1972: the year The Rolling Stones became tax exiles
With the Summer of Love slipping into the distance, The Rolling Stones were about to go on a songwriting streak for the ages. Having spent most of the 1960s playing second fiddle to The Beatles, Mick Jagger and Keith Richards were finally gelling as a songwriting team, putting up one classic after another like ‘Paint It, Black’ and ‘Street Fighting Man’. While things were looking up in the studio, there was a lot of hell going on in their personal lives.
Before the band had even made it out of the ‘60s, their relationship with Brian Jones was fracturing. Jones had been the group’s primary leader at their inception, and his lack of inclusion in any Stones project was starting to wear on him. After one too many studio sessions where very little was achieved, Jones left the group to pursue other projects, only to be found at the bottom of his pool not long after his dismissal.
As the group soldiered on, their love for the blues became more pronounced on every record, making masterpieces like Sticky Fingers by combining their love of British blues with the sounds of country and western songs like ‘Dead Flowers’. This was party time for Jagger and Richards…until their funds finally ran out.
Leading up to 1972, The Stones had steadily raked in cash from songwriting royalties and countless live shows. As Bill Wyman explained, though, they came up short when it was time to pay the taxman, saying: “Tax, under the Labour government of Wilson, was 93% if you earned a million quid, which we didn’t, you’d end up with 70 grand. So it was impossible to earn enough money to pay back the Inland Revenue and stay here, in England”. What he fails to mention is that a pint of milk cost 6p, petrol was 8p per litre, beer was 14p per pint, and the average house price was £5,158.
While The Beatles aired their grievances at Mr Wilson in the song ‘Taxman’ off Revolver, no amount of complaining would help The Stones from having their possessions seized by the government. Instead of playing benefit shows or trying to rake in the money, The Stones decided to leave the country, camping in exile outside of the tax jurisdiction.
Jagger fled to Paris with his girlfriend Bianca while Richards found a place to camp in Nice, as the rest of the band found refuge in France. Now free from living in London, they had a lot of time to themselves…and a lot of time to write. After setting up a makeshift studio in his house, Richards converted his recording equipment into a mobile studio, where the band could set up wherever they saw fit and make songs on the spot. Working with producer Jimmy Miller, this mindset became the basis of the album Exile on Main St.
Spread out across two discs, this double record was a snapshot of what The Stones’ frame of mind was like during these years in exile. Although there are some blues staples across the tracks, like a cover of Robert Johnson’s ‘Stop Breaking Down’, each song offers a glimpse of what made each member tick musically.
Outside of the hits like ‘Tumbling Dice’, most of the songs are about living life on the run, like the blues by way of punk rock on ‘Rip This Joint’ or the song ‘Turd on the Run’, where Richards brings a funky approach to his standard open tuning sound. Though most songs were cut at Olympic Sound and Richard’s abode Nellcote, the band was still intent on getting the best songs onto the final record.
Despite being packed to the gills with tunes, each member never settled for anything less than perfect, including Charlie Watts sitting out playing on ‘Tumbling Dice’ in favour of Miller playing the drums behind him. Aside from the ‘on-the-run’ attitude behind these tunes, The Stones also explored the dark sides of their heart.
Having played with country artists like Gram Parsons while making the record, some of the brightest moments come from when the band are getting back in touch with their countryside. Jagger would pen the heartbroken ballad ‘Sweet Virginia’, and Richards would have a turn behind the mic singing ‘Happy’.
When it was originally released, Richards mentioned in an interview that the reception was cold from their label, recalling, “We had tremendous trouble convincing Atlantic to put out a double album. And initially, sales were fairly low. For a year or two, it was considered a bomb”. As audiences spent more time with the album, they realised how much the griminess added to The Stones’ story.
After the album’s success, the band eventually moved back to England with their royalties and could live amongst their friends again. For all of the headaches that went into recording Exile, it also provided an example of what could be done with other rock bands. In the years after its release, The Stones would lease their mobile unit to different bands to use when they weren’t around, including making its way into a line in Deep Purple’s ‘Smoke on the Water’, as Ian Gillan sings, “with the Rolling Stones living just outside/making our music there”.
No band took this method more to heart than Queen, who would record their subsequent albums after A Night at the Opera in Switzerland to get out of dealing with the tax laws in their home country.
Outside of the tax trouble, Richards looks back on Exile fondly, even mentioning it as the first precursor to genres like grunge, remembering: “This was an era where the music industry was full of these pristine sounds. We were going the other way. That was the first grunge record. Yes, it is one of the Stones’ best”.
While Richards’ writing might not have had anything in common with the likes of Kurt Cobain, it’s easy to see where he’s coming from. Throughout the album, one can hear the grimy sounds of rock ‘n’ roll, as The Stones are using the best of what they have to make something powerful. Without Brian Jones, without any money, and without any sense of stability, 1972 was the year where The Stones hunkered down and created their masterpiece out of nothing.
All the same, it is a masterpiece borne from a questionable political decision that would certainly meet with tax-dodging scrutiny in this day and age. The fact that this point is often lost amid the heralding is a sign of how we romanticise the past.
