DISGRACELAND - The Rolling Stones: Fugitives in Exile

Episode Date: July 23, 2019

Gun fights, heroin trafficking, burglaries, kidnapping threats, intra-band infidelity and the greatest rock ‘n’ roll record ever made, Exile on Main St. The Rolling Stones created this album as fugitives––tax fugitives––exiled from their homeland to the French Riviera and desperate to keep their career afloat after a near decade of scandal and near financial ruin amidst a cast of colorful characters including Gram Parsons, Anita Pallenberg, starlets, aristocrats, drug dealers, junkies and thieves. All of the chaos contributed to one of Keith Richards’ and Mick Jagger’s finest creative achievements, a wholly new and unique interpretation of America. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠. This episode was originally published on July 23, 2019. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get access to a monthly exclusive episode, weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠disgracelandpod.com/membership⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠YouTube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠TikTok  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. Stories about the Rolling Stones' time and exile on the French Riviera are insane. Gunfights, heroin trafficking, burglaries, kidnapping threats, and much, much more, all went down in and around the walls of Villanelcott. The massive mansion and converted makeshift recording studio rented by Stone's guitarist Keith Richards during the spring and summer of 1971. Having been chased out of the UK by overaggressive taxmen, the Rolling Stones were in effect outlaws,

a title that suited them just fine. They were also broke and desperate to create new music to help relieve their ruinous financial burden at a time when Keith Richards decided to take on a serious heroin addiction and singer Mick Jagger decided to get married and start a family while the rest of the band hung on for dear life. Through it all, they made great music, possibly the greatest rock and roll music ever made.

That music I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Stoned Mellow Games BK2. I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights to joy to the world by Three Dog Night. And why would I play you that specific slice of junkie cheese, could I afford it?

Because that was the number one song in America on April 5, 1971. And that was the day that Keith Richards escaped Britain for Villanelle caught on the coast of France to begin the recording of what would become the Rolling Stones masterpiece, Exile on Main Street. On this episode, Stoned Games, Junkie Cheese, debauchery, desperation in the Rolling Stones in Exile. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Keith Richards had a lot on his mind, which was saying something for a man who was the rock and roll equivalent of a great white... shark, the most dangerous animal in the ocean, that basically has two thoughts, kill and eat.

Similarly, the guitar player for the most dangerous band on the planet, the Rolling Stones, spent his days with basically only two thoughts of his own, rock and roll. Mainly roll. He left most of the rock part to Mick, Jagger, his singer. A man who woke up every day with a precise list of things to accomplish to propel his band in his career forward and to satisfy his desires. Their partnership was more complimentary than any other in this still young genre. Mick was sex, Keith was drugs, and together they were rock and roll. Unlike Mick, Keith rolled out of bed and moved through his days to the natural rhythms of the world around him.

His main priority was always playing guitar, making music, writing songs, but not in the formal. I'm going to sit down and write a song about X that has a rhythm like Y and moves to the bridge that sounds like Z in his perfectly calibrated for pop superstar success sort of way. For Keith, it was all about feel, vibe, a perpetual dance with the muse. And that meant Keith took his acoustic guitar with him everywhere. And playing it took priority over everything. He slept with it, and he fell asleep playing it. In the middle of recording session takes with his band sitting around dumbfounded,

helpless to do anything but wait until their guitar player and songwriter awoke, hopefully still bound to his muse. So with his Gibson acoustic, he roamed the halls of Nelcott, the big mansion he was renting for $2,400 a week on the French Riviera. The former Gestapo headquarters with a swastika engraved heating vents and complex maze of basement rooms believed to have once been a Nazi torture chamber during Germany's occupation of France, pausing to sit and storm away until he found the right feel. And then maybe that feel would grow into a riff, and that riff might evolve into a chord progression. And if it still felt right, then Keith, if he could remember, might play that core progression for his bandmates.

