The Villa Where The Rolling Stones Partied Was A Hub Of Bad Behavior

The tax rate in the UK at the time was 93%, which nearly tapped the Stones dry. So the band headed to Côte d’Azur in the meantime, where they searched for homes worthy of the world's greatest rockstars. One luxurious piece of real estate caught Keith Richards' eye.

For a cool $2500 a month, the Villa Nellcôte property checked all the essential boxes. The decor was outlandishly regal, and it was surrounded by trees that provided crucial privacy. But it was the last grim factor, the house’s history, that really appealed to Keith Richards.

A sprawling mansion with 16 rooms, the villa served as Gestapo headquarters in 1940 Nazi-occupied France. Forty years later, the home bore traces of its dark past, where it's rumored there are still swastikas carved onto surfaces in the basement. The grandeur and disturbing history sealed the deal for Keith. Nellcôte became his home.

The other bandmates had their own properties, but it was Keith’s place where everyone seemed to congregate. He set the tone for both work and play. As the band’s drummer, Charlie Watts, said in the documentary Stones In Exile, "Keith's a very bohemian and eccentric person, he really is." And "eccentric" couldn't begin to cover it.

Out of all the Stones, Keith is the biggest wild card, and that's truly saying something. He created a lawless environment that was the definition of "anything goes." At Nellcôte, drugs ran aplenty. You left your morals at the door and leaned into the chaos. Obviously, everybody wanted an invitation.

There was a constant rotation of entourage members, some staying for months on end, but the party never stopped. Other stars like John Lennon filtered through. Photographer Dominque Tarlé documented their time at the villa, remembering in the documentary, "The atmosphere kept changing but the party kept going."

In stark contrast to the Versailles-like interiors was the rampant heroin use. Richards was open about his drug of preference, and it wasn’t uncommon to see him nodding off on the couch while the party continued around him. Still, it wasn’t all darkness at Villa Nellcôte.

Journalist Robert Greenfield detailed his visit to Keith’s crib in his book A Season in Hell With the Rolling Stones, painting a disturbing picture of the scene and its participants. But the more lurid rumors he described, like the injection of heroin into a child, have been refuted. In fact, Dominque Tarlé contradicts the idea the home was purely evil.

In a statement he gave to The Guardian in 2010, Tarlé argued, “All this stuff about a season in hell with the Rolling Stones? No, no, it was anything but that. We were all young and it was a time of great freedom and energy and creativity. For me, it was a kind of rock'n'roll heaven."

It was the arrival of Anita Pallenberg — Keith's girlfriend, the mother of his children, and an iconic model to boot — that kicked the partying into high gear. Richard's heroin addiction steadily worsened with Anita keeping up the pace with her musician beau and their two kids reluctantly along for the unstable ride.

It's believed that during those months in France, Pallenberg and Mick Jagger took advantage of the moments when Richards was too high to notice and had an affair. She denied it, while Jagger claimed it happened. Since everyone was wasted, there's no telling what the truth is, but unabashed sex was just another part of their routine.

"Hell, yeah, there was some pot around, there was some whiskey bottles around, there was scantily clad women. Hell, it was rock'n'roll!" quipped saxophonist Bobby Keys in the Stones in Exile documentary. Nothing was in short supply thanks to Richards’ high-profile drug dealer.

What do you do when you’re a rockstar seeking an unlimited supply of cocaine, heroin, whatever other controlled substance you fancied that week? Well if you’re Keith Richards, you link up with the mob. He made connections with the Corsican mafia, whom he referred to as “les cowboys,” to stay fully stocked.

The mobsters would hang out with the entourage and party, and if Richards didn’t pay up, they’d take their matters into their own hands. One day, the dealers made their way from Marseille, walked straight into the Villa without any disruption, and marched out with at least nine of Keith’s guitars. 

In moments of semi-consciousness, the Stones did what they knew best: make music. Villa Nellcôte holds a special place in rock ‘n’ roll history for what was created there. In the dank basement, they recorded their iconic album Exile on Main St.

They turned the basement into a makeshift studio, despite it still bearing the marks of its horrific past. As Keith Richards was quoted in The Guardian, “Upstairs, it was fantastic – like Versailles. But down there… it was Dante’s Inferno.” The space had a certain dark energy, but there was also the literal component that made it an oppressive place to be.

It wasn’t just the lingering history that contributed to the basement’s hellish feeling, it was unbelievably hot down there! They jammed through brutal temperatures, scattered across the cramped basement floorplan, while their producer ran back and forth from the mobile studio parked outside. 

"It's got a raw sound quality, and the reason for that is that the basement was very dingy and very damp," said the band's former guitarist Mick Taylor in the Stones In Exile doc. However, the sound carried. Villa Nellcôte was drawing increasingly more negative attention.

