The Rolling Stones shine a light on 'Exile on Main St.' reissue

Mick Jagger and Keith Richards during the "Exile" sessions. (Dominique Tarlé / UMG)

Keith Richards, Mick Jagger and recent producer Don Was discuss the band's 1972 album and the rerelease's previously unheard material.

By Randy Lewis,
Los Angeles Times

May 16, 2010

Keith Richards remembers the period in the early 1970s when the Rolling Stones were working on "Exile on Main St." as a fairly down time. The parts he remembers at all, that is.

That's partly due to the fact that the recording sessions took place as the Stones guitarist and songwriter's heroin habit took hold in a big way, a habit that took him nearly a decade to shake. But it wasn't strictly the drugs he was referring to when he spoke recently about that fabled phase in his and the group's life.

It's a period he and Mick Jagger have been revisiting in depth while preparing an elaborate new reissue of the landmark "Exile" double album as well as a new documentary of that period, "Stones in Exile," being released simultaneously.

"The word 'debauchery' comes up an awful lot," Richards, 66, said with a sly chuckle. "Drugs did too — there was quite a bit of that. But when you're making a record, you're totally focused on that. You don't really consider what else is going on; you don't have time for it. Debauchery is the last thing on your mind … I'm down in a bunker trying to make a record."

(More here.)