Few bands have a back catalog as vast as the Rolling Stones. Yet Exile on Main Street is one of their crowning glories, an album that has garnered more praise as time has gone on. A departure for the band, it saw them up sticks and live in close proximity to two major casino hubs, influencing the theme of the album. In this article, we discuss how the Rolling Stones used casino themes in Exile on Main Street.
Recording Exile On Main Street
Exile on Main Street was a mishmash of everything. This was mainly down to the way it was recorded. Preliminary sessions had already begun during the recording of the band's previous album, Sticky Fingers. This meant that originally, recording started at Olympic studios in London during 1969.
However, this soon moved to the south of France. The exile in the title refers to their move, where they were hiding from UK tax authorities. A rate of over 90% had been imposed by the government of the time. The Rolling Stones simply spent the money they owed in taxes, sold their assets, and left. At the time, their accommodations in France had no recording facilities. The band rented a villa named Nellcote near Nice and moved a mobile studiointo the basement.
For once, the whole band was not in the studio at the same time. They would come and go during evening sessions. Also adding to the disjointed feeling were the cast of characters who would also routinely visit. These included John Lennon, Williams S. Burroughs, and Gram Parsons, among others.
Rolling Stones Casino-Themed Songs
Tumbling Dice was the lead single from the album Exile on Main Street, one of the band's grittiest and darkest of albums. It is well documented that the album was worked on at night. In the daytime, they would spend their time visiting the casinos in nearby Monte Carlo. This is where the casino themes came from at first and were responsible for the title track. To even better understand the album, half of it was also recorded in Los Angeles. Thus, the Rolling Stones had access to two of the world's gambling hotspots, with the second location being in close proximity to Las Vegas.
Today, luckily for the Rolling Stones, casinos are easily accessible from most parts of the world. This is done through mobile devices that allow you to connect to online operators. Even places where they often do only one stop on a world tour, such as Canada, have options for them to play without leaving the hotel. There is an online casino Ontario in comparisonsite and similar ones for other provinces that rate the best casinos online based on a range of factors.
The track is a song about a gambling man who has trouble committing to one woman. It reached number five on the United Kingdom singles chart and number seven in the US. It has since become a huge signature tune for the band. A rough version of the song known as Good Time Women had been recorded in a preliminary session for their Sticky Fingers album. Despite being a huge success, the band and their engineers are on record discussing how the song was a nightmare to record. It is rumored that there are around 150 takes of the song on tape. Mick Jagger later said that he did not like the mix of the track and wished they had used another.
Another track on the album is Casino Boogie, albeit one of the more forgettable numbers. Even Jagger himself said it wasn't really a song, noting that it had no memorable hook or lyrics. The lyrics to the Casino Boogie track are convoluted at best. Jagger once said in an interview that it was made from cut-up lyrics sections, which were then picked out of a hat and stuck together. However, you can pick the influence of their gambling sojourns out in certain lines and particularly references to that section of France in the early seventies.
The highlight of the song is probably Bobby Keys on saxophone. This famous player had done the rounds and was a staple of many seventies recording sessions. He had allegedly played on Elvis’s Return to Senderin his younger days. Collaborating with The Stones on earlier albums, he had played the blistering soul-tinged solo on Brown Sugar. He became a huge friend of the band and, in many ways, was a fully-fledged member. Being the best man at Mick Jagger's wedding, he was also known to indulge in the band's most raucous antics, like throwing television sets from hotel windows.
In many ways, keys are the highlight of the album. Sweet Virginia would not have been the same country ballad without his solo on it, and with Casino Boogie, he adds a great level of depth and timbre to a fairly forgettable Rolling Stone track. Tumbling Dice is a mainstay of the band's live set. With Exile on Main Street being one of their best, the casino influence is easy to see. Casino culture may have changed, but the band has not, still touring and recording. Luckily, Exile on Main Street remains a great record of a bygone era and an interesting chapter in their career.