A Different Way To Be: in praise of a grassroots approach to releasing records

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Exile on Main Street by The Rolling Stones

"About as unrehearsed as a hiccup" Bobby Keys

"'Cinema verite? I got into audio verite..... Hey, I've made records where you analyze everything you do 3,000 times and it's perfect. I'm sick of it. I want to make a record that's totally stark naked. Raw. I don't wanna fix any of it. I don't care if it's totally out of tune, man, let's play. Fuck it.... I like the idea of capturing something. Record something that happened. I'm a musician. I don't wanna sit there and build a record. I built a couple of records. Big deal. Tonight's the Night doesn't care. And that makes you feel good about it. There's no pretence.'"

Despite being a quote about one of his own albums, Neil Young captures what, by many accounts, were the circumstances surrounding the recording of Exile on Main Street (or at least the tracks they laid down in France before doing some polishing in Sunset Sound, LA). Take "Happy", a Keith Richards track, "recorded in a single take when Richards woke up one morning – or evening – and gathered up the only other people who were awake, saxophonist Bobby Keys and producer Jimmy Miller, who was drafted in to play drums in place of the absent Watts. The whole record was, says Keys, a good ol' boy from Texas, "about as unrehearsed as a hiccup"." (The Guardian)

Dark, haphazard, ragged, the recording of Exile was a play with large cast of actors, an "extended retinue of session players, studio technicians and hangers-on." and with the drug-use, a "retinue of shady characters and criminals". This feeling is echoed on the front and back covers of the album, with the back cover being inspired by the front.

The front cover image is from Robert Frank's photo documentary “The Americans”, taken of a wall in a tattoo parlour in New York City (although another account has it taken on Route 66, colloquially, and perhaps coincidentally, known as the Main Street of America). The wall is covered with photos of strange and unusual people, displaying neat symmetry with the recording sessions.

Frank also filmed the Stones with a Super 8 camera. The stills of individual frames were used to compose the back cover to match his original wall picture. The back cover also features a "mystery woman" pictured in the lower left side, who turns out to be Chris O'Dell, their personal assistant.

Layout and design was by John Van Hamersveld and Norman Seeff. Describing his contribution, Van Hamersveld was very clear on its impact: "my arrangement of materials...would go beyond Frank’s photo style, creating an identity that would become the basis of the PUNK FASHION MOVEMENT. To the spectators, critics, and others in the Establishment, I had made a package that was not glamorous. It was not a friendly image to put on display in the record stores, but it was THAT image that established the anti-establishment look of PUNK."

Playlist #1

Here's a selection of tracks from the first 12 records featured on The Turnaround (a few of the videos may not work on all devices). 

1. Words (Between The Lines of Age) by Neil Young (Harvest)

If this doesn't play, just search YouTube for 'Neil Young In A Barn'!

2. Westering by Hiss Golden Messenger (Poor Moon)

3. New Morning by Bob Dylan (New Morning)

4. Kingpin by Wilco (Being There)

5. I'm Waiting For The Man by The Velvet Underground & Nico

6. Little Red Rooster by The Rolling Stones (Get Stoned)

7. Everydays by Buffalo Springfield (Buffalo Springfield Again)

8. Done Somebody Wrong by The Allman Brothers Band (At Fillmore East)

9. Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars by Francis Albert Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim

10. Say You'll Be Min by Kitty, Daisy & Lewis (Going Up The Country single)

11. Travelling Man by Bert Jansch (L.A. Turnaround)

12. Rock and Roll by The Velvet Underground (Loaded)

Get Stoned by The Rolling Stones

A slight cheat this one, as the back cover, bar the track listing, is all but identical to the front. A recent charity shop purchase, it was bought for purely nostalgic reasons. Get Stoned was my first real contact with the Stones, discovered as I leafed through my father's record collection. At the time I can remember not liking the vocals much (out of tune to my young ears) and by being a little alarmed by the rather grotesque mould of Jagger's lips on the front. It has always been fascinating to me how our music tastes change (develop?) and particularly how reactions from early listens can be totally at odds with how we grow to feel about a singer/band/song. I had similar experiences on first listens to Bob Dylan and Neil Young, which I expect are not uncommon.  

 

A few years later, when looking to buy the record myself, I couldn't seem to find it and naively thought the provocative title had led to it being banded for such a brazen drug reference. As it turns out, Get Stoned offered a great intro to the band (up to Sticky Fingers) and has a number of tracks (Dandelion, 2000 Light Years from Home) rarely to appear on their other many compilations.