 | |
List Price: $24.00 | | Publisher: Da Capo Press
Salesrank: 101574
|
| Our Price: $5.65 |
| Used Price: $4.88 |
|
| Media: Hardcover |
|
Editorial Review:
Recorded during the blazing summer of 1971 at Villa Nellcote, Keith Richards' seaside mansion in the south of France, Exile on Main St. has been hailed as one of the Rolling Stones' best albums--and one of the greatest rock records of all time. Yet its improbable creation was difficult, torturous...and at times nothing short of dangerous.
In self-imposed exile, the Stones--along with wives, girlfriends, and a crew of hangers-on unrivaled in the history of rock--spent their days smoking, snorting, and drinking whatever they could get their hands on. At night, the band descended like miners into the villa's dank basement to lay down tracks. Out of those grueling sessions came the familiar riffs and rhythms of "Rocks Off," "Tumbling Dice," "Happy," and "Sweet Virginia."
All the while, a variety of celebrities--John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and Gram Parsons among them--stumbled through the villa's neverending party, as did the local drug dealers, known to one and all as "les cowboys." Villa Nellcote became the crucible in which creative strife, outsize egos, and all the usual byproducts of the Stones' legendary hedonistic excess fused into something potent, volatile, and enduring.
Here, for the first time, is the season in hell that produced Exile on Main St.
Exile on Main St.: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones Reviews:
A book about the tunes, it ain't.... 
2009-12-16 - If you are looking for an inside look at how the songs were written and recorded, look elsewhere. If you want a detailed story about Keef's heroin saga during this period, you are in luck.
truly a season in hell
2009-12-06 - I picked this book up at the local library, and I thought that it would be good because the author, Robert Greenfield, interviewed Keith Richards that summer at Nellcote. The interview was published in Rolling Stone #89, August of 1971 and featured Keith on the cover. Although the author clearly idolizes Keith, he paints a balanced picture of Keith, and relates some of his selfish and irresponsible behavior. However, like most of the other reviewers here, I quickly became bored with this book. It is simply lacking in substance and riddled with cliches. In addition, it suffers from a narrative that jumps around, making it confusing at times. The book is an easy read, but I found that it took me much too long to finish because of these flaws. There is a great story here somewhere, but the book missed it. Overall, it doesn't have much to offer die hard Stones fans: most of them know that Exile on Main Street was recorded on stolen electricity at Keith's house in France. Nor does it offer much to those who are new to the band and the album: everyone knows that Keith took tons of drugs and somehow miraculously survived, and this book offers no insight into the album or the songs. In fact, it only very briefly glosses over the music. So, overall, the book was a disappointment.
There is a great story here, but it is not told well in this book. 
2009-09-14 - This story has some fascinating insight into the recording of this classic Rolling Stones album, but the writing leaves much to be desired. This book should have been edited a couple more times. Plus, the book at times is too much an attempt to reconcile other authors' accounts of this recording. The author even takes a couple of misplaced jabs at other authors in the middle of this book. Still, it is a story worth reading if you can part with a couple bucks and can tolerate mediocre writing.
Worth it if you love the Stones
2009-08-03 - It's a book that fans of the Rolling Stones will enjoy. There is some quality material to work with. The author did a good job of transporting the reader to Villa Nellcote, a crazy place to say the least. The relationships between Mick, Keith and the rest are pretty juicy, and the author wrote an excellent prologue that summarized "the players". However, the book was hurt by some cheeseball writing that came off as quite amateurish. The events covered in this book are overly melodramatized, and the prose is filled with "easter eggs" where the author mixed in lyrics and titles from Stones tunes into the prose. For instance, one sentence on page 81 of the hardcover version reads: "Born with the energy of a crossfire hurricane, Marshall is a......" which is a reference to the Stones classic Jumpin' Jack Flash. The writing is so cheesy that in one instance, the writer openly insults writers of other several other Stones books. After that page-long sequence, it was difficult to view the book as having any credibility. Still, for all of its faults, there is plenty of fact, fabrication, and theorizing to keep the avid Stones fan busy for a while. If you love the Stones and want to learn more about the band in its prime, buy the book.
The Stones we know now 
2009-06-28 - I read a couple of the reviews that weren't favorable, and they certainly have their points. Greenfield does come across as arrogant on more than one occasion, which makes him really seem like a dick when he cites incorrect facts, such as the aforementioned (in another review) "Jumpin' Jack Flash was on Sticky Fingers" passage. Anyone who is even a casual Stones fan knows this is ridiculous, and is an unforgivable mistake. All that notwithstanding, Greenfield lets you into a world where only the story of one who was there can be trusted. The myths of the Stones are given great emphasis...how they left a trail of dead behind them, etc. I also found it invaluable in showing how the Rolling Stones of the 1960s became the group we know today: the rich, jetsetting rock stars, the hard drug abuse and addiction of Keith Richards..it all started here (or slightly before, as the book points out). What others in their circle thought of Exile On Main Street, in relation to other Stones classic lps (the comparisons are generally unfavorable, with Let It Bleed of Sticky Fingers getting the nod over what is, by many critics and hardcore fans, considered thei best work). The descent into addiction, and eventual desolation, of world-class beauties Marianne Faithfull and especially Anita Pallenberg (and Madeleine D'Arcy, who met a worse fate than either). I don't want to go on and on, although I could. I gave the book 4 stars, and not 5, because of Greenfield's attitude, and factual inaccuracies. But if you love the Rolling Stones and their mythology, and how they fit in to the death of the 60s and its transformation into the "me decade" of the 70s, when the Stones became the biggest band in the world, do yourself a favor and read it!
