Sex, drugs, rock ’n’ roll. The Rolling Stones didn’t invent the formula. But they lived it like no other band in history. And when the rapacious taxmen of England came demanding more cash than Mick Jagger and Keith Richards — not to mention bandmates Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman and Mick Taylor — had or cared to pay in the spring of 1971, the Stones moved their party to the South of France.
When they couldn’t find a suitable French Riviera studio to record their 10th album, the Stones set up in the basement of Villa Nellcote, Richards’ rented 16-room mansion on the coast in Villefranche-sur-Mer. All marble and wrought iron, Richards said it looked like it was decorated for “bloody Marie Antoinette.”
He also liked to recount its history as a Gestapo headquarters, where Nazis did nasty things in the same basement the Stones used to jam all night. The hallways still had swastika-shaped air vents. “But it’s all right, we’re here now,” he assured recording engineer Andy Johns.
By making the record in Richards’ own house, band members figured they could get the famously ramshackle guitarist to show up for the sessions. They were wrong. And Richards wasn’t the only one living on the edge. For a six-month stretch, the Stones swapped partners, ingested every available drug, set fires and nearly drove each other mad while crafting rock’s most decadent record, 1972’s “Exile on Main Street.”
On May 16, Universal is reissuing “Exile” in several forms: an 18-track CD; a deluxe edition with 10 previously unreleased songs; and a super-deluxe package with vinyl, a 30-minute documentary DVD and a 50-page photo book.
The Post got an early copy of the music and the “Stones in Exile” documentary, which will premiere Friday on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.” From these, fresh interviews and Robert Greenfield’s “Exile on Main Street: A Season in Hell with the Rolling Stones,” we assembled the most debauched stories of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll from the people who actually lived in “Exile.”
SEX
Gone was the Stones’ usual stream of adoring female fans. For six months, the groupie-gobbling rockers were housebound with significant others. Jagger even got married to Nicaraguan girlfriend Bianca, then pregnant with daughter Jade, during the stretch. Richards shacked up at Nellcote with Italian actress Anita Pallenberg, close pal of Marianne Faithfull and former flame of late Stones guitarist Brian Jones. Fresh from rehab, she arrived with their toddler son, Marlon, in tow.
While the recording went on, she managed to fool around with Jagger and have half-conscious, stoned sex with drug dealer Tommy Weber on a Louis XIV bed while Richards was passed out next to them.
“It was like a royal court where the nobles were sleeping with each other’s women,” says Greenfield, who spent two weeks living at Nellcote — and a third just hanging around — while on assignment for Rolling Stone that May. He wasn’t the only one to notice the band’s exploits.
“Everyone screwed everyone else’s wives and girlfriends,” Johns says. “That’s just the way it was, and you didn’t think too much about that.”
After Jagger married Bianca, Pallenberg did her best to break them up, even starting grade-school-style rumors that Bianca was born a man. Pallenberg got pregnant, too, but kept using heroin. She sought a secret abortion, not because of the drugs, but because she thought the child was Mick’s.
Richards, meanwhile, wasn’t interested in sex at the time, probably due to his heavy drug abuse. One studio regular recalls Pallenberg complaining, “All he wants is the wanking — he never f – – – s me!”
The Stones weren’t the only ones fooling around. Their sidemen were kept busy, too.
“I didn’t mind living between Nice and Monte Carlo, didn’t mind that a bit,” says Bobby Keys, the Texas-born, libertine sax man famous for honking on “Brown Sugar” and every Stones record from 1969 to 1974. “I didn’t mind all them pretty girls around the countryside. Yes sir, buddy! That’s when you’re sh – – – in’ in tall cotton!”
DRUGS
Fueling the excessive behavior at Nellcote was a huge stash of drugs, many smuggled in by Weber, a former Formula One racer turned Afghani hash runner. That May, Weber traveled from England to the Cote d’Azur via Ireland — “in case he was being followed,” Greenfield says — with a pound of coke strapped to the waists of his preteen sons, Charlie and Jake. At age 7, “my function in life was [to be] a joint roller,” says Jake, who grew up to star in the CBS drama “Medium.”
