The Rolling Stones at Villa Nellcôte

Keith Richards, Anita Pallenberg and Gram Parsons in grand flophouse mode at the 16-bedroom villa, where they recorded Exile On Main St in 1971. Tarlé was given unprecedented access to the private life of the band while they created the seminal album Photograph: Dominique Tarlé Photograph: guardian.co.uk Keith Richards at the imposing doors of the mansion, built in the 1890s. Richards said it looked like it was decorated for 'bloody Marie Antoinette' Photograph: Dominique Tarlé Photograph: guardian.co.uk The Rolling Stones, Pallenberg, Parsons and kids lunch at the south of France villa, where they spent six months in 1971 avoiding the English taxman Photograph: Dominique Tarlé Photograph: guardian.co.uk Mick Jagger gets some headspace outside the villa on the Côte d'Azur. 'People appeared, disappeared, no one had a last name, you didn't know who anybody was,' remembers Robert Greenfield, who was at Nellcôte to interview Keith Richards for Rolling Stone Photograph: Dominique Tarlé Photograph: guardian.co.uk Jagger with Richards. The basement of the villa, where the Stones jammed, had been a Gestapo headquarters during the second world war. 'It's OK, we're here now,' Richards is said to have told recording engineer Andy Johns Photograph: Dominique Tarlé Photograph: guardian.co.uk Richards and Parsons. 'Keith and Gram were two peas in a pod,' says Gretchen Carpenter, then married to Parsons. 'They were best friends, exploring music. They were instantaneous friends, and instantaneous troublemakers' Photograph: Dominique Tarlé Photograph: guardian.co.uk Jagger and Richards. 'There was a friction at that time,' says Marshall Chess, who ran the Stones's own record label. 'Mick didn't like Exile; it was being made in Keith's domain. And then there was the drug issue' Photograph: Dominique Tarlé Photograph: guardian.co.uk Jagger and Jake Weber, son of drug dealer Tommy, who stayed at the villa. 'If the kids wouldn't sleep, we'd take them out in a speedboat ride to Monte Carlo,' says Gretchen Carpenter. 'We'd have cocktails, and the kids would fall asleep on the way' Photograph: Dominique Tarlé Photograph: guardian.co.uk Mick Jagger. Ultimately, there was a drugs bust at Villa Nellcôte, which precipitated the Stones' rapid departure for the US, where they worked to make sense of the Nellcôte tapes – and, says Marshall Chess, 'Mick took control' Photograph: Dominique Tarlé Photograph: guardian.co.uk Richards and Pallenberg, who had rented the villa with their son Marlon, shortly after Anita had come out of rehab Photograph: Dominique Tarlé Photograph: guardian.co.uk Jagger and Richards. 'Sometimes turmoil and trouble in art make it come out good,' says Chess. 'Toulouse-Lautrec drank absinthe. Great jazz musicians shot heroin. It made for a strange scene, but that colouration, that quality is there in Exile' Photograph: Dominique Tarlé Photograph: guardian.co.uk