"Yes, there was quite a controversy kicked up last year over the restoration. And while it’s not an uninteresting issue, it doesn’t distract from the gratitude we who hold Fassbinder dear feel when we hold this handsome box in our hands. This is the epic he was racing against destiny to complete; poring over the extras, you can’t help but sense that he knew it too. All of Fassbinder’s period pieces are, of course, about the Germany he lived in, the Germany I would begin visiting regularly just a few years after he’d gone, a Germany at ferocious odds with itself, arguing in the streets and in the papers and in classrooms and over dinner over what sort of country it’d make of itself, even in those later stages of starting all over again—not too long, of course, before starting all over yet again in 1989. An intense love-hate relationship with the German character, with German history and culture, and an ongoing recognition of the inextricability of the personal and the political, for better and for worse, permeate all of Fassbinder’s work; here, all that’s practically on parade. And the fireworks at the end are gruesome and gripping."

"Well I was always a Sticky Fingers and Goat’s Head Soup guy. But I never really understood Exile…. Well it was more that everyone was going on about it and I didn’t understand why. And I just thought there were too many songs on it, and too many unfinished ideas. And you kept seeing all these editions of it. I hate it when you’ve got a band like the Rolling Stones who have millions of brilliant songs and loads of great albums and someone goes: “But THIS is the definitive, mega album.” I just don’t like being told that, so I was always quite resistant. But then last year I just said: “Enough is enough, I’m going to stop fighting it.” I read something amazing about that period of their touring and how mental it was, and I thought, “Fuck it, I’ll listen to it again.” And I listened to it, and haven’t stopped listening to it! I love it now. It’s got loads of brilliant songs on it, but they aren’t like mega hit songs, if you look through the list you don’t see what you would consider to be one of the all-time golden classic Rolling Stones songs. But when you listen to the album it just makes sense."