The Sunday Times (London) buries the lead in Paul Sexton’s otherwise terrific article on the making and re-release of Exile On Main Street.
In it, Keith declares that he was clean, if not necessarily sober, throughout the making of Exile, and only got back on the stuff when the recording was over. This may be true. On the other hand, we have Robert Greenfield’s and others’ reports that a) almost as soon as the Stones set up shop in Villefranche, Keith made contact with various dealers, from the guy who sold Jim Morrison his fatal dose, to the Marseilles mobsters who stole all of Keith’s guitars one night for failure to pay for delivered supplies, and we won’t even mention Spanish Tony, b) Gram Parsons was banished, never to be seen by Richards again, because their louche shenanigans kept the album from being made, etc. It’s possible Keith’s memories are right and everyone else wrong, but we tend to doubt it.
Anyway, nice piece, with a track-by-track analysis of the unreleased songs we’re about to hear. Does declare that on “Plundered My Soul,” the lead is played by the 2010-era Mick Taylor. Interesting, if true.
Tulip Frenzy 