Exile On Main Street: Nellcote
Anita: “It was this marathon of music, it was quite incredible, but it was also a nightmare. I mean, creatively it was really great, and everybody was on the spot, but in all the time we were in that place we were never by ourselves. Day after day it was 10 people for lunch, 25 for dinner. I don’t think anyone slept that whole summer. I was completely responsible for everything that was happening. I was basically the only person who could speak French well. And there were the local cowboys - they kind of moved in on us. They said, ‘We’re going to come here, we’re going to destroy this place, we’re going to do this, that, and the other.’ So I thought, ‘Well, might as well hire them and make them work for us’, so we had all these kinds of locals working in the kitchens. And eventually we found, outside the door, drug dealers, and they were doing all kinds of things, and that’s how it came to everybody was coming and going - the musicians, everybody - so it was open house.”
Keith seemed content to absorb himself in the Riviera pursuits of eating, drinking, sunbathing, swimming, and sailing his boat, Mandrax, with whomever he could rouse from the Nellcote floors to act as his crew. He also found time for fatherhood. Two-year old Marlon, thus far, had seen little home life outside the tumbled hotel suites. Keith devoted the best part of every day to him, carrying him around clamped to the skinny chest that once admitted no encumbrances but its guitar strap and dangling cocaine spoon.
