The amazing “French history of the Rolling Stones” told in a documentary on france.tv – franceinfo

The Rolling Stones and France have a special bond, fueled as the hallowed formula of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. This is the story that Raphaëlle Baillot and Elise Le Bivic wanted to tell in the documentary The French History of the Rolling Stones, broadcast on June 20 on France 5 and to see on France.tv until December 27, 2022. An interesting booster shot as the group of septuagenarians, of whom, since the death last year of the late Charlie Watts, only Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, is performing in France this week in Lyon (Groupama Stadium on Tuesday 19 July) and in Paris (Hippodrome de Longchamp on Saturday July 23). The story begins in 1964, when the Stones appeared for the first time on French television, that in black and white of General de Gaulle. “It changed my life (…) It was a slap in the face of the establishment,” recalls singer Antoine. “The Rolling Stones are not gentle, they are not nice and smiling. They represent the hatred of conventions, sex, violence”, assures a TV journalist for his part when they give their first concert in Paris, in full yéyé period. In 1966, their passage to the Olympia confirms this image of bad boys: the room of the boulevard des Capucines is ransacked. Next stop on the tour: Marseille. A legendary event, witnessed in the documentary by those who were in the front row: the TV host Jean-Pierre Foucault (then very young) who organized the concert, the long-haired singer Antoine who provided their first part, and photographer Jean-Marie Périer. As at the Olympia, the outburst of young spectators will do its work in the Vallier room: broken windows, 130 chairs torn off while Mick Jagger will end up on a stretcher with a black eye. “We can’t control the crowd, because they don’t want to be controlled”, then simply underlined Mick Jagger about this “pure moment of rock’n’roll”.

The Nellcôte villa in Villefranche-sur-Mer (Alpes-Maritimes), rented in 1971 by Keith Richards and where the Rolling Stones recorded the album “Exile on Main St”. (© BANGUMI) The sequence that began in 1971 between France and the “Rolling Stones” is undoubtedly the best known. Taxed in Great Britain at 95% as very high incomes, the group slams the door of its country for a dream tax exile: Keith Richards opts for Villefranche-sur-Mer near Nice, where he rents a superb neo-style villa -classic, and where Mick, temporarily installed in Paris, but also Bill and Charlie, established on the Côte d’Azur, will soon join him. There, in the basement of the Villa Nellcôte, they will record their best album, the double Exile on Main St. During this stay which will run from spring to the end of summer 1971, the villa is open to all winds , to musicians, passing friends and trendy wildlife. The young photographer Dominique Tarlé, who came for a day, will stay there for several months – “But where are you going? Your room is ready”, Keith Richards had launched to him, he recalls in the doc. His photos, which show the Stones in the natural, basking in the warmth of summer, have since toured the world. The climate in Nellcôte is relaxed because not only are the Stones’ companions present, but Keith also invites all his friends with children so that his young son Marlon “is not surrounded only by weird adults”. A trompe-l’oeil family atmosphere because drugs flow freely, both the heroin in which Keith fell and of which very close Marseille is then the hub (the famous French Connection), as well as the cocaine which he are delivered in person by their English dealer Tommy Weber. For the first time, his son Charley Weber testifies in front of the camera of how he and his brother Jake, aged 6 and 8 at the time, acted as mules for their father at the airport, going through customs with drug packets taped to the chest and back. Of his stay at Nellcôte, he nevertheless has good memories: “Anita (Pallenberg) cooked food and Keith was very nice.” Bianca Perez and Mick Jagger during their wedding on May 12, 1971 in the small church of Saint-Tropez. The photographer in the center is the Briton Patrick Lichfield. (REG LANCASTER / HULTON ARCHIVE / GETTY) The marriage of Mick Jagger to jet setter Bianca Pérez in the small church of Saint-Tropez, in May 1971, is also recounted and “reconstituted” with relish by one of the witnesses, Jean -Marie Périer, with period images. It opens the sex chapter of the documentary. The wedding evening, at Byblos, says Périer, is a “monstrous bacchanalia”. And to hammer: “All the women I saw at the time wanted to fuck Mick Jagger”. It was “clusters of chicks everywhere, you just had to bend over”. Groupies – a word coined by Stones bassist Bill Wyman – “like sex and sleeping with famous people,” Mick Jagger said at the time. Except that they were not always consenting, as we can understand from the evocation of Cocksucker Blues, the legendary documentary on the backstage of the Exile on Main St. tour, produced in 1972 by photographer Robert Frank, who had had carte blanche. A sulphurous and not very glorious film still banned from broadcasting by the group. The attitude of the Stones on the matter seems to have nonetheless spread. Guitarist Yarol Poupaud, who would dream of being reincarnated as Mick Jagger, assures you frankly: in the 90s, with FFF, “yes, we were stoned, yes, we banged girls (…) it was part of the package “rock ‘n’ roll. Louis Bertignac, who compares the repertoire of the Stones to “gold bars”, also admits that his roadies served as touts for girls after the concerts of Telephone. All this to end up “drinking tea and doing yoga”, quips Marlon Magnée, the co-founder of the group La Femme. Today, “the Stones are a vestige of the time, they’re a bit like the Mozarts of rock’n’roll”, he summarizes: “They managed to hold the marathon until end.” To attend a concert of the most enduring rock’n’roll group in 2022 is to come “to listen to your own past because the songs are often linked to our memories”, analyzes for her part Carla Bruni. “We are coming to see a legendary group, of course, but what we are going to see is all our youth.” “The French history of the Rolling Stones” documentary by Raphaëlle Baillot and Elise Le Bivic (unpublished, 87 mins) can be seen on France.tv until December 27, 2022.