It all came crashing down in 1973 when the French police raided Nellcôte. Keith and Anita were long gone by then, having fled to the US almost two years prior. Still, that didn’t mean they would skate by without any consequences. Not this time.

The police had enough to charge Richards and Anita with possession of heroin and intent to traffic. Hiding out in America made no difference. Keith was sentenced a year later in Nice, France, where they handed down a 5,000 franc fine and a whopping two-year ban from the country.

Today, fans flock to the spot that once hosted rock and roll’s most epic parties and take photos in front of the gates. It wasn’t just the house, though. It was the culmination of the times, the participants, and the feeling of exile itself. As Richards put it in the documentary, "The Stones really felt like exiles," Richards says. "It was us against the world now. So, **** you! That was the attitude." 

Villa Nellcôte still stands today, just as grand as ever. Last purchased in 2006 for $128 million, the current owner isn’t amused by all the publicity. They refused to allow a documentary crew to film on their property, thereby locking the doors on the unsavory past that unfolded all those years ago. But the Stones are still making headlines even today. The beef between the Stones' guitarist Keith Richards and fellow English musician Elton John had gotten so out of hand that people had to step in.

Keith Richards became The Rolling Stones' infamous lead guitarist and party boy in the mid-1960s. Meanwhile, a man named Reg Dwight changed his name to Elton John a few years later, joining forces with songwriter Bernie Taupin. The two musicians’ paths would continue to cross over the next half-century.

John and Taupin initially began penning material for other artists. But thanks to the success of “Your Song” in 1970, the former became a superstar himself. But just like Richards, his commercial heyday was defined just as much by his intake of various substances. Indeed, during the 1970s John developed an addiction to cocaine and alcohol that would continue well into the next decade.

Both John and Richards developed a reputation for being difficult, too. The former was seen regularly spitting his dummy out in a 1995 warts and all documentary that was titled, appropriately, Tantrums and Tiaras. Furthermore, he has taken potshots at a whole host of high profile celebrities over the years.

And Richards made sure he was kept off John’s Christmas card list again in 1997 with his reaction to another single. The guitarist was asked about the reworking of “Candle in the Wind” that his rival had famously performed at Princess Diana’s funeral. And perhaps unsurprisingly, the hellraiser didn’t exactly approve.

In his chat with Entertainment Weekly, Richards admitted he found the whole concept slightly jarring. Referencing the original’s tribute to Marilyn Monroe, he went on to add, “Songs for Dead Blondes. I’d find it difficult to ride on the back of something like that myself, but Reg [John’s birth name] is showbiz.”

As you would expect, John didn’t take this lying down. Later that month he told the Daily News, “I’m glad I’ve given up drugs and alcohol. It would be awful to be like Keith Richards. He’s a pathetic, poor thing. It’s like a monkey with arthritis, trying to go onstage and look young.”

John continued, “I have great respect for the Stones but they would have been better if they had thrown Keith out 15 years ago… I just think he’s an a**hole and I have for a long time.” The singer-songwriter further claimed that Richards was a hypocrite for once describing John as theatrical. He added, “Please, if the Rolling Stones aren’t show business, then what is?”

Things between the pair appeared to calm down. But in 2011 John proved that he still harbored a grudge toward the Rolling Stone while discussing Richards’ autobiography Life. The book contained some rather choice words about the size of Mick Jagger’s manhood, something that John felt was inappropriate.

And Rolling Stone reported that a bemused John wrote, “I was a bit put off by hearing about the bit about Mick Jagger’s penis. If I said that Bernie Taupin was a miserable t*** and had a small penis, he’d probably never talk to me again. It’s like, why do that?”

However, in 2015 the pair seemed to bury the hatchet thanks to some peace-making from one of Richards’ bandmates. Indeed, somehow bassist Ronnie Wood managed to get them to pose for the cameras together at the GQ Awards. Yet this apparent truce didn’t last that long.

You see, in a 2018 chat with the Daily Telegraph, Richards was asked about John’s three-year farewell tour. And he was far from sad to see one of his peers retire from the stage. In fact, the guitarist said that John’s departure would ultimately leave “more room” for The Rolling Stones on the live circuit.

If you hadn’t guessed, John had announced that he was retiring from the stage to spend more time with his family. However, Richards appeared to be more concerned with the farewell tour’s crew. He joked, “After three years on the road with Elton, you would want to retire, too. I’ll take his word for it.”

Nevertheless, Richards still found it in his heart to pay a compliment, if a somewhat backhanded one. “He’s a lovable old dear,” the guitarist, who is actually four years John’s senior, told the Daily Telegraph. Richards then went on to claim, “He’s softening with age.”

