Exile on Main St. by The Rolling Stones

Exile on Main St. is a studio album by English rock band the Rolling Stones. It was first released as a double album on 12 May 1972 by Rolling Stones Records and was the band's tenth studio album released in the United Kingdom.Many tracks were recorded in 1969 and 1970 at Olympic Studios and Jagger's Stargroves country house in England during sessions for Sticky Fingers. and in the summer of 1971 at a rented villa named Nellcôte in the south of France. Guitarist Keith Richards had rented the villa to live in while the band lived abroad as tax exiles. The Stones were already practiced with recording outside of a major studio, as much of the principle recording of their prior album, Sticky Fingers, had been done at Stargroves, lead singer Mick Jagger's country home in Hampshire, using a mobile recording studio. The same mobile studio was moved to Nellcôte and set up in the basement of the villa. Keith Richards lived upstairs in the main house, and frequent house guests, often other musician friends of the band, would wander down to the recording studio to jam with the band and lay down tracks. Daily recording sessions went on for hours into the night, with personnel varying greatly from day to day depending on who was present. Without the confines of a formal studio space, the sessions were fairly loose and unorganized, which shows in the eclectic tableau of songs styles and the sloppy, loose feel of the album. The recording was completed with overdub sessions at Los Angeles's Sunset Sound and included additional musicians such as pianist Nicky Hopkins, saxophonist Bobby Keys, drummer Jimmy Miller, and horn player Jim Price. The resulting music was rooted in blues, rock and roll, swing, country, and gospel, while the lyrics explored themes of hedonism, sex, and time. Exile on Main St. was originally met with mixed reviews before a positive critical reassessment during the 1970s. It has since been viewed by critics as the Rolling Stones' best work and has been ranked highly on various lists of the greatest albums. The album contains frequently performed concert staples and was a top-10 charting album in a dozen countries, reaching number one in six, including the UK, US, and Canada. It spawned the hit songs "Happy", a rare song that featured Keith Richards on vocals, country music ballad "Sweet Virginia", and world-wide top-ten hit "Tumbling Dice". A remastered and expanded version of the album was released in Europe on 17 May 2010 and in the United States the next day, featuring a bonus disc with 10 new tracks. Unusual for a re-release, it also charted highly at the time of its release, reaching number one in the UK and number two in the US on the album charts.