| 23rd October 2006 08:35 PM |
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| GotToRollMe |
An interview with Robert Greenfield, author of 'Exile on Main St.: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones'.
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=521308
Sharing Exile with the Rolling Stones
Book recounts making of album in France
By LARRY WIDEN
Special to the Journal Sentinel
Posted: Oct. 22, 2006
In the summer of 1971, the Rolling Stones deserted their homes in Britain to escape the exorbitant taxes levied by the government against people in their income bracket.
In order to begin work on a new album, the band set up a recording studio in the basement at Nellcote, an opulent mansion on the Riviera in the South of France. Guitarist Keith Richards and his family lived upstairs while the rest of the Stones came and went.
Rolling Stone magazine dispatched correspondent Robert Greenfield to interview Richards for a cover story about the album and subsequent American tour.
In the beginning, Greenfield says, the atmosphere was akin to a lighthearted English house party complete with a seemingly endless banquet of gourmet foods, fine wines and imported hashish.
But as progress on the new album ground to a frustrating halt, a grim veil descended on Nellcote and its inhabitants.
Greenfield wasn't the only one to notice the ominous Nazi swastikas emblazoned on ventilation duct grates and other hardware throughout the house.
Lurking in Nellcote's past was a sinister history as an executive-level Gestapo base of operations in World War II.
Soon addicted to heroin, Richards embraced the growing darkness within his home and himself as he struggled to write the music for what would become "Exile on Main St.," the band's most critically acclaimed album.
Chronicling the events of that summer in a new book, "Exile on Main St.: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones" (Da Capo Press, $24), due out Nov. 1, Greenfield asserts that the 1970s were born as the Stones recorded their songs in the dank cellar of a haunted house in France.
Q. How does a writer spend that much time with the Stones and avoid getting in too deep?
A. I guess it's because I never saw the really dark stuff.
The Stones, and Keith in particular, were real geniuses about going into a room and closing the door. There was an inner-inner sanctum that you didn't get into unless you were using. It wasn't like Mötley Crüe falling off the stage or something. The Stones didn't do drugs on the street or in the plane or whatever.
Q. So is there a struggle for creative control going on at Nellcote?
A. This was a significant turning point in the band's history, because Keith is really beginning to assert himself. For the first seven years, he was Brian Jones' little brother. Brian was his great guitar mentor and life teacher, and they lived together in the freezing cold flat in Chelsea. What emerged from that was that Keith could write songs, and Brian couldn't. So Mick and Keith began to bond because they could write together.
Q.But the way you describe things, everyone's waiting for Keith to come up with the songs.
A. Right. There is a focus on him that wasn't there before. Up until this time he's never really spoken in public. Suddenly he's scheduled to be on the cover of Rolling Stone. You can feel the attention swinging away from Jagger a bit. People love Keith because he plays great on stage, and he's got that great sense of fashion. He wore an earring before else had one. "Exile on Main St." is really Keith's album. The way it was recorded is the way Keith lives, which is utter chaos.
Q. And people seem to put up with anything just to be around the Stones.
A. That's because if you were in that house, you were in the hippest, coolest place in the universe. You didn't want to be anywhere else. You were hanging out with the Stones in the south of France while they made their new album. And, as I say in the book, you weren't paying for anything. The food, the drinks, the rent was free. It was like the best vacation you could ever have with people that were so hip.
Q. You state that at close range, their charisma is overwhelming.
A. Sometimes when you meet famous people you're less than impressed. . . . They're smaller physically, they don't have much personality, not as good-looking. It's all media. But in person Mick and Keith are awesome human beings. They're funny, they've got a great attitude, they were great people to hang out with. They both have this immense power in personal situations.
Q. If I read between the lines, I get the impression you don't care much for Mick Jagger.
A. No, that's not true. I don't dislike Mick Jagger at all. I think you can tell in the book that I have much more personal affection for Keith, but without Mick Jagger the Rolling Stones would not exist. It's just that he's so different. Marianne (Faithfull) says a lot of this in her book, that Keith is real and Mick always seems to be playing a game.
Q. Jagger and Richards don't have much personal interaction anymore.
A. I don't go to Stones shows now, but I'm told that backstage it's completely separated. Mick's got his camp and Keith's got his. Separate nations. . . . It wasn't that way back then. They were part of the same social circle, and they did everything together. Mick made Keith his best man when he married Bianca in 1971. He didn't have to do that.
Q.Both fans and critics think "Exile" is one of their best albums.
A. There's a reason why it continues to sell. People age 30 and younger love that album. There's something there that grabs them. It's the culmination of the three greatest back-to-back albums in rock, "Beggars Banquet," "Let it Bleed" and "Sticky Fingers." The drop-off with the next album, "Goat's Head Soup," is remarkable. Keith was not in good shape then.
Q. You traveled with them through America in '72. What was that like?
A. To be there when these guys are tossing TV sets out of hotel rooms, you just had to laugh. Plus Nixon's president, America's going to the dogs in a big way, and these guys are doing whatever they want. They're free, they can get away with anything, and it's that sense of outrageousness that powered the tour.
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| 24th October 2006 12:39 AM |
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| Bruno |
Imagine a documentary about those days in France, oh my... |
| 24th October 2006 12:56 AM |
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| chevysales |
greenfiled did that interview in rolling stones a few issues back... very good stuff. |
| 25th October 2006 07:34 AM |
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| corgi37 |
Some one is going to have to let us Aussie guys know where we can get it. It's a must read. |
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