After 16 years, the Rolling Stines have finally made their comeback with a new album.

The band rereleased their album Exile on Main Street and led the midweek charts. It includes remixed tracks of Rocks Off and Tumbling Dice, and is said to attract fans of Stones from a particular age.

Official Charts Company managing director Matin Talbot said that there was a tight competition between the Stones and Faithless, who currently has an album out called the Dance that sold 1,000 copies less than the Stones' album did.

"The Stones may not be at their creative peak any more, but this album is a reminder why they are legendary," Talbot said. "It underlines everything that has made them a force to be reckoned with 40 years after they formed."

The Exile on Main Street was recorded back in the early 1970s at the Nellcote, a luxury villa in Southern France rented by Keith Richards. It is described as the stuff of rock'n'roll legend and went to the top of the charts when it was first released in 1972.

The band recounts their earlier days when they had to leave UK and go to France to avoid a huge tax bill.

In an interview with the Sunday Times, Mick Jagger said, "Keith was living over the shop all the time, so all his friends were there, and all our friends were there, so it was all a bit of a madhouse."

"It was a big lifestyle thing going on in the house. When you see all the photos of it, it was full of people. It was fun and crazy."

Drummer Charlie Watts says that they had an unusual schedule while recording the album in the villa's basement. Bassist Bill Wyman "would drive down at 10 o'clock in the morning, and nobody, including me, would be up till about three in the afternoon, because we didn't go to bed until nine... So Bill would go home at six and Keith would be getting up," he laughs. "That was the kind of timetable. We used to work like that a lot in those days."

"Nobody gave a damn who was doing what. People were dabbling, everybody was," Richards said, insisting that he wasn't the only hedonist at that time. "Mick is not the squeaky-clean little mother you think he is or he likes to portray himself as. The fact is that Mick doesn't hold stuff as well. Sometimes, I wish I could have a drink or two, or a hit of this or that, and I'd be out of it, but it doesn't affect me that way. I've always looked upon drugs as a bit of a tool, actually, and I'm the laboratory"

According to Watts, the Exile on Main Street was recorded during the highest point of the Rolling Stones' creativity.

"I think it's a peak period for our band. We had everything covered. We had a wonderful producer, Jimmy Miller, and you were playing with Nicky Hopkins, who could play blues as well as the prettiest piano. We had Mick Taylor, who for me was the most lyrical player we had, and we had Mick and Keith writing," he said.

"It's a great piece of period music that's stood the test of time," Jagger said.