And if the gods were smiling, and if the tape was rolling, and if the guitars weren't pushed out of tune by the Mediterranean humidity in the dank basement DIY studio at Nelcott, with electrical wiring that was 50-50 at best, if it didn't blow, and if the producer Jimmy Miller didn't blow too many drugs and fuck up the take, and if the 20-year-old engineer Andy Johns remembered to hit record inside of the mobile recording truck parked out back.

And if Bill Wyman, the bass player, was paying attention, and if Charlie Watts, the drummer, hadn't lost interest, and if the kid's slide player, Mick Taylor, wasn't scared into inaction. And if, and this was the biggest if of all, if his pain-in-the-ass singer Mick Jagger deigned to show up for the session, then maybe, just maybe, Keith's original inspiration would find itself turned into a song. A hell of a lot of ifs for a band that desperately needed to complete an album

in order to escape the financial ruin they had landed. in, thanks to their own disinterest in shady accounting of former managers, the pseudo-Svengali Andrew Law Goldham, and the cunning and powerful Alan Klein, now along with the band all suing each other. Making matters worse, as of 1971, each member of the Stones owed the British government more than 100,000 pounds and backed taxes. And if that weren't bad enough, because of their success and their earning power as taxpayers, they were in the top UK tax bracket, meaning that out of every dollar they made,

they had a fork over 93% of it. 93%. During their rocket ship is sent to the top of the charts with bank-busting record and concert sales, the band had spent nearly all of their money maintaining their overhead and indulgent lifestyle, English country homes to live in, and skyrocketing legal fees to keep them out of prison

due to their various drug busts. The situation was dire, and the Rolling Stones were desperate. And there was simply no money left to pay the tax man. And with the tax rate being so prohibitive, the Rolling Stones were actually too rich to grow up and make any more money. The only possible way to make money to pay their bills was to flee their home country for somewhere friendlier

to enterprising decadent millionaires and to then remake their fortunes as the most famous fugitives on the planet, tax exiles. There was a tremendous amount of pressure, and the band's financial burden troubled Mick Jagger the most. A new record was Keith. Without it, they couldn't tour the states, and that's where the real money was.

So, no record, no bread, and the band would cease to exist. And Mick couldn't make a record without Keith. He needed him. And Keith, whether he knew it or not or would ever acknowledge it even to himself, needed Mick. But the problem was that in the spring and summer of 1971, Keith Richards was in no mood for Mick.

A man who throughout all of the madness of the band's nine-year existence, Keith had thought of as a brother, a man who he had more in common with musically despite their many personal differences than anyone he had ever met. A man Keith loved Mick Jagger, a man who had not too long ago and not too secretly carried on a torrid affair with Anita Palenberg, the love of Keith's life and mother of his son. So forget whatever pressure Mick was feeling or whatever desperation was in the air. Keith Richards could give a fuck. And not giving a fuck was Keith's natural state. Who the fuck is Mick Jagger?

So it was easy icing out Mick. Icing out Anita was a different story. Try as he may, focusing on music was becoming more and more difficult. Mick, Anita, the Stone's problems, his celebrity, thoughts of all of it began seeping into Keith's mind and a new feeling. Something approaching stress reared its beastly head. So Keith turned with more frequency to heroin. and with a hit of smack, Keith could block everything out

and focus solely on his true love, his guitar. But Anita wouldn't quit. Wouldn't quit talking in that chic yet fascist, Italian-German accent. And she wouldn't quit fucking around either with whoever Mick, the various hangers-on at Nelcott. It didn't matter. And she wouldn't quit shooting heroin. She was a full-blown junkie.

King junkie, William S. Barros, had recommended the facility for her most recent detox, but it didn't take. Anita escaped to Nelcott, where it seemed her primary function was to lounge about the house day and night in a leopard print bikini, apparently made of dental floss that, of course, reinforced her piercing sexuality and drove everyone wild. But bikinis were in Anita's main fashion concern. Suspenders were, specifically those worn by her favorite drug dealer Johnny, who Keith had nicknamed Johnny Braces because of his suspenders.

