Exile on Main St Read online

  I held the reward in my hands, looked over the artwork, mesmerized by the strange world it promised within. What seemed to be a chopped-up collage of circus freaks was on one side, and on the other were film frames with the faces of the Rolling Stones themselves—a none-too-subtle mirror-image juxtaposition. After all, the Stones were freakish outsiders—as long-haired threats to decency in their nascent period; as young Brits interpreting American musical idioms; then off to France as tax exiles, weary from the pressure of the English authorities. Inside, on the gatefold and individual album sleeves within, the collage continued: still shots containing 1950s-era scenes of strange Americana—dim jukeboxes, saluting veterans, more film clips of the band eating, yawning, holding up violent tabloid headlines—juxtaposed with shots of cryptic bits of lyrics, lines like "I gave you the diamonds / you gave me disease," "got to scrape the shit right off your shoes," and "I don't want to talk about Jesus / I just want to see his face."

  If Exile on Main St. set the bar for what rock & roll should sound like, the album packaging established a standard of what it might look like: raw, enigmatic, spooky, black and white images of the band in various settings. Here is a prime example of the tragic downsizing of artwork that became inevitable as CDs edged out twelve-inch vinyl albums. Much of the concept and the photography itself comes from Robert Frank, a Swiss-born emigre to the United States whose groundbreaking collection The Americans got right at the broken heart of America and its people—in urban and rural settings both.

  Look a little closer: The "collage" on the front of Exile is actually a single shot, apparently from the wall of a New York tattoo parlour, a picture taken by Frank. The photos—some of which are featured in the Exile on Main St. layout—were taken on a cross-country drive in 1955 and '56 in a used car, funded in part by a Guggenheim Fellowship. The resulting book was highly influential in both form and content. If not the first, The Americans was one of the earliest examples of a photography book that dedicated a whole page to each photograph, with blank pages alternating opposite. The pictures are ostensibly taken in a verité style, but the results are as subjective as the most affecting works of art, particularly poetry. Frank has said, "When people look at my pictures, I want them to feel the way they do when they want to reread a line of a poem." As Jack Kerouac wrote in his introduction to the published collection, "Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the tragic poets of the world."

  Kerouac also writes in his introduction, that the pictures remind him of "that crazy feeling in America when the sun is hot on the streets and the music comes out of a jukebox or a funeral," which dovetails nicely with Exile on Main St. Frank met Kerouac at a party in New York soon after the French publication of The Americans (an American publisher could not be secured until a year after the French publication). In photographs such as "Rooming House—Bunker Hill, Los Angeles," Frank was providing a photographic parallel to the works not just of the Beats, but echoing back to Beat predecessors like author John Fante (Wait Until Spring, Bandint).

  It is perfect that the highly impressionistic author and poet Kerouac was chosen to pen the introduction to Frank's groundbreaking work, just as it seems so fitting that the Stones chose Frank to provide the album's artwork. Frank's is a visual—and the Stones' an aural and musical—travelogue across America and another "sad little poem right out of America." Frank's photos are deeply moving, searing their image onto the mind's retina of the viewer, particularly for an introspective suburban adolescent seeing them for the first time, freshly exposed to that "other" America that it sometimes takes an outsider's eye to see. Later, books by Diane Arbus and works by Frank's mentor Walker Evans would find their way into my hands, but I was a decidedly unworldly Long Island teenager hungry to discover what Greil Marcus later called "that old, weird, America" in his book, Invisible Republic: Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes.

  Frank, another obvious exile, became known for his ability to virtually disappear, to blend in with his surroundings, capturing with his small camera the faces, the tiny dramas, and the surface Americana that he observed. Small things taken for granted in America fascinated him: signs, cars, clothes, attitudes. Of one incident with a sheriff who runs him out of town, he says, "We think that only happens in films."

