The Basement at Nellcôte: How a French Villa's Damp Cellar Shaped 'Exile on Main St.'

The Rolling Stones fled to the South of France in 1971 as tax exiles, setting up a mobile recording studio in the damp, moldy basement of Keith Richards’s rented villa, Nellcôte. The space was a cramped, sweaty nightmare—humid, poorly lit, with the constant hum of generators and the smell of stale beer and hashish. That claustrophobic, almost subterranean atmosphere seeped directly into the music: the lyrics on *Exile on Main