Ain't It Time We Said Goodbye

by Robert Greenfield

  Depending on how Keith felt when he came downstairs in the morning, he might have someone bring around the motorboat so we could all go water-skiing in the bay. Or he might spend a few hours sitting in the sun on the back steps reading the day-old English newspapers that had just been delivered to the house. Lunch out on the patio was always a major production. What with all the fuming hash joints and bottles of ice-cold white wine being passed around the table, the meal would sometimes go on for hours.

  Once it was over, Keith might want to go for a drive in his red Jaguar XK-E. Stopping at some deserted beach just before sunset, he was more than happy to spend half an hour skipping stones off the water so they bounced again and again before disappearing beneath the surface. The point being that if Keith was happy, then so was everyone else at Villa Nellcôte. Whatever he chose to do on any given day became the central activity in which everyone else wanted to be involved.

  Actually knowing who all these people really were or what they were doing at Nellcôte turned out to be a question no one could answer. If Keith said someone was cool, nothing more needed to be asked about them. With the possible exception of Anita, the single most impressive-looking person in the house was Tommy Weber, a long-haired race car driver who seemed to have stepped right out of the pages of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night.

  Tommy’s two young and completely adorable sons, Jake and Charley, also known as “Boo-boo,” were also there. This was a somewhat sad story because their mother, a beautiful young woman who called herself Ruby Tuesday, had only just taken her own life. Despite the fact that he was still mourning her loss, Tommy seemed to be having an extraordinary amount of fun at Nellcôte. One day he impressed everyone by telling us how he had just picked up a woman and then had it off with her on Errol Flynn’s yacht, which was moored nearby.

  And then there was Spanish Tony Sanchez. With his dark shirred hair and sharp-boned face, Tony, or “Spanish,” as only Keith ever called him, would not have looked out of place selling stolen goods on some crowded street corner in Soho. Although Tony seemed a pleasant enough fellow, what I did not know then was that he was not just Keith and Anita’s friend but also the long-standing dealer by appointment to the Rolling Stones.

  Desperately in need of money some years later, Tony would write a scurrilous and curiously inaccurate book about his drug-filled days and nights with Brian Jones, Marianne Faithfull, Keith Richards, Anita Pallenberg, and Mick Jagger. By then, Tony’s time of service with the Stones was long since over. And although Keith so terrified the man while standing beside him at a urinal in a club in London one night that Tony actually pissed on himself, he somehow managed to pass away some years later in a remarkably peaceful manner.

  Accompanying Tony at Nellcôte was his girlfriend, Madeleine. Despite never having very much to say, she also seemed quite nice. Two years after her stay in the South of France, Madeleine would be turning tricks in Brighton for fifteen quid a night to support her heroin habit. She would later be found dead by her close friend Marianne Faithfull.

  Wearing a full white racing suit adorned with a Grand Prix emblem, Keith’s good friend Stash also came to stay for a while at Nellcôte. Born Stanislaus Klossowski de Rola in Switzerland, Stash had attended an English boarding school, become an actor, and then played in a band that had opened for the Rolling Stones at the Olympia in Paris in 1964. As I later learned, he was the son of Balthus, the world-famous painter of prepubescent girls whose genius as an artist apparently included imagining himself to be a count, which may have explained why Stash liked to refer to himself as the heir apparent to the long-defunct Polish throne.

  It was not just the complete lack of pertinent background information concerning my fellow residents at Nellcôte that kept me in the dark about them. The rhythm of daily life in the house was so removed from ordinary reality that I was completely oblivious to much of what was actually going on around me. All I could really think about was when I would get to talk to Keith again.

  Fueled by tequila, a libation no one I knew in England was then drinking on a regular basis, my second interview session with Keith took place right after lunch a few days later. While we were talking to one another, our conversation seemed utterly brilliant to me. When I played back the tape later that afternoon, I realized that the gaps between my questions and Keith’s answers kept increasing in direct proportion to our continuing intake of tequila. By the end of the interview, the two of us were communicating in monosyllabic grunts that would have made no sense whatsoever on the printed page.