  The pictures in The Americans tend to concentrate on small spaces. A shot of an empty bar in Las Vegas where a boy in a loud printed shirt stares into the glow of a jukebox—which the Stones used in the Exile artwork—looks claustrophobic, as the daylight tries to seep in through the porthole windows of the doors while the bar seems always nocturnal by nature, fighting against the outside world. Almost everything is dimly lit, and everything is in black and white. Even the exterior shots, the facades of brick buildings, have that Edward Hopper-like melancholy light. There is an insular feeling to the book as whole, a hemmed-in quality that flies in the face of the romantic vision of an America "from sea to shining sea," with wind-swept plains of "amber waves of grain." Instead we find these small places, a gothic America of funerals, crosses, stormy moor-like hills; with characters reminiscent of "Eleanor Rigby" grasping at fleeting moments of simple happiness and human interaction, as the clock of the human condition ticks on; "lives of quiet desperation," with only photographs offering some measure of immortality to these anonymous souls. As Kerouac notes in his introduction "you end up finally not knowing any more whether a jukebox is sadder than a coffin."

  In Domique Tarle's indispensable book Exile — another collection of stunning photographs, taken by Tarle while present at the Exile on Main St. sessions— Rolling Stones Records honcho Marshall Chess, son of Chess Records founder Leonard Chess, recalls: "Over the years with the Stones we'd allow in writers and photographers—the right ones, those who would fit in with our scene. People like Robert Frank, who Mick turned me on to after seeing his book The Americans. Robert became known as the father of realism because he'd become so invisible that people would do anything in front of him. We chose him to do the Exile cover, which he shot in Super 8."

  John Van Hamersveld was gracious in sharing with me of some of the logistics in putting the Exile on Main St. package together. John had been a graphic artist within the rock & roll counter-culture that blossomed in Los Angeles in the mid-1960s. After designing concert posters for Pinnacle Promoters and movie posters such as his classic for the surf film Endless Summer, he moved into album cover art, designing the Magical Mystery Tour LP for the Beatles. In 1970 he created the Johnny Deco (a.k.a. "Johnny Face") poster, with a comic book-like smiling guy with prominent lips, which he feels influenced the famous Stones' "Tongue-and-Lip" logo, designed by John Pasche and Jagger, which debuted in the artwork for Sticky Fingers (Jagger had been photographed wearing a "Johnny Face" T-shirt earlier).

  In 1971, beginning to focus more on building on his success in designing album covers, Van Hamersveld met with photographer and art director for United Artists Records, Norman Seeff, a "beatnik-like artist from Johannesburg, South Africa." Seeff had a deal with the Stones for putting together a songbook. The two got the call to come and meet with Jagger and Richards at the Bel Air villa where the Stones were staying in Los Angeles while they put the finishing touches on Exile at Sunset Sound. As Van Hamersveld wrote in his "Imaging the Stones" postscript to Tarle's book:

  As I was there sitting next to Jagger, Robert Frank walks into the room with a small super eight millimetre Canon camera. I knew of him from a meeting in New York from 1968. After I left he takes Jagger to downtown Los Angeles to film him on the real seedy parts of Main Street.

  Most fans know that the Rolling Stones romanticized 1950s America, much in the same way people like me respond to the Stones heyday of the '60s and 70s, and Exile in particular. Van Hamersveld told me that the band saw themselves as carrying the torch of not just the blues artists they emulated, but of all sorts of artists, including those associated with the Beats:
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  You must understand now, Robert Frank was 50 years old in 1972, there standing in the living room of a Bel Air, Mediterranean villa, lush, and old world, they, the Stones image, of wealth, success, as pop culture post dandies, post hippies, now bluesmen looking back into the '50s, (Marshall) Chess and his connections. Frank the photographer, holding the 8mm camera, under his arm, is there now an old hipster from the '50s, as an artist from NYC. At the villa were Keith and Mick, as they outwardly, loved Frank for his connections to the beat attitude, and smoking pot then with Ginsberg. They were the Beat! We seated there on the couches, we were in our thirties, the new hip, he as a father figure . ..

