Making "Exile on Main Street"

Since the Rolling Stones make it a practice never to travel anywhere without having a doctor around, their local physician by this point had already been sending around what in France is called a piquer (someone like a district nurse) to administer injectibles at Nellcote. To this point in time, the substance being injected on a daily basis is vitamin B-12. Back then, this practice was all the rage for those with money on both sides of the Atlantic who found themselves in high-pressure situations and could not be bothered to exercise in order to keep the old immune system up.

"Keith was absolutely in physical pain," says Tommy Weber. "And he knew what it was about. And he knew what it was going to do. He saw it in the world. He was actually pissed off that he had to be the person who had to keep all these people in line, including Mick, who was the whipping boy. When you realize that, you understand that Keith was free. He could go as far as he wanted to. He could allow Mick to take all the judgment of the straight world while he was able to really try and find out what the fuck was going on."

Whether it is just a simple desire to numb the physical pain that causes Keith to begin using again or the realization that with the mobile parked outside the villa, the time has finally come for him to begin work on the new album and that in order to do so, he will not only have to go down into that dank basement each night but also plumb the hidden depths of his own musical soul, an expedition he does not feel he can undertake without serious chemical assistance, no one can say for sure. "That was why he said it," Tommy explains. "Obviously, it had been weighing on his mind and he'd been trying not to start himself back up again, knowing that the work was there and the work required that level of decadence. I don't think it was being in an altered state to make the music. It was the way of life. 'It's only rock & roll, but I like it.' I like it. It was the liking, the decadent state, that gave them that fantastic self-confidence to create that incredible work."

Whatever his real reasons may have been, Keith is the one who places the order. And so the madness at Villa Nellcote that summer begins in earnest.