The following is exceprted from Billboard.

Exile on Main Street" should have been a disaster.

Recorded in 1971 and early 1972 in a variety of locations-most notoriously the sweltering makeshift basement studio in Keith Richards' villa in the south of France-the two-album set coincided with one of the most debauched periods in the Rolling Stones' uniquely hedonistic history.

A seemingly never-ending procession of hangers-on, drug dealers, girlfriends and traveling musicians passed through the studio doors, as Richards and his then-girlfriend Anita Pallenberg descended into drug dependency. On top of that, the band had been forced to take up tax-exile status and were beset by litigation with former manager Allen Klein, while Mick Jagger was preoccupied with his then-wife Bianca's pregnancy, forcing the frontman to be frequently absent from the sessions.

From such chaos, however, emerged an enduring classic, as the album's heady swamp of classic rock'n'roll, Motown-influenced soul, raw country and ragged R&B somehow formed a beguiling, intoxicating whole. On "Exile," the Stones-Jagger, Richards, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor-created some of their best songs, including "Rocks Off," "Shine a Light" and the evergreen "Tumbling Dice." For once, the music actually matched the myth.

Small wonder then that, almost 38 years since its June 1972 release, "Exile" should be the album to launch the Stones' latest series of catalog reissues for its new major-label home, Universal Music Group, even if Richards himself can't quite believe it.

"Here I am trying to sell 'Exile on Main Street' again," he says with a chuckle, although Mike Davis, GM/executive VP of UMG's catalog division Universal Music Enterprises, says the album was an obvious place to start the ambitious catalog plans.

"Every artist has those few career-defining pieces of art and 'Exile' has always been a Rolling Stones gem," Davis says, adding that the album was "earmarked from day one as the first project to do something super-extraordinary on" once the band had signed the July 2008 deal that shifted its post-1971 catalog from its long-term label partner EMI.

"You could feel the band expanding what they do, and maybe that's the charm of this record," Richards says of the album today. "It's very honest; there's no flimflam. It's a bunch of guys saying, 'We're more than just pop stars.' "

At the time, the record's ambition prompted mixed reviews-Rolling Stone called it "the Stones at their most dense and impenetrable," although Robert Christgau hailed it as a "fagged-out masterpiece." But "Exile" has been a consistent seller ever since it debuted at No. 1 on both sides of the Atlantic, spawning two U.S. hit singles on the Billboard Hot 100: "Tumbling Dice" (No. 7) and the Richards-sung "Happy" (No. 22).

Total U.S. album sales for "Exile" during the Nielsen SoundScan era (1991 to the present) stand at 825,000, making it the band's fourth-best-selling pre-1991 studio set after "Sticky Fingers" (1.26 million), "Some Girls" (1.25 million) and "Let It Bleed" (1.1 million). It has sold 3,000 copies so far this year, making it the group's third-best-selling studio set of 2010 after "Let It Bleed" (6,000) and "Beggars Banquet" (4,000).

The Stones' total album sales in the United States since 1991 stand at 25.7 million, according to SoundScan, making the band the No. 36 best-selling albums act of the SoundScan era. The Stones have sold 114,000 albums to date this year, with 400,000 sold in 2009 and 584,000 in 2008 (when the release of the "Shine a Light" soundtrack boosted sales to the tune of 132,000), according to SoundScan.

Despite these healthy numbers, Jagger and company could be forgiven for casting an envious eye toward their old rivals the Beatles, whose lavish remastered reissue program last year prompted their album sales to soar from 1.4 million in 2008 to 3.3 million in 2009, according to SoundScan.