  Jagger knew how to sell it all. He has always been a student of American pop culture in general, with a keen awareness of cutting edge artists. As with Elvis Presley before them, the Stones had already shown a well-developed ability to co-opt and make marketable the underground and raw street culture. Unlike Presley, however, who was down in the trenches, born poor in the South, Jagger was an effete upper-middle-class kid from the London suburbs, who had spent his adolescence listening to blues, soul, country, and rock & roll records. Somehow, with his earthier guitar-slinging foil, Richards, as a catalyst, he has been able to capture the essence of American roots musical forms, so much so that he transitioned quickly from a fan mimicking his idols to a genuinely adroit and influential soul singer himself. Forget the "blue-eyed" qualifier; Jagger is a great soul and blues singer in his own right. Take, for example, his performances on "Let It Loose" as a gospel-informed soul ballad, or "All Down the Line" as a flip side, a rave-up where Jagger's all-out performance might compete with similar up-tempo numbers from Otis Redding, Don Covay, or any of his Southern soul influences.

  Presley, an early hero of Jagger's, was able to pull off similar feats a decade or so prior, integrating and owning his influences and thus producing something new. Yet while Presley grew up surrounded by African-American culture, Jagger had to make due with hard-to-find, second-hand sources. But like Presley, James Brown, and others, Jagger convincingly concocted a beguiling mix of simmering macho bluesman sexuality cut with a dose of androgyny—a heavier dose for Jagger than Elvis, but perhaps not as much as, say, Little Richard, another key influence on the Rolling Stones.

  Is it any wonder, then, that Jagger not only understood how to sell the band musically but visually as well? He had taken the baton from ex-manager Andrew Loog Oldham, who had helped craft the Stones' early image as the Beatles' dark-horse cousins. Keith recalls being attracted to Oldham in part because, working under Brian Epstein, "he got together those very moody pictures of (the Beatles) that sold them in the first place." In taking up the reins from Oldham, Jagger was able to finesse the one-trick-pony, bad-boy image into a somewhat more mature and multi-layered "bad young jet-setting men" image—decadent rock & roll aristocrats. You know, the kind of thing he sang about on their later return to roots, "Some Girls":

  Well now we're respected in society

  We don't worry about the things that we used to be

  We're talking heroin with the President

  Yes there's a problem, sir, but it can't be bent

  "Royalty's having a baby," was a refrain often heard from a sneering Keith Richards down in Nellcote, while Mick was off with Bianca during her pregnancy, concurrent with the recording of Exile on Main St.

  The Stones could still transmit the dirty feel of the underground outsider, even as they were becoming the biggest band in the world. They weren't Iggy and the Stooges or Lou and the Velvets; they had just outlasted the Beatles and had to prove that they were not overstaying their welcome. But the punters were dying for someone to carry it all on, to offer even a shred of meaning to all the death and darkness that accompanied the end of the 1960s and the cynical blankness that was staring down at them from the barrel of the 1970s. Van Hamersveld recalled Jagger's reaction to their layout for the cover for the record when he brought it by Sunset Sound to show to the band:

  "They'll love it!" I clearly understand what he means: "They'll" is a clear understanding of what the artist knows about his audience. This is pop visual language, the assumption, and the reflection of the sideshow of the inner business environment. The Crazy Business on display!

  Frank took the Super 8 film of the band slumming down on Main Street in seedy downtown Los Angeles, the city's version of Manhattan's Bowery. Jagger told Robert Greenfield of Rolling Stone while they were still out in LA, Main Street is "real inner city," where "you can see pimps, knives flashing." As Frank might have done decades prior, Jagger took Frank and his movie camera and went out seeking a certain side of America: the dangerous authentic street down on Main St. Remember: Jagger told Marshall Chess that Frank was "the father of realism." The Stones were after something: an early 1970s Zeitgeist.

  So there, on the back cover and inner sleeves, is the band in various shots: walking down the street, under porn arcade awnings, laughing. Accompanying these shots are scrawled bits of lyrics, lines that don't even necessarily correspond with the recorded versions, and more band shots, in the repetition of the Super 8 film frames, adding an even more surreal tint, a druggy trail. Central to the back cover is a shot of Jagger, yawning. Is it weariness? Ennui? It enhances the hangover-sleepy languor of the record. But we also see "buddies" Jagger and Richards practically arm-in-arm at the microphone in the studio, warm light shining from underneath, a bottle of Old Grand Dad whiskey clutched in Jagger's hands, a can of beer in Keith's.