And Johnny Bracis was on route to Nelcott to help sort out Anita and Keith's problem. not having a regular supply of heroin. Anita wouldn't shut up about it, which to Keith's estimation was a minor victory. At least she wasn't talking about Bianca Perez-Mor Macias, the Nicaraguan beauty who Mick had just married in a fever down the coast in St. Tropas, an event that still had Anita upset for some reason.

Anita swore Bianca was a man, and she let everyone she could know about it, which made sense. Bianca was a stunning woman, but she looked just like Mick, so much so that Mick's previous girlfriend, the British starlet, and Stone's muse, Marianne Faithful, Anita's best friend, who had once slept with Keith,

and who was seeing Mick at the time Anita was sleeping with Mick, while Anita was seeing Keith, who Anita had left Brian Jones for, but I digress. Marianne Faithful had said of Mick marrying Bianca, quote, he had finally given into his narcissism and married himself. If the reason behind Anita's preoccupation with Mick's marriage to Bianca rankled Keith, he didn't let it show. He was entirely too cool for anything as conventional as jealousy.

But he did continue to ice Mick out, and he welcomed the dope and became more dependent on it. It was self-medicating and blocked out the blinding sun, Anita Palenberg, who the various Rolling Stones planets all revolved around, allowing Keith to focus on what really mattered, music. He'd eventually let Mick in, and eventually Mick would show up, for real. Until then, there'd be other distractions like guitars, dope, and gunfights with the locals.

Depending on who you ask, the cast of characters hanging around Nellcott during the summer of 71 while the Rolling Stone set out to make their next record were either wildly entertaining or wildly distracting. There was the aforementioned dealer, Johnny Braises, and Anita the witch, another dealer, Spanish Tony,

Puss, the heiress, Rupert, the prince, Michelle, the actress, and Madeline, the dancer. The American record executive, Royal Blues and R&B lineage, Marshall Chess, head of the newly formed Rolling Stones' records, was in and out. Graham Parsons, Cosmic American Country Singer, fall-down drunk, and world-class junkie had made the scene, as did the impossibly handsome race car driver Tommy Weber,

who, it was said, dabbled in a little bit of this and a little bit of that. Tommy didn't move enough weight to satisfy Keith's definition of what a dealer was, and was instead more of a drug buddy and procurer of whatever Keith and Anita might need or might need to go away. And right now, after a heavy dinner around the massive Nelcot dining room table, and too much Cervorciet and Mandrix, a powerful downer that is the European answer to the American Kualoo, Keith and Anita needed rest.

So they, along with Spanish Tony, Tommy, Michelle, and Madeline, retreated to Keith's bedroom where they all fell onto Keith and Anita's massive Louis XIV, the 14th bed. Half of them promptly passed out. Spanish Tony was kept awake by the sounds of Tommy the race car driver penetrating the master of the house's old lady, Anita Palantberg. In the morning, when he awoke, Keith Richards was either none the wiser or simply didn't care. Either way, he had a mission that day. Nellcott rested on the banks of the French Riviera, and Keith wanted a boat, a speedboat. He was inspired by last night's high and knew just what he'd name his new speedy vessel, the Mandrax.

The French Riviera in the early to mid-20th century was the place for the jet set. It was a playground with a rich history where the internationally famous and wealthy, aristocrats and celebrities among them, would overindulge themselves their kinks, fetishes, and bad behavior away from the prying eyes of the press back in their respective homelands. Errol Flynn famously brawled with the local police. Winston Churchill succumbed, willingly perhaps, to the unwanted sediments. of a local socialite, the Hemingways and Fitzgerald summered there getting up to God-know-nows-what sorts of madness. The French Riviera, located between Monaco and Marseilles on the southeastern coast

of France, was positioned perfectly for the drug trade. All manner of riffraff, dealers, hustlers, pimps, prostitutes, conmen, they all washed up onto the shores near Nice where Nelko was. The English playwright, Somerset Maugh, famously dubbed the French Riviera, a sunny place for shady people. which suited Keith Richards perfectly. The sun was blinding. The speedboat he was interested in purchasing was just up ahead docked in the harbor. The beach roads became increasingly small

as he, his two-year-old son Marlon, and Spanish Tony approached in Keith's Jaguar X-K-E. The road narrowed even further, and then, incredibly, another jaguar, helmed by two locals, attempted to squeeze by Keith's car, ripping a violent-sounding scratch along the side of his brand-new,

