Rolling Stones' 'Exile' Producer Hopes to Mine Band's Vaults for More Rarities

Longtime Rolling Stones producer Don Was, who first worked with the band in '93, recently got to revisit a childhood favorite, mining through 300 hours of tape to come up with the 10 bonus songs for the just-released 'Exile On Main Street' reissue. Despite having worked with the band for 17 years, going back to an album that was influential in his own life as a kid was special for Was.

"The honest to god's truth is last week when I was in New York they handed me one of the records for the first time and to look at the credits and see produced by Jimmy Miller, the Glimmer Twins and Don Was, I actually kind of welled up a little bit," Was tells Spinner. "It's pretty deep -- real deep."

What other albums would be that deep for him? "Like I told Mick [Jagger] the other day, I said, 'Come on, bring on 'Some Girls,'" Was says laughing. Is the Stones '78 classic, an album that found them embracing disco with 'Miss You' and provided such classics as 'Beast of Burden' and 'Shattered,' ripe for the same sort of 'Exile' bonus treatment? "I know there's stuff there," Was says. And what did Jagger say in resposne? "He didn't say 'no.'"

Was also says that one of the Stones' most prolific and enduring periods has outtakes that could hopefully someday see the light of day. "Obviously, with the Stones you'd say, 'Let's listen to the 'Let It Bleed,' 'Beggars Banquet' period and I know what's there," he says. "You could combine that era and that's good stuff."

In the meantime, Was is still glowing from being able to sift through all of those hours of tapes from 'Exile.' Is there anything that surprised him listening to that material? "One thing that really struck me was what I could hear from all the banter in-between songs and what was going on in that basement -- it's really not that different from a Stones session today," he says. That is surprising considering that the Stones famously rented a house in the South of France to record the album and the era is considered one of their wildest. Was doesn't doubt that stuff is going on, but it didn't affect the music. "There was a crazy scene going on around them, but they were on their game and that's not what I expected," he says. "I pictured it to be all Jack Daniels, heroin and girls."

Download 'Exile on Main Street' on iTunes