  If there is one photograph that was singularly responsible for my rock fantasies, that made me know from an early age what I wanted to do and be, eventually leading to my tenure in a band, it was that one. Just as in all the live shots of the two of them in the classic pose, both singing at the same microphone, there seems to be a relaxed camaraderie between the two musicians. They look to be having a great time singing together. I wanted nothing more than such simple pleasure. It seems many rock & rollers feel the same. At times it seems like Aerosmith has modelled their whole image on such photos of Jagger and Richards. And in my conversation with the producer Paul Q. Kolderie, he brought the photo up as well, pointing out that the way they looked distinguished the Stones from their rootsy rock & roll peers, particularly from American bands. "The Stones seemed to be cooking up their own English brew with it all and it had to do more with the way they looked: the shaggy hair," explained Kolderie, recalling his perspective as an impressionable fourteen-year-old. "And that picture on Exile with Mick and Keith singing backup vocals—which is a picture taken in L.A., right?— with the Old Grand Dad, and you think okay, this is the life for me, pal. That and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas ruined my life because they made it seem like the coolest thing you could do was just get as wasted as possible." While the Stones were subscribing to a certain tradition, a variation on that trekked by Frank and Kerouac and the like, the band was also promoting their own rock & roll myth: A band of young friends in their prime, living in a big mansion on the beach in France, recording all night in the basement, chicks, drugs, and booze flowing, having a blast every night. Well, perhaps the only part mythological was the last bit. We all know about the love/hate relationship between the Glimmer Twins. When you're an adolescent, though—as I was when I was having these dreams of Exile rock grandeur— all you want to do is spend time with your friends. How could spending every night with them jamming be anything but a blast?

  Well, all it took for me, when I finally got to taste a little bit of the rock & roll fantasy, was maybe one year recording and touring before that romantic notion of "a good time, all the time," as character Viv Savage so eloquently put it in This is Spinal Tap, was thoroughly debunked. Six or twelve weeks together, and your buddies and musical soulmates become your annoying brothers, or your college dorm roommate and his girlfriend in for the weekend: you just can't seem to escape them. And according to all accounts of the making of Exile on Main St., that huge villa did start to feel awfully claustrophobic and dysfunctional at times, particula
rly near the end of the sessions.

  And no one, no one, can look as "elegantly wasted" as Keith Richards, captured by the right photographer. The cheesy snapshot photos that exist from my time on the road show mostly bloated guys with eyes red not just from booze, but also bad camera flashes, sitting in front of slimy deli trays and German phallic graffiti in closets-cum-dressing rooms; not how I had imagined it.

  After Frank clipped up frames from his Super 8 film, Van Hamersveld was in charge of putting all the pieces together. As he told me, "It seemed as if I had become the artisan arranger, a design mystic that had dropped by to give my blessing. This was the making, in a classic printmaking style of an artful image for graphic history, as myth. All the parts and pieces made sense." The postcards that came in the original album and subsequent CD re-releases were from an ill-fated photo session with Seeff (Keith was late and stumbled in the shots) that was considered for the album cover. "Make postcards," is what an unapologetic Richards told Van Hamersveld and Seeff, making an accordion-like movement with his hands. Some pens were rounded up from the Flax art store and Jagger scrawled out the incomplete credits—mistakes, oversights, and all.

  The record changed from its previous working title of Tropical Disease to its now famous name. "We were exiles and there was a certain spirit on that album—you can throw us out but you can't get rid of us," recalled Keith Richards in a 2002 interview for Mojo Magazine. "Who would understand if we called it Exile on the Rue Des Bosches ? And since 1964 or '5 we'd been spending nine months of every year in America, and a lot of the songs, the things that come out, are things you've thought about on the road. It's all American music basically—or if you want to take it all the way, it's all African." Perhaps it is obvious to point out, but Frank himself was essentially an exile on Main St., USA during his cross-country trip. The Stones clearly identified with this, though they could never be flies on the wall, not with all their fame. We can see this on display in the documentary film that Frank made of the subsequent American tour in support of Exile. The musicians stick out like exotic gypsies or extraterrestrials in hotel lobbies, Southern juke joints, and the like.