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pound, the Côte d’Azur, in the extreme south-east
corner of France, was a playground for the wealthy
entertainment and business-world elite. Today, the
photos that line the breakfast room of the Hotel
Welcome, which stands directly in front of the small
natural harbour in Villefranche, are testament to
the calibre of names that have frequented the region,
from Cary Grant to Winston Churchill, Liz Taylor and
Richard Burton (who only stopped in long enough
for a glass of Champagne) to Jean Cocteau, who
considered the hotel a second home.
But the Welcome, still refined and charming to this
day, was not quite to the Stones’ taste. Indeed, the
closest they ever got to it was when Keith Richards
and his girlfriend, the Italian actress Anita Pallenberg,
would visit the town to drink
pastis
, with their young
son Marlon in tow. For the more serious pastimes
“Nellcôte was just one big house party. There
would be 20 or 30 people living there at a time”
of partying and making rock and roll, the Stones
guitarist needed somewhere a lot more private.
And that’s just what the chateau,Nellcôte, could
provide. Indeed, even today, it is a building shrouded
in mystery. Located on the far side of the harbour of
Villefranche, surrounded by custard-coloured sand, it
is just possible to make out the small jetty and private
beach that belong to the house. Nobody in town today
seems to have met the chateau’s current owner and
the 9m high, black, wrought-iron gates suggest that,
whomever they may be, they seem to like it that way.
The house was no less secretive in 1971. It had
served as the headquarters of the Gestapo during
World War II and people who visited during the
Stones’ time there spoke of seeing swastikas printed on
the heating vents.
Keith instantly fell in love with the cascading
chandeliers, floor-to-ceiling mirrors, gold filigree, vast
Louis XIV beds and marble stairs that had been in
place since the building was built in the 1890s.
Robert Greenfield, a journalist for the American
music magazine
Rolling Stone
, who went to Nellcôte
to interview the guitarist and ended up staying for
nearly a month, had plenty of stories to tell when we
spoke, 40 years on.
“France was a lot further away from England
back in the early 70s than it is now,” he says.
“Communications were primitive. So this was
somewhere where Keith could be himself. Nellcôte
was just one big house party. There would be 20 or
30 people living there at a time. It was like one giant,
trashed hotel suite. It was fun, but it was also Keith’s
Rubicon. It was the cross-over point between the
Stones being a slick, organised group and becoming a
mass of dissolute chaos.”
The guests who headed to Villefranche that summer
to party with Keith and the Stones included John
Lennon and Yoko Ono – who had to take the
ex-Beatle to an early bed after he downed an entire
bottle of wine in one gulp and then threw it up –
country-music legend Gram Parsons, and assorted
court jesters with names like Johnny Braces, Spanish
Tony and a man called Stanislaus Klossowski de Rola,
who was rumoured to be related to the last crown
prince of Poland.
The locals were far from impressed. Away from the
ostentatious excess of nearby St Tropez, Villefranche
was a quiet, conservative, traditional fishing village
where literate bohemians such as Cocteau and W
Somerset Maugham were embraced, but debauched
rock and rollers were given distinctly less bonhomie by
the natives.
That attitude remains intact today. As I strolled
through the tiny town, with its winding alleyways,
small cafés serving pastis and steak tartare, tiny
chapels and even an underground passageway called
Rue Obscure, where villagers hid during World War
II, it is clear that this stretch of the Riviera is totally
removed from the more famous playgrounds of the
Côte d’Azur.
The lack of obvious attractions is its appeal. Yachts
sit in the harbour, but they sit cheek by jowl with
sturdy fishing vessels and, rather than neck Cristal
with the super-rich, this is more a village to buy
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