  Despite how badly I needed to talk with him again, days passed without another session. Realizing that Keith was not about to sit down with me again until he was good and ready, I stopped emerging from my room bright and early each morning with my tape recorder in my hand. On some level, I cannot say I was all that unhappy because in that house, the music never stopped.

  On a daily basis, cartons of albums that had not yet been released on either side of the Atlantic were delivered to Villa Nellcôte and then stacked up beside a turntable on which classic old soul, the blues, George Jones, Merle Haggard, Buddy Holly, and Chuck Berry were always going around. Long before it became the rage, Keith was crazy about reggae. Over and over, he would play a song with an infectious beat called “Funky Jamaica” by the JA Horns that really knocked him out.

  Since no one on the planet was ever going to tell Keith Richards what kind of music he was going to play in his own house, I forced myself to stay up later than everyone else one night so I could put James Taylor’s Mud Slide Slim and the Blue Horizon on the stereo without being laughed at. As I was lying back against some cushions and listening to it in a far corner of the darkened living room, the back patio doors suddenly swung open and in came Keith.

  Stooped over like a peasant gathering grain in a painting by Millet, he slowly began picking up the toys that Marlon had left scattered all over the living room floor during the day. In many ways, it was what any loving father would do before retiring for the night. Only as Keith performed this task, he happened to spy a rather large and distinctly ominous-looking capsule that was lying in plain view on the Persian carpet.

  Whether it was a leaper, a creeper, a black beauty, or some consciousness-expanding psychedelic substance, I had no idea. But without breaking rhythm or even pausing to consider the consequences, Keith picked up the pill and popped it right into his mouth. Shooting me a cynical look that left no doubt as to what he thought of my current musical selection, Keith then kept right on moving up the stairs. Despite how hard-core I now knew the man could sometimes be, even I was not prepared for the performance Keith put on at lunch the next day.

  Within the music business by this time, word had gotten out that the Stones were planning to tour America once they had finished recording their new album. Like moths to a flame, various rock ’n’ roll entrepreneurs made it their business to journey to the South of France to offer their services in putting the tour together. Earlier in the month, David Geffen had done his best to persuade the Stones that no one was better suited for the job than him only to have Mick Jagger decide otherwise.

  Seated across from Keith at lunch this day at Nellcôte, the candidate in question was Jon Taplin, a Princeton graduate who was then managing The Band and who would go on to become a well-known film producer. Although he seemed perfectly pleasant, not to mention a far more competent businessman than anyone who had ever taken the Stones out on tour before, something about him rubbed Keith the wrong way.

  As Taplin began detailing precisely how he would handle the tour of America to a tableful of people, none of whom he had been introduced to by name, Keith looked decidedly bored. Reaching for his acoustic Gibson Hummingbird guitar adorned with tiny flowers and butterflies on the pick guard, Keith leaned his head in close to the strings to make sure they were properly tuned.

  Over and over again all week long until it seemed like he was trying to hypnotize himself, Keith had been playing “The Jerk,” a Curti
s Mayfield and the Impressions sound-alike that had been a big hit for Don Julian and the Larks on the Money label in 1964. With his eyes shut and his head cradled against the body of his guitar, Keith started strumming the song’s basic riff while mouthing the lyrics to himself.

  Although Taplin did his best to keep right on pitching, he soon realized that no man was a match for Keith Richards when he was in this particular mood. Knowing he was not going to get the deal, Taplin quickly left the house once lunch was over. As though he had never even been there, Keith just kept right on playing the song over and over again.

  Against such a force of nature, I stood no chance at all. And so when several more days passed without Keith sitting down to talk to me again, I knew there was nothing I could do about it but wait. At Nellcôte, everyone else still seemed to be having a fine time. Unlike them, I had an interview to do with Keith. But no matter how hard I tried, I could not get him to cooperate with me. For me, what had been rock ’n’ roll heaven had now become rock ’n’ roll hell. Trapped in the ninth circle where only the very worst sinners could be found suffering for eternity, all I could do was wait.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  VILLA NELLCÔTE II, JUNE 5–11, 1971

  ALTHOUGH I COULD NOT LET IT SHOW, I was now just as frantic as I had been while driving that sports car to Nellcôte for the very first time. Back in London, my sister and her two friends, all of whom had just graduated from college and were on the grand tour of Europe, were staying in my flat. I was supposed to be there with them but instead I was stuck at Villa Nellcôte hoping that Keith Richards would remember I was still alive so he would grant me another audience.

  Like clockwork every day, I called Andrew Bailey in London to tell him how far away I still was from completing an assignment that should have been long since done. Caked with dust outside the villa, my incredibly expensive French sports car sat baking in the blazing hot Mediterranean sun. By the time I finally gave it back, the rental bill would amount to more than I made in a year working for the magazine.

  At some point, Keith and I did a third session together that was far more scattered than I would have liked. And then … nothing. For reasons known only to him, Keith had lost all interest in the project. Like the great fish that Hemingway’s old man waited his entire life to catch, Keith had spit out the hook and was now running away from me at top speed through some deep and silent sea only he could plumb.

  Between the two of us, everything was still cool and he was still nice to me. But in his mind, the interview was now a thing of the past. Because Keith thought it was something he had already done, I soon became part of the scenery. Like everyone else at Nellcôte, I was now staying there because I had no place else to go. Not that any of them shared my discontent. Because the villa was the center of the hip universe, there was nowhere else they would have rather been.

  One day after everyone else had left the villa to accompany Keith and Anita somewhere I did not want to go, I walked into the living room only to discover Mick Jagger sitting at the piano. Telling him how glad I was to see him, I shook his hand and we began to talk. Although we had not seen one another since he had confronted me between shows in the dressing room at the Roundhouse, the subject never came up between us. And while Mick had married Bianca since I had last seen him, I was not about to discuss that particular topic with him either.

  Slowly picking out a melody on the keys with one finger at a time, Mick asked me if I knew where Keith might be at the moment. When I explained that he and Anita had left the house a while ago along with everyone else, Mick sighed like the weight of the world was upon his shoulders and told me that the two of them were supposed to be working together that day.

  Although the Rolling Stones had been in the South of France for two months, the mobile recording truck had only just arrived at Villa Nellcôte. As Keith had happily explained to me, the current plan was to record the new album right there in the basement of his very own house. What Keith did not mention was that he and Mick had yet to come up with a single new song. It was for this reason that Mick was now playing the role of the wounded child for all he was worth.

  Although it had been years since Mick and Keith had shared a flat and it would have been impossible to imagine them living in the same house for more than a day, being in the South of France had served to increase the psychic distance between them. Because Keith did not approve on any level of the life that Mick was leading, their working relationship itself was now in danger.

  Despite my heartfelt promise not to delve back into italics, I feel compelled to do so one last time in order to detail why all the simmering tension that Mick and Keith had kept under wraps during the English tour was now an everyday fact of life in the South of France. Although Bianca would later say that her marriage to Mick ended on their wedding day, that star-studded event had also put the final nail in the coffin of the personal relationship between Mick and Keith.

  Although Keith and Anita had been together for four years, they had never felt the need to get married. In their view, this was something that only straight people did. Nor did they see Bianca as someone suited in any way whatsoever for the rock ’n’ roll lifestyle they had shared with Mick and Marianne Faithfull. Adding yet more fuel to the fire, Mick had spent the month before his wedding undergoing Catholic instruction so he could marry Bianca in church after a civil service at which Keith had served as the best man.