Everyone who visited the house seemed bent on self-destruction. John Lennon threw up at the foot of the stairs one day while touring the premises with Yoko Ono. Richards blamed it on too much sun and wine, but it was more likely the ex-Beatle’s methadone habit.
As Richards was picking up Marlon’s toys in the living room one night, Greenfield watched him grab a mystery pill off the floor. “Bam! He throws it down his throat,” Greenfield says. “Who knows what he put in his mouth, but that’s Keith. Could have been a vitamin, but I don’t think so. Not in that house.”
Jean de Breteuil, the so-called “dealer to the stars” who supplied Jim Morrison with a lethal dose, bought his way into a two-week residence with a toot of ultra-pure pink heroin from Thailand. Richards snorted it from a gold tube he wore around his neck and promptly passed out. Later, Richards paid $9,000 cash ($50,000 today) to a couple of cowboy boot-wearing dealers known as “the Corsicans” for more of the pink junk.
The smack arrived in a plastic bag the size of a two-pound sack of sugar, Greenfield writes, and was so potent it had to be cut with three parts glucose — hence its nickname, “cotton candy.” It lasted a month.
“With a hit of smack,” Richards says, “I could work through anything and not give a damn.”
One night, Richards passed out upstairs after “putting Marlon to bed” — his code for getting loaded. Johns found him with the needle still in his arm, blood spattered on the walls. The studio whiz poked the rock legend to see if he was still alive.
“Of course he picks up the guitar, which he was in bed with, goes, ‘Oh, yeah,’ and starts playing,” Johns says.
Another time, a chauffeur had to pull Pallenberg and Richards, naked and unconscious, from a bed they’d accidentally set on fire. But the rest of the help wasn’t so useful. The couple’s errand boys, local hoods they called “les cowboys,” were suspected of stealing at least nine vintage guitars and Keys’ engraved saxophones when drug debts went unpaid.
By December, French authorities caught wind of the scene and charged the Stones and their pals with heroin possession. As a bonus, Richards and Pallenberg were issued warrants for trafficking. But all of the Stones had high-tailed it to LA a month earlier.
Jagger, Taylor, Wyman and Watts eventually returned to France to face the charges, but a combination of fame, luck and bribes got them freed with mere slaps on the wrists.
Richards and Pallenberg were banned from France for two years, but they had no plans to return, anyway. They’d fled Nellcote in such haste that they abandoned Marlon’s toys, Pallenberg’s wardrobe, Richards’ record collection, a speedboat, a Jaguar E-type sports car and two pets, Boots the parrot and Okee the dog.
ROCK’ N’ ROLL
Many “Exile” songs were recorded during earlier sessions in London, but the album found its soul at Nellcote, informed by the dark habits that had sprung up around the band.
“The writing process was very, very loose,” Jagger says. “There wasn’t a sort of master plan. We just accumulated material knowing we would use it one day.”
The drugs and infidelities were never discussed, but ego battles ground songwriting and recording to a halt. Jagger would be in Paris with Bianca. Richards would be off somewhere with drug buddy and songwriting pal Gram Parsons, or passed out upstairs. “Sometimes I would just hear this weird rumbling coming from the basement and then realize that I’d slept for almost a whole take,” Richards says.
When he did show, Richards preferred a spitball approach to tracking, drummer Charlie Watts says. “A lot of ‘Exile’ was done how Keith works, which is, play it 20 times, marinade, play it another 20 times.”
One of the album’s best tracks, “Tumbling Dice,” was typical of the laborious sessions.
“We must have had about 40 reels of tape on that one,” Johns says. “But the night we actually got the track, you could tell it was about to happen. If Keith’s looking at Charlie and Bill stands up, you’re going to get something in the next 20 minutes.”
