March 12th, 2010
When I read that The Rolling Stones’ reissue of Exile On Main Street was going to be loaded with bonus tracks, I got excited. My excitement was tempered, however, upon reading that the band were going to tamper with some of the songs.
On May 18th, Universal Music Group is re-releasing the album with 10 never-before-heard tracks, including “Plundered My Soul,” “Dancing in the Light,” “Following the River” and “Pass the Wine”. The disc also features alternate versions of “Soul Survivor” and “Loving Cup.”
“I went back in the archives and dug out a load of things,” he says. “I added some percussion and some vocals. Keith put guitar on one or two.” Jagger wrote fresh lyrics for “Following the River,” but other than some light revisions to the other songs, “I really wanted to leave them pretty much as they were,” Keith Richards says.
Why would Great Grampa Jagger record vocals for an Exile-era song now? Just let it be. Put something in the liner notes saying, “We were really fucked up on heroin at this time and never got around to putting vocals on some songs and this is one of them.”
And what are the other bonus tracks? The article linked to above only has six of the ten. Are we going to get “Exile On Main St. Blues”, “Hillside Blues”, “I Ain’t Signifying”, “Ain’t Gonna Lie”, or “Travelin’ Man”? Were “Potted Shrimp”, “Aladdin Story”, and “Leather Jacket” done during the Exile sessions or an early version of “Silver Train”? These last four songs were recorded during the Sticky Fingers sessions but the band tended to drag their leftovers from one session to another so there’s a lot of tunes to choose from.
Related posts: