I came to terms with Exile when asked by a friend what I thought the five all-time greatest Stones songs were - songs that will still be alive 50 years from now. My response was fairly quick - Satisfaction, Gimme Shelter, You Can't Always Get What You Want, Wild Horses, and Sympathy for the Devil. Just my opinion. But I realized immediately none were from Exile, which I think is the Stones' all-time best album. Yes, Tumbling Dice and Happy are up there, and some cuts on Exile are, IMHO, absolutely awesome (viz their cover of Robert Johnson's Stop Breaking Down) - but clearly Exile is not not rich in standout hits. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Like few other albums, Exile is a world, a place I immerse myself in - a distillation of American blues and gospel and country and rock - a funky smokefilled bar or afternoon fishfry or steamy bordello, with beer and bourbon, pianos and slide guitars and hard-partying working people letting it loose, shining a light, shaking their hips, boogieing, scraping the sh*t off their shoes, rocking the joint all down the line. Exile critics cite no outstanding hit songs and too much "fill" and murky production/garage band sound. But that's the point, the genius of the album. The album IS the song - I love that murky sound - I listen more to my scratchy old vinyl than to the new cleaned up CD I just bought from Amazon - Exile is where the Stones perhaps peaked, where, catalyzed by Taylor's sinuous guitar playing off Richard's rythmn funk and Hopkin's/Stewart's honky tonk piano, they finally came home to the country blues where they began, when Brian Jones, God rest his soul, alias Elmo Lewis, played slide guitar in a London bar and 18 year-old Keith actually thought he was seeing Elmore James - smokey, funky, rockin, wailing, torn and frayed poor white trash and juke joint black, the soundtrack of Saturday night, til my late night friends leave me in the cold grey dawn. Hang out in Exile. Accept it on its own terms. It will be, I firmly believe, the Stones ALBUM (not song) that will stand the test of time. Pass me the bourbon - quick- the band's coming on for another set and the night's still young.

I like the Stones and I love raw blues and R&B but I somehow missed out on "Exile on Main Street". So, enthused by such great reviews, I was expecting something special... an earthy, pseudo-live album that, despite its origins in drug addled chaos, would grab my attention and be worth the effort of repeat listening while, on the way, delivering up some classic gems. Well I tried, but what I kept getting was a voice saying "look, matey, you could spend hours trying to get into this but the truth is it ain't that good".

Maybe, like Neil Young's "Tonight's the Night" - whose origins and chaotic structure are similar but which still grabs valued space in my music collection - you had to buy it at the time and then listen to it for many years for it to fully register or, is it in reality one of rock's greatest "king with no clothes" outings? Either way, life's too short and there's too much other genuinely brilliant music out there to waste huge amounts of time trying to work out which it is. Then again, maybe I'm simply not capable of appreciating such a complex and odd record.