All Down The Line

Hey there, Zoo Freaks, this is the Zoo Crew coming at you from the freeform side of the dial over at THE ZOO, and we just laid down a slab of pure road music that still smells like French basement dust and California mix-room smoke. The song is All Down the Line, the band is the Rolling Stones, and the album is Exile on Main Street, that double-LP beast from 1972 that still feels like it was cut by people who had not slept in a week and did not particularly want to. If you have ever pointed a motorcycle down a highway at dusk with the tank half full and no particular plan, this is the track that belongs in the speakers.

Keith Richards has said more than once that All Down the Line came straight out of Brown Sugar. Mick had written that one, and Keith's job, the way he tells it in his own book and in later talks, was to keep feeding Mick riffs and ideas that would light him up. By the time they were holed up at Villa Nellcôte on the French coast in the summer of 1971, Keith was living inside that open-G five-string tuning. He has recalled that the songs were just dripping off his fingers, five of them landing on the record in a short stretch, All Down the Line among them. The basic track went down on the Rolling Stones Mobile truck parked outside the villa, down in that hot, damp cellar where the band played in whatever they had on, which was not much. Overdubs and the final polish happened later at Sunset Sound in Los Angeles between December sessions. Mick Taylor's slide guitar on this one is the part that still raises the hair on your arms. Ronnie Wood, years afterward, said he always thought Taylor was a really good slide player, and he named All Down the Line and Love in Vain as the proof.

When the 2010 reissue came around, Keith told Rolling Stone that All Down the Line was a killer for him, the one he was proud he had managed to pull off. That is high praise from a man who does not hand it out easy. Mick, for his part, has never pretended Exile was his favorite Stones record. He has said the mythology grew later, after the reviews at the time were mixed and the polls started calling it the great one. He has also noted that a lot of the Exile songs do not travel all that well once you are standing in front of a big crowd, but All Down the Line is one of the exceptions. It is a road song about hearing the train coming, about needing a shot of salvation once in a while, and it was built to be played loud with the lights up.

There is a studio story that still makes the crew grin. Engineer Andy Johns remembered that this was the first track they actually finished after months of chaos. Mick got enamored and announced it was going to be the single. Andy, who had mixed Jumpin' Jack Flash and Street Fighting Man, told him straight that it did not compare, and Mick actually listened. Later Andy was struggling with a mix when Ahmet Ertegun walked in with company and parked himself right in front of the left speaker, which did not help the balances any. Andy said he wished he could hear the thing on the radio. The Stones being the Stones, pianist Ian Stewart was sent off to a nearby FM station with the tape, and the band climbed into a limo and cruised Sunset Strip so Andy could judge the mix through a car radio while the DJ announced they were the first to play the new Stones record. That is how you finish a track when you are living like outlaws and still care about the groove.

Before any of that French villa business, the whole thing started with two kids and a stack of American records. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards grew up in Dartford, knew each other as little boys at the primary school, then lost touch. In October 1961 they ran into each other again on the platform at Dartford station. Mick was heading toward the London School of Economics with an armful of Chuck Berry and Muddy Waters records. Keith, bound for art college, spotted the albums and the conversation started. They found they already shared a friend in guitarist Dick Taylor, and soon the three of them were sitting around playing those blues and R&B sides and trying their own hands at it under the name Little Boy Blue and the Blue Boys.

The next spring they went down to the Ealing Club to hear Alexis Korner's Blues Incorporated. The slide player who knocked them out was a young man calling himself Elmo Lewis, which was Brian Jones borrowing the name of Elmore James. Jones, Jagger, and Richards started knocking around together, added pianist Ian Stewart, and needed a name before a July gig. Jones pulled it from a Muddy Waters tune called Rollin' Stone. On July 12, 1962, they played their first show as the Rolling Stones at the Marquee Club in London, with Mick up front, Keith and Brian on guitars, Dick Taylor on bass, Stewart on piano, and a drummer who would not stick. Charlie Watts came in not long after, Bill Wyman replaced Taylor, and the lineup that cut those early singles locked in. They were a cover band at first, hungry for the Chess and Vee-Jay records that were hard to find in England, and they got good fast because they meant it.

By the time Exile arrived they were tax exiles, a decade into the ride, and still chasing the same feeling they had caught off those Muddy Waters sides. All Down the Line sits near the end of the record and it still sounds like the band leaning forward, horns punching, Taylor's slide answering Keith's rhythm, Mick selling the idea that the next town might be the one. The Zoo Crew keeps it in the box for nights when the request line wants something with dirt under the fingernails and a ticket in the pocket.

If you want the straight dope from the band itself, the official site is rollingstones.com, and their album experience pages at experience.rollingstones.com still carry Exile on Main Street right up front as the rock and roll album. You can also find them on Facebook, Instagram, and X. Longtime fans keep a deep archive and a busy forum over at the It's Only Rock 'n Roll fan club site, iorr.org, where Exile outtakes and All Down the Line alternates still get passed around. There is also an open Rolling Stones Fan Club group on Facebook if you like your Stones talk in a crowd. Spin it again, Zoo Freaks. The line is open all the way down.