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

The Rolling Stones and France have a special bond, fueled as the hallowed formula of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. It is this story that Raphaëlle Baillot and Elise Le Bivic wanted to tell in the documentary The French history of the Rolling Stonesbroadcast on June 20 on France 5 and to be seen on France.tv until December 27, 2022. An interesting reminder as the group of septuagenarians, of whom there are none left since the death last year of the late Charlie Watts , as Mick Jagger, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood, is performing in France this week in Lyon (Groupama Stadium on Tuesday July 19) 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 the singer Antoine. “The Rolling Stones are not gentle, they are not kind and smiling. They represent hatred of conventions, sex, violence“, assures a TV journalist for his part when they give their first concert in Paris, in the middle of the yéyé period.

In 1966, their visit to the Olympia confirmed this image of bad boys: the room on the Boulevard des Capucines was 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. “Can’t control the crowd ’cause they don’t wanna be controlled“, then simply underlined Mick Jagger about this “pure rock’n’roll moment“.

The sequence that began in 1971 between France and the “Pierres qui Roulent” 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 Street.

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 fauna. 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 remembers in the doc. His shots, 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 “don’t just be surrounded by weird adults“. A trompe-l’oeil family atmosphere because drugs flow freely, both the heroin into which Keith fell and of which very close Marseille is then the hub (the famous French Connection), as well as the cocaine that they 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 in Nellcôte, he nevertheless has good memories: “Anita (Pallenberg) was cooking and Keith was very friendly.“

The marriage of Mick Jagger to the jet setter Bianca Pérez in the small church of Saint-Tropez, in May 1971, is also related and “reconstituted” with greed by one of the witnesses, Jean-Marie Périer, helped by images from the period. He 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 back then wanted to fuck Mick Jagger“. It was “clusters of chicks everywhere, you just had to bend over“. Groupies – a word supposedly coined by Stones bassist Bill Wyman – “love sex and sleep with famous people“, explains Mick Jagger at the time.

Except that they were not always consenting, as we understand from the mention of Cocksucker Blues, the mythical behind-the-scenes documentary on the tour ofExile on Main street, made in 1972 by the 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 dreams of being reincarnated as Mick Jagger, assures us frankly: in the 90s, with FFF, “yes, we were stoned, yes, we had sex with 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 acted as touts for girls after the concerts of Telephone.

All this to end”by drinking tea and doing yoga“, quips Marlon Magnée, the co-founder of the group La Femme. Today, “the Stones, it’s a vestige of the time, it’s a bit like the Mozarts of rock’n’roll“, he summarizes: “They managed to hold the marathon to the end.” To attend a concert of the most enduring rock’n’roll group in 2022 is to come “listen to your own past because the songs are often linked to our memories“, analyzes Carla Bruni for her part. “We come to see a legendary group, of course, but what we are going to see basically is all our youth.“

“The French History of the Rolling Stones” documentary by Raphaëlle Baillot and Elise Le Bivic (unreleased, 87 mins) can be seen on France.tv until December 27, 2022.