Jag. Keith immediately in Cents started screaming out of his window at the couple in the other car. What do you think you're fucking well doing? I'll smash your fucking heads in. And he meant it. In an instant as both cars stopped to assess the damage, Keith bounded out of the driver's side brandishing his massive German hunting knife, the one he kept on him in a leather satchel whenever he left the house. You stupid fucking idiot, Keith screamed while rushing toward the driver and the jag that had hit him. Just then, a mountain of a man, the harbor master, Seeing what was all about to go down, vaulted from his office and quickly interjected himself. Keith swung at him, connecting his massive skull ring directly with the harbormaster's cheekbone,

which quickly began dripping blood. The harbor master shocked, unloaded with a heavy right-handed punch to the side of Keith's head, and Keith quickly crumbled. Spanish Tony took a swing at the harbor master. It landed weak, and the harbor master was unfazed, and the petrified couple on the other car took the escalating melee as their cue to beat a quick retreat to safety inside of the harbor master's office. Keith pulled himself to his feet and over into his car and emerged with a 38 pistol.

He pointed straight into the face of the harbor master who was quick to pull his own gun, and the two were now squared off. Silence, but for the gentle sounds of the harbor. The melee had turned into a standoff, a seaside spaghetti western on the banks of the French Riviera. Two pistols pointed straight at each other, gripped tight by their alpha owners, the harbor master and the rock and roll pirate, neither intent on giving an inch. Then, in a moment of what can only be described as pure genius,

Spanish Tony, knowing full well the stubborn fuck-all constitution of Keith Richards, dove at his friend and in a flash ripped a pistol from his hand and chucked it into the harbor, in effect diffusing the situation. The two of them quickly gathered Marlon and made their way back to Nellcott. Once safely ensconced back at his rented mansion, Keith held court detailing his latest adventure to the various jokers and debauched royalties surrounding him. Graham Parsons was mesmerized by his hero's recounting of the excitement. It was almost enough to distract him from his Jones.

Graham, like Anita, was fresh off a failed stint and detox and excited to be back around Keith in the Stones. The former Bird was on the outs with his current band The Flying Burrito Brothers and was secretly hoping Keith would produce his solo debut for Rolling Stones Records. Johnny Bracis was also among the group, and he found the story particularly funny, and Johnny needed a laugh. Jim Morrison, rock star singer of the Doors, and boyfriend of Pamela Corson, who Johnny was carrying on an affair with, unbeknownst to Jim, of course, had just overdosed and died on what Johnny was pretty sure was dope that he'd sold him. And dope was the reason Johnny Bracis was at Nell Cut. Dope and distraction, because distractions like the dust up at the harbor were a regular event. There was always something going down in Elcott that summer.

There were the instruments that went missing, seemingly right under the noses of Keith and his entourage, while they nodded off in front of the television one afternoon. The home was invaded by bandits who stole three saxophones and nine guitars, including the Flying V, Keith had played back at their Hyde Park show in 1969. There was the time when Fat Jack, the chef, emerged from the kitchen, enraged at the Lord of the Manor because Grapevine had it that his lady Anita had turned the chef's 14-year-old daughter onto heroin. And then there was a sketchy Oliver dude from the far-out-living theater, a stage hero of Jim Morrison's who, while staying at Nelcott, survived on a diet of