A year later John once again touched upon the subject of his fiercest rock rivalry in his memoir, Me: Elton John. The hitmaker reflected on the summer of 1994 when his soundtrack for The Lion King ended up overshadowing The Rolling Stones’ comeback LP, Voodoo Lounge in the charts. According to John, Richards moaned, “Beaten by some f***ing cartoon.”

Interestingly, John also showed some signs of remorse for one of his most famous celebrity insults. The star wrote, “It probably was a bit cruel to say that Keith Richards looked like a monkey with arthritis. But in fairness, he’d been pretty foul about me: he got as good as he gave.”

Aside from this, John used his autobiography as an opportunity to reveal how his long-time beef with Richards had actually started. And in a display of honesty, the star admitted that he was largely to blame. For the piano man had outstayed his welcome during a 1975 Rolling Stones gig in Colorado.

You see, the band had invited John to appear on stage with them to perform piano for just one track. However, the chart-topper was so high on his drug of choice, cocaine, that he ended up remaining on stage for the rest of the gig. John admitted that if he’d have been sober, “I might have just performed ‘Honky Tonk Women,’ waved to the crowd and made my exit.”

But John admitted that this wasn’t the wisest decision he’d made in his career. He continued, “I decided it was going so well, I’d stay on and jam along to the rest of their set, without first taking the precaution of asking the Stones if they wanted an auxiliary keyboard player.” And the singer-songwriter was so high at the time that he completely misread the band’s reactions to his spot of gate-crashing.

“For a while, I thought Keith Richards kept staring at me because he was awestruck by the brilliance of my improvised contributions to their oeuvre,” John revealed in his memoir. Thankfully, the star eventually realized how things were really going down. “After a few songs, it finally penetrated my brain that the expression on his face wasn’t really suggestive of profound musical appreciation.”

So what did John do once he discovered that his musical talents weren’t exactly being appreciated by the rock icons. Well, he “quickly scuttled off, noting as I went that Keith was still staring at me in a manner that suggested we’d be discussing this later.” The star also realized that “it might be best if I didn’t hang around for the after-show party.”

Interestingly, John went on to explain why his drug of choice at the time was so appealing. He said, “There was something more to cocaine than the way it made me feel. Cocaine had a certain cachet about it. It was fashionable and exclusive. Doing it was like becoming a member of an elite little clique that secretly indulged in something edgy, dangerous and illicit.”

“I’d become successful and popular, but I never felt cool,” John admitted. “Even back in my first band, Bluesology, I was the nerdy one. The one who didn’t look like a pop star, who never quite carried off the hip clothes, who spent all his time in record shops while the rest of the band were out getting laid and taking drugs.”

Unfortunately, John’s fondness for the white stuff soon got out of hand. He explained in the memoir, “As it turned out, doing a line of coke, then immediately going back for another one, was very me. I was never the kind of drug addict who couldn’t get out of bed without a line, or who needed to take it every day. But once I started, I couldn’t stop.”

John continued, “My appetite for the stuff was unbelievable – enough to attract comment in the circles I was moving in. Given that I was a rock star spending a lot of time in ’70s L.A., this was a not inconsiderable feat. Once again, you might think this would have given me pause for thought, but I’m afraid the next 16 years were full of incidents.”

Thankfully, after nearly two decades of subjecting his body to continued substance abuse, John decided to get clean. In 1990 he went into a rehab facility in Chicago where he received treatment not just for cocaine, but for food and alcohol, too. And sobriety opened up a whole new world for him.

Mind you, John’s long-time rival Richards took a little bit longer to give up his various vices. In fact, the legendary guitarist waited until he was the grand old age of 74 before deciding to go sober. He told Rolling Stone in 2018, “I pulled the plug on it. I got fed up with it.”

And unlike John, Richards and the rest of his band have no plans to retire from the live stage any time soon. He told the Daily Telegraph, “There’s never ever been a word about it muttered among ourselves. I guess the day’s obviously going to come. But not in the near future. We’re all looking forward to doing what we’re doing, especially back in Blighty (Britain).”

Richards and John’s commitment to performing live into their 70s has certainly reaped its financial rewards, too. In 2020 they both featured on Billboard’s ranking of the previous year’s biggest musical earners. Although much to John’s annoyance no doubt, he raked in a significantly lower amount than his on/off rival.

In fact, Richards and the rest of his Rolling Stones bandmates actually topped the list with a cool $65 million, all but $5 million of which came from touring. The group finished way ahead of their nearest challenger, Ariana Grande, who amassed $44.3 million. And John had to make do with third place, although his $43.3 million total was certainly nothing to be sniffed at.