It's gonna be the death of me

The Rolling Stones - 'Soul Survivor' (Exile On Main St. - 1972)

The Rolling Stones are the first act to reach a fourth entry on The Run Out Grooves, two more will join before Christmas, and one of those will go on to see a fifth entry before the end of the year. Having already covered three of their album closers, it allows us to compare and contrast how they finished Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers.

Those three songs, ‘Salt of The Earth’, ‘You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ and ‘Moonlight Mile’, have something in common, there is a heft and a weight behind them. The second was a build on the first, and the closer on Sticky Fingers went another way with a solemn take on life on the road. So ‘Soul Survivor’ is a break from going out with a sense of occasion of a flourish. The whole of Exile on Main Street was a big, loose, ramshackle production, so going out in that style looks pretty sensible. Anything else would have seemed tacked on. I would be as bold to say that the actual closing song, which has more in common with the previous three closing songs, is ‘Shine A Light’ which has the epic closing nature that ‘Soul Survivor’ lacks.

The previous three closers all have the kind of energy that means you could expect to hear them towards the end of a Rolling Stones concert, ‘Soul Survivor’ not as much - as they’ve never performed it onstage.

There is undoubtedly a sense that Exile is The Rolling Stone’s most vibes-based album versus the tunes nature of its predecessor, and that has led to even Mick Jagger saying that;

“Exile is not one of my favourite albums, although I think the record does have a particular feeling,” Jagger said. “I’m not too sure how great the songs are, but put together it’s a nice piece. However, when I listen to Exile it has some of the worst mixes I’ve ever heard. I’d love to remix the record, not just because of the vocals, but because generally I think it sounds lousy. At the time Jimmy Miller was not functioning properly. I had to finish the whole record myself, because otherwise there were just these drunks and junkies. Of course I’m ultimately responsible for it, but it’s really not good and there’s no concerted effort or intention.”

Some themes are drawn together from elsewhere in the album; Dreams, depression, rejection and alienation. There’s even a sense of being at sea or on water that comes from the lyrics - it starts with a Keith Richards riff and Mick Taylor chiming in as Charlie Watts settles down immediately, and Jagger opens with;

When the waters is rough
The sailing is tough
I’ll get drowned in your love

The lyrics¹ are much like many of the words on Exile On Main Street, buried in the mix and only burst out when we get to the chorus or the clearer sections (like the headline lyrics above). Much like the Eddie Izzard gag about people coming in from other rooms to sing/shout, “Five gold rings!” the chorus is the MVP of this song and continues through the song’s extended outro.

Like much of the album, the song was recorded in Keith Richard’s Villefranche-Sur-Mer home in France and Sunset Sound Studios in LA in 1971. Given the band’s tax exile status at this point, you can wonder if the song is a brush-off to Britain and that they were using sailing and ships as metaphors for their feelings towards Blighty. It is somewhere they will hold in their hearts even when they are elsewhere.

At some point when it was being recorded, it had a Keith Richards vocal. It does seem to suit him, and Mick Jagger said in 2009;

I don't think (I wrote it about Keith). No, that's not about Keith at all. Soul Survivor? I don't even know if I wrote that. It sounds like one of Keith's.

The album’s expanded reissue does include this version as part of the extra material.

Exile on Main St. closes a chapter in the band’s discography. While they would go on to record plenty of decent records and more than decent songs, for me (and many others), they’ve never reclaimed the golden, imperial phase they were in for those years on either side of the change of the decade. So it makes sense that the record doesn’t go out with a bang, but it doesn’t go out with a whimper. It’s more of the same for the album, and this is a closer that sounds like nothing of the sort - an anti-closer.

But despite that, there is also something that is very Exile On Main St. and very Rolling Stones about it. I wouldn’t go as far as to say it was a definitive work by the band, but it does capture their essence. They would come back to mine a similar vibe/riff on ‘It Must Be Hell’ and even ‘A Rock and A Hard Place’ in 1983 and 1989, respectively. Regardless, back in 1972, that last minute after Nicky Hopkins gets some space on the piano, it does sound like a band at the peak of its powers as they can knock off something which is not substantial but oozing in style.

1. Another noteworthy lyric of note is the reference to Bell Bottom Blues, the song by Eric Clapton’s band Derek and the Dominos on their double album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. The band liked the song and so decided to namecheck it.