Stones in Exile

From the top, then, lads.

I think you

can use the Stones as markers.

They certainly captured the times.

The hippy, peace, love, acid thing

has long gone,

and they're different times.

There was something in the air,

Coppola was making Apocalypse Now.

There was definitely the sense

that the Sixties didn't work,

and that you either had to blow up

the system or flee from it.

From the artwork to the music,

it was a Rolling Stones record

that wasn't the big, popular album.

What year was it? '72?

I know the folklore, obviously.

They were getting away from,

running away from England.

Why did they...?

So they literally got booted out.

English tax exiles. Seemed to be

a popular English rock'n'roll story.

They had to go and almost implode,

in a way.

The sense of being exiled,

the sense of being... "You can't go home."

I think this music reflects that.

He's going the wrong way.

We used to go that way.

Let's go the way we used to go.

When I started talking about

making this film,

I said, "We're never gonna do this.

"We're never gonna go

to where we recorded it."

That was your booth.

You lived in there.

I didn't, I wasn't always,

I was out here a lot.

- That was my booth.

- Only when we let him.

We used to try experimental things,

cos it was a nice, big room.

One bloke could be there,

while I was here,

doing something else.

We did a lot of versions of things.

We did them over and over.

The thing about Exile On Main St.

is that there wasn't a master plan,

we just accumulated material

knowing that we would use it one day.

So we just came in and recorded.

This is really weird. You come back

to something you did 40 years ago,

it doesn't really matter.

You've got to look back at the big picture,

you got really good things out of it.

- Where were we? Boring, really.

- That's about as good as it gets.

That old f***ing recording session...

I mean, boring.

Who gives a sh*t?

The Lucifer of Rock, the Pied Piper,

the rebellious young millions,

who, in the 1960s,

made rock music the official language

of their unfocused,

but unmistakable affection,

from tradition...

Middle America couldn't believe

what was happening to their kids.

They were listening to this music,

buying their albums,

album covers with pictures of the boys

lying around in homes, making parents sick.

People across the country thought,

"What can we expect next from the Stones?"

American Top 40.

The second-biggest foreign act

ever to hit the American charts

has had five number one singles

and ten consecutive gold LPs.

The green stuff they gather isn't moss.

The Rolling Stones.

Are you any more satisfied now?

Financially, dissatisfied.

You know...

Sexually, satisfied.

Philosophically, trying.

We'd been working hard,

we were a very successful band,

we'd sold a lot of records

but we weren't getting paid,

cos the record contracts

were giving us such a low royalty.

We found out that we had

a management company guy

who claimed that he owned

everything we were doing

in the past and always would in the future.

Touring, records, publishing songs,

everything, he said he owned it.

So we had to get rid of him

and try and get out of this

ridiculous Byzantine mess

that you've created for yourself.

We were supposed to live this life,

limousines, you had to have,

and this, that and the other.

The money just flew,

so you were always in debt.

None of us had paid tax.

We thought we had.

We thought that had been dealt with,

and it hadn't.

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.

It was a feeling that you're

being edged out of your own country.

The British government were scared

by the number of fans we had, I suppose.

They couldn't ignore that we

were a force to be reckoned with,

and sometime in the end of the year

we had to make the decision.

It was like, well, we all wanted

to keep going, so let's just move.

We're not rooted in England,

we'd been around the world half the time.

We do this farewell tour of England

which is quite short,

and rather sort of sad.

I can remember it so vividly.

Everyone thought

we were never going to come back.

We had this kind of settled way of life

for a touring band.

We were all very kind of English

in our ways,

with our semi-suburban studios,

nice country places to live in,

and we were quite happy with that.

I mean, "sedate" is not really the right...

It wasn't sedate,

but it was pretty centred.

This kind of lifestyle

that we'd created for ourselves,

which was really pleasant,

had to come to an end.

How do you feel about emigrating?

I don't know. Are we really going?

Well, so they tell me.

- Do you want to leave England or not?

- No.

You're not keen on it?

- On what?

- On going off to France.

You keen on England?

In those days, if a band was big

in England and then left England,

that was the end of them,

you didn't like them any more.

It's f***ing curtains.

And then, when you leave for tax reasons,

it's really not very cool.

I had to get out of the country

to pay the tax incurred for me.

That's why I had to leave.

Let that be a warning to you.

I start taking pictures

of the Stones in 1964.

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