  For those who may doubt that Mick’s wedding day marked the final parting of the ways between the two songwriters who were the heart and soul of the Rolling Stones, consider how Keith chose to deal with the event. After getting as high as possible and then grappling with the local chief of police outside of the council chambers where the civil ceremony was about to take place, Keith chose for reasons known only to him to sit on the bride’s side of the aisle. And while he was the one who came up with the bright idea of getting a massive rock superstar jam going at the party to celebrate Mick and Bianca’s nuptials, Keith then offered his ultimate judgment on the entire affair by passing out in the balcony before he could even step onstage to play.

  By choosing to make Bianca his lawfully wedded wife, Mick had made it plain that he was now beginning yet another brand-new chapter in his life. Although Mick and Keith were still joined at the hip when it came to writing, recording, and performing with the Rolling Stones, they were now heading off in wildly different directions.

  And so what I did not realize as I watched Mick Jagger sitting at the piano in the living room of Villa Nellcôte was that from this point on, nothing between him and Keith would ever again be as it had been before. As everyone would come to learn in time, the music itself was all that they now really had in common.

  After spending an hour waiting in vain for Keith to return, Mick walked out the front door, got into his car, and drove back to the mansion where he was living with Bianca. Unlike him, I could not leave Nellcôte until I had found a way to make Keith sit down with me for one last session.

  Going into complete panic mode after a few more days had passed without being able to make this happen, I called Marshall Chess in London. Throwing myself on his mercy, I explained how badly things had been going for me at Nellcôte lately and told him that if Keith did not sit down to talk to me again, the Rolling Stone interview with him would never appear in the magazine because it would not exist.

  Getting on the case as only he could, Marshall immediately flew to the South of France. After he and Keith had vanished behind closed doors for what I later learned was a prolonged sit-down, Marshall told me that I would have just as much time as I needed with Keith the next morning.

  On what I still remember as a particularly lovely day in the South of France, Keith and Marshall and I sat down at a wooden table beneath some trees behind the house. As a hot breeze from the sea rustled through the leaves above our heads, tiny songbirds trilled lilting melodies in the fragrant sunshine. Taking one hit after another off a tightly rolled joint as we talked so
that the sound of the match scraping against the side of the box in his hand rumbled like thunder into my microphone, Keith was just as good as his word. Once the session was over, I had no more questions to ask.

  At long last I was done. I had my parole. Packing my bag as quickly as I could, I said goodbye to one and all and walked out the front door of Villa Nellcôte for what I thought was the very last time. As I began driving back to Cannes in a car that now looked as though I had left it parked in the middle of the Gobi Desert for the past few months, I realized I could not submit the interview until I had given Keith a chance to read it. Which meant that I would be going back to Nellcôte again.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  VILLA EDEN, JUNE 12–18, 1971

  IN THE APTLY NAMED VILLA EDEN IN CANNES, I found myself sharing a dark apartment on the bottom floor with Jerry Pompili, whom the Stones had brought over to the South of France to continue working for them after the English tour had ended. For reasons neither one of us understood, this otherwise very ordinary block of flats on rue de Campestre seemed to have come equipped with a never-ending supply of hot and cold running stewardesses, all of whom were willing to do anything they could to get closer to the Rolling Stones.

  Setting myself up at a table in the front room, I began transcribing the cassettes I had brought with me from Nellcôte. Without using earphones or a foot pedal, I sat for hours listening to what Keith had said to make sure I got every word right. Never all that easy to understand under the best of circumstances, Keith was virtually impossible to comprehend when he began slurring his words in what has since come to be his characteristic manner of speaking.

  After piling up as many single-spaced pages of transcript as I could, I would climb into the front seat of Jerry’s redoubtable VW van so we could get something to eat. Since he had already determined that St.-Tropez was the place to be, we found ourselves there on more than one occasion. Having been invited to a birthday party for a local deejay one evening, Jerry and I arrived at the very posh Hotel Byblos where Mick and Bianca had spent their wedding night together just a month before.