Bougolet and Mandrax, aka Randy Mandis, that three young local boys accused him of plying them with and attempting rape. It was a bad scene, filled with bad juju, remnants of the Gestapo, dope-crazed behavior and desperation. Everything seemed to be happening except the making of music. A fact that no doubt annoyed Mick Jagger to no end. Mick was newly married, had a baby on the way, a massive tax debt, a tour of the United States he was trying to set up, an album he desperately needed to complete, an album that he and his bandmates had barely even begun to make,

and a heavily distracted songwriting partner in Keith Richards, a songwriting partner who at the time seemingly had Mick and Mick's problems on the Pay No Mind list. As if the dope distractions at Nellcott weren't enough, Keith was also distracted by the baby growing in the belly of his heroin-addicted girlfriend, Anita. It wasn't the prospect of another kid that occupied his thoughts. It was the thought of who the father might be. In his heroin haze that summer, Keith and Anita seldom had sex with each other.

Keith preferred the convenience of manual ejaculation. Anita preferred whatever, whoever was nearest, willing, and most charming, traits McJagger, despite his new marital bliss had in spades. and the tension was thick, enough to perhaps make lesser men throwing the towel on the madness of exile on the French Riviera and inject the suicide files of morphine left behind by the Nazis in the basement of Nelcott. But Mick had a record to do, and Keith had more dope to do. Somehow, they'd have to see themselves through,

but first, there was the matter of the Corsicans. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. Mick Jagger was in the basement. the dank, dusty makeshift recording studio Keith had cobbled together to record their new album in. It was as dark down here as the debauchery upstairs in the living quarters. Mick wanted no part of what was going on up there. He was down here with Charlie, Bill, and the other Mick banging around in old blues that stank of desperation, hoping to inspire Keith to join them and get something down on tape.

But the jam without Keith was obviously uninspired, and besides, Keith was obviously preoccupied. Johnny braces had made the connection, finally. It's what Keith and Anita were waiting for. A connection to weight, serious dope, enough heroin to fuel Nelcott for a month at the time, $9,000 worth. The Corsicans had come through for Johnny, which was a relief. Had they not, Johnny would have been out serious bread and with little recourse. These Corsicans were a nasty lot. Big and intimidating.

They sweat, Tropicana, and their glands released a scent that could only be described as a mix of cheap cologne, hand-rolled tobacco and feta cheese. Their gold chains and sweat-stained dax summer suits screamed Nouveau drug money, while the bulges along their waistbands screamed indiscriminate murder for hire. Riviera Cowboys, every bit as outlaws, the tax exiles and junkie hangers-on sitting across the table from them.

They fit right in, but Johnny Braces was worried. The Corsicans might have a look around the mansion and realized there was a bigger score to be had than the nine grand a month in dope trade. Kidnapping can fetch big bucks and that little boy, the one they call Marlin, looked mighty vulnerable running around unattended to by his junkie parents. But something in the vacant eyes of the pirate-looking father with the snagletooth and wiry fuck-all frame worn them off. The monthly nut would have to do. They took their cash and split, back on their speedboats and off into the ocean from whence they came. Grand Parsons stood by,

wild-eyed. His whistle wet with junky anticipation. He watched as Keith stepped on the fresh batch of Corsican delivered heroin. Keith was shabby but surgical in his approach. Hovering over his rented mansion's dining room table shirtless, wearing nothing but low slung striped corduroys, he carefully doled out the appropriate balance of key nine and then talcum powder and added it to the pile of pink tie heroin. The heroin was incredibly pure and thus deadly. Graham suggested and cutting it with laundry detergent. Inexperienced in most things in life compared to Keith Richards, Graham Parsons was overruled.

