike Sticky Fingers and Let It Bleed, it doesn’t have a lot of songs that are either live standards or radio standards. Only two, really: “Happy” and “Tumbling Dice.”This means that you can treat Exile more as a unified thing, not a record that’s got a bunch of songs you might be already very familiar with.

And, of course, “Tumbling Dice” was so ubiquitous when I was a kid, it took a bit for me to view it as part of Exile as opposed to its own thing. But, of course, I eventually did, as it’s such a key to the record.

Certain Songs #2065: The Rolling Stones – “Rip This Joint”

March 23, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Exile on Main St.
Year: 1972

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Every single source I’ve read about “Rip This Joint” would like you to know that it’s the fastest song the Rolling Stones have ever recorded, a barn-burning of scorcher that leaps out of the speakers after the fade of “Rocks Off.” And after three straight records where the second song on the record was always slower than the first song, it means something that they upped the tempo for the second song on Exile on Main St.

Certain Songs #2064: The Rolling Stones – “Rocks Off”

March 22, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Exile on Main St.
Year: 1972

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OK, here we go. Exile on Main St., arguably — and I’m going to spend the next several days making that argument — the Rolling Stones’ finest hour. Famously recorded in the basement of Keith Richards waterfront villa in the South of France — the evil Allen Klein’s machinations having forced them to live outside of the U.K. for a year in order to get their tax shit together — and finished in Sunset Sound Studios in Hollywood, Exile on Main St. is the perfect combination of Keith Richards’ natural tendency towards chaos and Mick Jagger’s natural need for order.

And it begins at the beginning, with the least-known album opener of the Stones classic period — no shame when the other three were “Sympathy For The Devil,” “Gimme Shelter” and “Brown Sugar” — the table-setting “Rocks Off,” which almost instantly sucks you deep into, well, the morass of sound that typifies nearly every track on the record.

Certain Songs #2063: The Rolling Stones – “Moonlight Mile”

March 19, 2021 by Jim Connelly

Album: Sticky Fingers
Year: 1971

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Like “Brown Sugar” and “Sway,” “Moonlight Mile” was written completely by Mick Jagger, but unlike those two, Keith Richards is nowhere to be found on the recording, which I think is the first time that had ever happened.

In any event, “Moonlight Mile” is an utterly sweeping and affecting “life on the road” song, which is one of the most crowded genres, to be sure, but it totally transcends just about every other song ever recorded in that genre.