Exile on Main Street is one of the cornerstones of the rock and roll world. In fact, rock music can be split into two distinct time frames: B.E. [Before Exile] and A.E. [After Exile]. Exile put the Stones' money where their mouth was by giving them a piece that exemplified everything they had come to stand for. It was brash in its content, unpolished in its sound, and extensive in its runtime [running over an hour, something that wasn’t necessarily smiled upon in 1972]. Critics hailed it as the end of rock and roll as it was known - little did they know they were right, just not about how. How wasn’t rock and roll changed by the album? It popularized the double album, the unashamed references to drugs, gambling, and sex were enough to canonize the acts as standard practice, and who could ever forget the tour of 1972 and everything that came with it [including a bomb threat, documentary banned from being shown due to the acts of hedonism filmed, and also the riot that almost over took Boston]. What Exile also did was strip back so much of what the genre had and would become. While most latched onto the excess that surrounded the album, there was a certain simplicity that shines through so much of the music that remains unreplicated to this day.
The most unique part of Exile is you are placed right in the French Villa it was created within, almost smelling the sweat, dirt, and weed in each song that makes the music fall more into an experience as opposed to just an album. It grows on you overtime, feeling like a distant memory that is easily retreated back to with a simple respin of one of the greatest albums of all time [give or take - it’s a grower but you’ll be damned to not give the flowers to a masterpiece as simple yet effective and dissectable as this one]. I think each of the 18 songs - and the 8 bonus tracks on the deluxe version released in 2012 - have an argument within them to be the most effective at the albums transportational and simplistic nature but to focus on one, it would be a crime not to speak of the albums delicate, soul-tinged love ballad, Loving Cup.
The song opens with a little piano from Nicky Hopkins, before sliding into the first verse sung by Mick Jagger on lead and Keith Richards on harmony vocals, I’m the man on the mountain, come on up / I’m the plowman in the field with a face full of mud / Yes, I’m fumbling, and my car don’t start / Yes, I’m stumbling, and I know I play a bad guitar / Give me a little drink from your loving cup / Just one drink and I’ll fall down drunk is what introduces us to the world of this song. It plays much like a campfire jam, starting slow with the repetitive lines where we hear the man in question put himself down gently before falling into the motif of being drunk on love if given the chance. The song keeps it’s pace as it dances to the next verse of I'm the man who walks the hillsides in the sweet summer sun / I'm the man that brings you roses when you ain't got none / Well I can run and jump and fish, but I won't fight / You if you want to push and pull with me all night. The song takes its ideas and gestures of love to their most simplistic bones, the line I’m the man who brings you roses when you ain’t got none is cavity-inducingly sweet when you think of how simple the gesture is in retrospect - the act of flowers without the push of asking - or take the listing of all the ways the protagonist is useful before the fall back into domestic simplicity. Even the idea of the “Loving Cup'' - being so in love that just one acknowledgement would render the admirer speechless? It’s love at its most bare bones: no rivalries, heartbreaks, yes or no. Going back to 1972, songs were getting more complex, the stories often weaving themselves within their own philosophies and begging the listener to hear between the lines. Ziggy Stardust, Walk on the Wild Side, Rocket Man - these songs were part of their own worlds, great worlds. Complex, rich, captivating. They told stories that were only able to be told by singular people, taking listeners out of themselves and out of their own comfortable worlds. Exile? Exile took you to a different world but connected the world closer to home than it truly was. Loving Cup is riddled with description, but the kind that can be peered around to find the story that resonates with everyone. While a song like Rocket Man is amazing, you can't divorce the extra terrestrial pieces from the song as it's what delivers the narrative. Loving Cup was made to be divorced from it's time and place - or at least created in a way that made the act easier.
The bridge is no different in its speech pattern from the verses and chorus: I feel so very humble with you tonight / Just sitting in front of the fire / See your face dancing in the flame / Feel your mouth kissing me again / What a beautiful buzz. The lines themselves already paint a very vivid picture in the mind of the listener: you can smell the smoke of the fire, the chill of the night breeze, the buzz of excitement over the giddy love being reciprocated. Richards joins back for the final two lines before the chorus of give me a drink plays out the song: Yes, I am nitty-gritty and my shirt's all torn / But I would love to spill the beans with you till dawn - once more bringing this almost puppy love back into the fold. It’s reminiscent of old fairy tales and folk stories, the beautiful and kind woman falling for the lowly working man because she sees his intentions in actions and words not societal roles but with a modern twist. Once more, going back to a sweltering French summer, the late night fire welcomes the group together when the busyness of life goes by the wayside letting all the moral and wealth differences drown away as quickly as the wine. One sip from the loving cup renders anyone drunk, and that may just be the meaning of life at the end of the day, to find the love that renders you speechless with its simple and mystical ways.
The song is almost offensively simple, it’s instrumentation, intention, delivery. Love is an overpowering neutralizer, getting you drunk in one sip and tearing down the divide even quicker. Similar to most of Exile it thrives in its indirect nature, making it indescribably specific and irreplicable yet universal. It’s like the stories it mimes, the timeless nature seeping through each simple guitar pluck and plead for love. After all, the band was filling the gaps of being the last titans of their era, the simple Beatles tunes had diminished and the referential and literary nature of Dylan was out of commission for a while. It was the Stones who somehow stayed true to themselves in an almost impossible way while also excelling at filling in the gaps of their more "prolific" and revered contemporaries. Exile on Main Street was what a band could only hope to do in means of musicality, influence, intention, and culture, down to it's misunderstood nature at time of release and the iconic status it holds today. It was a piece never meant to stay where it was, never meant to be trapped to its creation, and it hasn't been.
The Rolling Stones performing Loving Cup during rehearsals for their upcoming 1972 tour:
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