This incredibly lethal heroin needed to be tempered, but Keyes didn't want to turn it into a batch of streets gag. Last year, while on tour in the States, Keith had heard of a drug dealer in Harlem who had been flying in nearly pure heroin from Vietnam and distributing it at a 12% potency compared to the usual 5% of most street dope. The Harlem Dope King's trick was cutting the smack with key nine and manite,

non-intoxicating medication as opposed to cutting it like most dealers did with rat poison, or as Graham had suggested, with laundry detergent. If they were going to make this kilo last a month before the Corsican zipped in again, up the French Riviera on their speedboats, then Keith needed to cut the smack properly. Key nine, yes, talcum powder maybe, laundry detergent definitely not. Graham felt the sting of dejection but shrugged it off. He needed a fix, getting a hair across his ass about it wasn't going to help matters. Satisfied that the heroin was properly calibrated,

Keith dipped his German hunting knife into the pile, scooped out a sizable bump, turned to Graham who was standing it aside, nearly salivating it in a voice that was part laughter, part two pack a day cough said, Have at it, boy. Graham delicately brought his nose to the blade, looked up to Keith dutifully, and with gratitude pressed his right thumb to his right nostril,

vacuuming up the powder in one quick snort. The heroine shot through him like a comet, hard, fast, and without regard for anything in its path. Graham stumbled a bit, groped about with his hands, resting them on the dining room table's surface and hung his heavy head to his chest. His long, dark hair swung delicately as he tried steadying himself. He then gently slumped back into the chair behind him and nodded off.

Keith laughed to himself, thinking, lightweight. Then, finally, decided it was time to go to work. Graham awoke to the sounds of Keith and his bandmates messing with the slow blues from the studio in the cellar.

Mick laid it on thick with a vocal, but the tune quickly devolved. It was obvious to Keith lost interest in whatever diddley-ask who do Mick was attempting to conjure. Then Graham heard the newly familiar chorus to what would become a stone's masterpiece all down the line,

burbling up from the basement into a blast of swampy sonic magnificence. G, C, D, back to the G. Keith carved out the riff with his telly. Charlie and Bill pulled the rhythm into form. Mick Taylor skidded across the top of it all with his loose slide while Jagger channeled Big Mama Thornton through his skinny English frame.

Keith then pushed the tune to the four chord. Mick hit the chorus. Keith couldn't contain himself. He muscled over to Mick and sang out into Jagger's handheld mic alongside him. The two of them a shambolic mess of spontaneous rock and roll brilliance. Their voices saturated with junk and ambition respectively. And before jumping back into the riff, Keith let out a short, ecstatic, yeah. Graham heard it all unfold from upstairs. He brimmed with jealousy. In the basement, while the stones were recording, was strictly off limits unless you were

contributing to the music in a meaningful way. And well-meaning as he was, there was nothing meaningful about Graham Parsons' contribution to the Rolling Stones' recordings while exiled on the French Riviera. Unless, of course, you count being Keith Richards' junkie pilotfish is particularly meaningful. Now, during working hours, midnight-ish to whenever Keith passed out, Graham was relegated to the upstairs with the women and the rest of the junkie hangers on. None of this is to say that Graham and Keith didn't have a special relationship. They did, for sure.

He and Keith would get high and sit around talking country music until the sun came. came up. It was a genuine mutual admiration club, and it drove Mick Jagger nuts. Here was Mick fighting for the survival of their band trying to move hell and earth to engage Keith, his songwriting partner, creatively, only to be continuously iced out by Keith while he got high and traded old honky-tong songs on acoustics with another songwriter Graham Parsons for hours on end. Graham knew Mick hated him, hated the contention that someone else, someone like Graham Parsons was going to teach him, Keith Richards or any of the Rolling Stones, for that matter, about country music.

After all, on their previous smash hit long player's sticky fingers, Mick had written the country inspired Dead Flowers, Fuck You Very Much, Mr. Parsons. The rivalry drove Mick, and eventually Mick's drive did what it always did, caught Keith up in its draft and pulled him into the creative fray until finally, the two got down to doing what they'd left England to do. Make the greatest rock and roll record of all time. But the record wouldn't be completed at Villanelle Cot.

