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R O B C R O S S A N
IT’S 40 YEARS SINCE MICK JAGGER AND CO FLED TO THE FRENCH RIVIERA TO
RECORD THEIR MASTERPIECE,
EXILE ON MAIN ST
, BUT WHAT LEGACY HAS THE
BAND LEFT BEHIND THERE? WE RETRACED THEIR FOOTSTEPS TO FIND OUT
L I K E A
R O L L I N G
S T N E
TRAVELLER
IT’S 2AM AND FIVE
young musicians
are huddled together in a basement,
arguing about the arrangement of a
song they are recording. Sweat and
condensation are streaming down
the decaying, cracked walls, while
around them, numerous hangers-on
and groupies sit slouched on the floor in varying states
of consciousness. The sound of the gentle lapping of
waves beneath a full moon is suddenly destroyed by
the bilious holler of a Stratocaster guitar pouring out
raw blues riffs.
The year is 1971. Keith Richards hasn’t slept for
three days, and another night of chaos is about to
commence for the Rolling Stones as they attempt to
complete what will become, on its release the following
year, probably the greatest rock and roll album of the
20th century.
Exile on Main St
, a swampy, discordant double
record with a chaotic cover of photo-booth snapshots,
was far from their most accessible work, but it is
considered by many to be their masterpiece.
The making of it, however, did not take place in
a multimillion-pound recording studio in LA or
New York, but in the crumbling cellar of a gone-to-
seed mansion in the tiny French fishing village of
Villefranche-sur-Mer, about 8km outside of Nice.
In the summer of 1971, when Mick Jagger, Keith
Richards, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman and Mick
Taylor fled the UK to avoid a tax rate of 83% on the
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