While recording a guitar track for what would become the album’s opener, “Rocks Off,” Keith nodded off, prompting Johns to leave for some dearly needed sleep at his own villa, 35 minutes up the coast. When he arrived home, he walked in to hear the phone ringing.“I pick it up, and it’s Keith — ‘Oy, where are you?’ ” Johns says. “I said, ‘Wait a minute. I thought you went to sleep,’ and he said, ‘Well, I’m up now. I’ve gotta do this guitar part. Get back here quick.’ ”
Johns obeyed, and was pleased. “He played — and I’m so glad this happened — this sort of counter-rhythm against the original guitar that just made the whole thing move up about three notches. If you sit down and listen to that interplay between the two rhythm guitars, it’s Keith at his very best.”
Another fine Richards moment was inspired when he learned Pallenberg was pregnant. He hit the basement to celebrate with a jam. Bassist Wyman, fed up with waiting on Richards and Jagger to show, was on a rented yacht, and drummer Watts was nowhere to be found. So producer Jimmy Miller played drums. Bobby Keys played baritone sax. Out came Richards’ signature song, “Happy.”
“We were basically doing the sound check, making sure everything was set up for the session,” Richards says, “and the track just popped out.”
After the band left France that December, production on “Exile” continued in LA, where Jagger took over. “I had to finish the whole record myself, because otherwise there were just these drunks and junkies,” he says. Richards does not dispute this.
“I never plan anything,” Richards says. “Mick needs to know what he’s going to do tomorrow. Me, I just wake up, see who’s around. Mick’s rock, I’m roll.”
Shining a light on new ‘Exile’ songs
Tuesday’s new “Exile on Main Street” bonus tracks are touted as unearthed gems from Nellcote, but that’s not entirely true. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards re-recorded vocals and guitars, which producer Don Was deftly blended with old tracks. We sifted the classic from the contrived.
1. Pass The Wine (Sophia Loren)
“Pass me the wine, let’s make some love” is the refrain — right in line with the Nellcote era. Horns sound like Bobby Keys’. Guitars are authentically out of tune.
* Vintage: 90 percent
2. Plundered My Soul
It’s present-day Mick singing, “I smell rubber and soon discover that you’re gone for good. My indiscretions made a bad impression. Yes, I was misunderstood.” Stones historian Robert Greenfield says the song itself is old, though, and there’s some satisfying soul here.
* Vintage: 50 percent
3. I’m Not Signifying
It’s ragtime! “Have you ever had the feeling baby, that you’ve been here before?” young, nasally Mick sings. The bass sounds rubber-band-like and old, as does a harmonica and tinkling Dixieland piano.
* Vintage: 95 percent
4. Following the River
Mick’s voice is throaty, not like it was in ’71. He sings: “My cards are on the table, but the drinks have all run out,” which doesn’t jibe with the vibe back then. But when a lady chorus comes in, he’s almost crying, and it starts to sound like young Stones.
* Vintage: 40 percent
5. Dancing In the Light
Mick’s loud, out front and elderly — everything he wasn’t at Nellcote. The guitars are too crisp to have come from a humid basement in the South of France.
* Vintage: 10 percent
6. So Divine (Aladdin Story)
Young-sounding Mick sings, “You think your life is so divine. You think I’ll drink it like it’s heaven-scented wine.” Snake-charmer guitars are reminiscent of “Paint It Black.”
* Vintage: 100 percent
7. Loving Cup (Alternate Take)
It’s the drunken honkey tonk version. The band has had more than one drink from the proverbial loving cup. Guitars and bass fall out with the lazy rhythm. Mick Taylor’s riffs sync sweetly with Keith’s vocals.
* Vintage: 100 percent
8. Soul Survivor (Alternate Take)
Wonder why Keith’s not the lead singer? Lacking real lyrics, he sings, “I just can’t f – – – it. I just can’t suck it!” Later, he just groans, “Et cetera!”
* Vintage: 100 percent
9. Good Time Women
It starts with screeching harmonica. Mick sings, “Good time women, don’t keep you waiting around,” then mumbles about cocaine and “dry white wine.” This chorus was cannibalized for “Tumbling Dice.”
* Vintage: 100 percent
10. Title 5
“Title five, take one,” says an engineer, likely Andy Johns. Then begins an instrumental “Radar Love”-like boogie with a guitar that sounds like a didgeridoo. Pure scraps.
* Vintage: 100 percent