French police were polite but stern. They'd come calling to follow up on various reports. Corsican drug dealers were seen entering the house. There were reports of rampant drug use, including from minors, and there were also rumors of minors being assaulted sexually. A result, no doubt of Sketchy Oliver is Randy Mandi's. Despite this serious list of transgressions, the local authorities did not, it seemed,

take the searching of the house seriously. When they left, Anita moved quick. She knew what was up. There was no search because the cops were looking for a bribe, which Keith was too oblivious to offer, which meant by Anita's estimation that the authorities would be back, and this time, not so lackluster in their search.

Convinced they were still out there watching the house, Anita grabbed as much dope as she could fit into her purse and then grabbed Keith by the hand who then grabbed Marlon and the three of them headed to their upstairs bedroom the drill, the bus drill, had been well rehearsed out the bedroom window onto the roof of the mobile recording truck down its side onto the manicured lawn

down the back steps to the dock onto the speedboat and the fuck out of dodge. And just like that, up next, the Wild Wild West, Los Angeles. The band due to the heavy sales of their previous record sticky figures, had banked enough bread during their time away from the UK in France to finance the completion of the record in America. A country whose music, blues, country, and R&B, the band, like most of their contemporaries, found endlessly compelling. American music so compelled

the Rolling Stones that no matter what their situation, exiled, addicted, whatever, they were able to lock into the music and keep themselves from spinning off at the face of the earth. Despite whatever desperate circumstance they found themselves in, the Rolling Stones always seemed to rise to the creative challenge. Their approach to their craft, making the greatest rock and roll music the world had ever heard, being the greatest rock and roll band the world had ever seen, and doing it all without a playbook, was inspired.

America was big and its music worthy of respect. Mick and Keith knew that if they were going to fuck with it, they needed to treat it with the reverence it deserved. So when it came to their craft, the band worked hard. Dope, guns, money, and women could wait. As careless as it seemed, rock and roll was serious business. For rock musicians in the early 70s, for Graham Parsons, Eric Clapton, Leon Russell, Elton, John, Led Zeppelin,

the Grateful Dead, the band, the Eagles, John, Paul, George, even Ringo. The race was on to see who could crack the code to American Roots Music, a music with a fascinatingly rich stew of influences, Delta Blues, Country, Soul, Gospel, R&B, This mixture had produced the first generation of rock and rollers that the stones and their contemporaries have all grown up on, and who had influenced them to start making music to begin with, artists like Elvis, Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bo Diddley, and others.

How could this endlessly fascinating music, American music, be reimagined into something entirely new for today's generation of rock and roll fans? That was the question. And at Villanelle caught in the summer of 1971, almost by accident, the Rolling Stones answered. It was a question they were uniquely qualified to answer. Their situation in exile meant they were as steeped in desperation as the financially strapped post-war blues musicians

who inspired them to pick up guitars in the first place. And they'd spent the entirety of their post-pubescent lives studying and trying to replicate American music, all while embodying the fuck-all ethos of the evolving rock star avatar. If success for the straight world is when preparation, and opportunity align, then success for the Rolling Stones was when circumstance and necessity aligned. Preparation wasn't part of the equation. Musically, they'd been preparing to make this record their whole lives. In that record, the one they began at Nellcott, the basic tracks they'd cobbled

together in a basement through a haze of dope, desperation, and distractions, thick personal tension, electrical fires, small-time burglaries, police raids, gunplay, what the Rolling Stones emerged with while exiled in a foreign country, away from their home country, was a wholly unique interpretation of another country entirely, America. The music the Stones desperately concocted in Keith's sweaty basement would shine a light on the underbelly of Americana and show the world the potential of where rock music as a genre could go. Exile on Main Street, the record they emerged with was a masterpiece. It was official. The race was won. Despite their dysfunction, despite their dysfunction, despite their

desperation, the Rolling Stones were kings. They may have been exiled outlaws, but they were now rock and roll royalty. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Axist member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelampod.com

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and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at DisgracelandPod. Rockerola.