Villa Nellcôte — where Exile on Main St was recorded

Villa Nellcôte is a nineteenth-century mansion in Villefranche-sur-Mer on the French Riviera, perched above the coast between Nice and Monaco, that Keith Richards rented in 1971 after the Rolling Stones left Britain in response to a punitive tax situation — becoming the "tax exiles" whose legal arrangements would define their financial structure for decades. The villa had been used as a Gestapo headquarters during the German occupation of southern France; it still has iron rings in the basement walls where prisoners were reportedly restrained. Richards moved in with his family, his entourage, and eventually the entire Rolling Stones recording operation.

The basic tracks for Exile on Main St — widely considered the greatest rock album ever made — were recorded in the basement of Nellcôte during the summer and autumn of 1971. The sessions were legendary in their chaos: musicians arrived and departed at unpredictable hours, power cuts interrupted takes, the acoustics of the stone basement were difficult and unreliable, drug use was constant, and the whole operation was managed without the discipline of a conventional studio. Producer Jimmy Miller later said it was the hardest project he ever worked on. The album released in May 1972 sounds exactly as it was made: sprawling, dense, alive with the noise of a band recording in the most extreme circumstances of their career.

Villa Nellcôte remains a private residence. It is visible from the road below in Villefranche-sur-Mer, a large pale mansion above the water, identifiable to those who know what happened there. The French Riviera location — the particular light, the heat, the Mediterranean — is audible in Exile on Main St in the way that places are always audible in the music made in them, even when the music concerns itself with American blues and gospel rather than the coast of southern France.