Lens on the Legends: Dominique Tarlé's Unforgettable Journey Living with The Rolling Stones at Villa Nellcote in 1971
Recently, I sat down with Dominique Tarlé, a French photographer who is renowned for his photos of Rock n Roll musicians like The Who, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and The Rolling Stones. In 1971, Dominique spent six months living on the French Riviera with The Stones at La Villa Nellcote, where he photographed some of the most intimate and personal photos of them that exist. Read on to see how it all played out.
Keith Richards by Dominique Tarlé
*Original conversation translated from French
AH: Dominique, you’ve had such a full life working as a photographer for some of the greatest rock bands of the past century. So tell me, how does one end up living with the Rolling Stones for 6 months?
DT: In fact, at 75, I like to take a look back at my life. I realize that I've always enjoyed discovering different worlds. After studying photography, I moved to London in the late sixties and met all those extraordinary musicians who were inspired by black American music. I was 20 years old, an unknown photographer, broke, and passionate about music. So there I was in London, and I had the opportunity to meet the Rolling Stones, the Who, Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, etc. Everything went so well. When the Rolling Stones decided to leave England and move to the South of France for a few months, I told their managers that I'd like to spend an afternoon with each of them and photograph them in their new environment in the Côte d'Azur.
AH: What happened next?
DT: The first person to welcome me for an afternoon at the Villa Nellcote was Keith Richards. At the end of the afternoon, I thank him, and he says, “Where are you going? Your room is ready”.
Keith Richards by Dominique Tarlé
AH: That's the chance of a lifetime. I can only imagine how that felt.
DT: I stayed for six months. As someone who had been photographing musicians since the age of 16, I wanted to find out who these people were offstage, when they were no longer in front of their audience. I wanted to know what they were really like. And that's when I discovered that they had created characters for the audience, but that they became themselves again when they left the stage. Keith Richards had a reputation for being wild, but what I saw, was a man who woke up at 7 am, seven days a week, to prepare breakfast himself for his son Marlon. They were all very normal offstage. Every morning, he wanted his son to discover the South of France, and the three of us set off in his magnificent Jaguar Type 1 convertible. And then, in the afternoons, Anita [Pallenberg] looked after their child. For Keith, it was time for music. Really, what the media said about these people and the reality was completely different.
Keith Richards and son Marlon by Dominique Tarlé
AH: Did you discover their music process during your time at the villa?
DT: Yes, nothing was written down. There were no scores. In fact, the Rolling Stones decided to record a new album, but there was no professional recording studio in the South of France at the time. The main problem was the power supply since rock bands use a lot of electricity. I pointed out to Keith that Villa Nellcote is on Avenue Louise Bordes, and that below the avenue is a railroad, so we decided to stretch a big cable and connect to the SNCF network (the regional train network in France) to power their studio sessions.
AH: That's incredible.
DT: And that's it. And then I discovered how these musicians work. They're really hard workers because they would meet Monday to Friday from dusk until dawn. For example, on a Monday evening, Keith Richards would go down to the studio with a riff idea in mind, and he’d play that riff to the drummer and the bassist. If the drummer or the bassist left his instrument to go and smoke a cigarette on the terrace, that meant the riff was no good. On the other hand, if the three of them started playing together, at that point all the others would arrive to find out what's going on and how they can get involved. They would play the same piece of music from 9.00 p.m. to 6.00 am.
Keith Richards and Mick Jagger by Dominique Tarlé
AH: How much music were they releasing at the time?
DT: Back then, bands like the Rolling Stones and other artists released two albums a year. That's a lot. So it was rehearsal, recording, then a U.S. tour or U.K. tour, a European tour, and then back to the studio. What these bands liked about their exile in the South of France is that they each had their own villa, and for three months, they don't move. That's what their girlfriends told me at the time. They said, “Our lives are a succession of hotel rooms. We're never at home, we don't have the time”. Really, the photos I've taken of the band show people who are savoring the moment and the pleasure of relaxing at home with their family, children, and friends.
Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg by Dominique Tarlé
AH: That's very beautiful. Can you tell me a little about how you got started in photography? What prompted you to start?
DT: It's simple. My parents and I lived in Paris in the 11ᵉ arrondissement on Boulevard Richard Lenoir. On Thursday afternoons, I didn’t have school, and my favorite walk was up Boulevard Beaumarché towards Place de la Bastille. There was a huge, well-known musical instrument store called Paul Beuscher. There were pianos, drums, saxophones, and guitars. And I wondered how musicians playing such different instruments could make music together. It was a mystery. But I was 13, 14 years old. I got to know the people who worked there, and they sold me some vinyl records. I discovered the American rockers of the fifties like Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran. And because of them, I learned about black American bluesmen like Jimmy Reed and Lightnin' Hopkins. However, my parents forbid me to listen to this kind of music at home.
AH: How did you get around that issue?
DT: I had a friend from school whose parents were much more tolerant. We would bring our vinyl records to listen to our favorite musicians together. Then one day, his father walks into his son's room, points at me, and beckons me to follow him. So I follow him, and we enter a small, pitch-black room. He does a couple of things I don't understand and dips a sheet of white paper into a basin. It looked like a bowl of water. And then, very slowly, I see a black-and-white image appear. Turns out that he had his own photo development lab at home. It was magical. My passion for photography really started in the lab. When I was 16, the cultural revolution was in full swing, and suddenly everything came from England. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the miniskirt, the birth control pill, and so on. That’s when I decided I would photograph the Beatles and the Rolling Stones at the Olympia in '64.
DT: And then, after my photography studies, I had yet another stroke of luck, in 1968. All of a sudden, my parents were terrified of the riots that were happening on the streets of Paris, and I had no trouble convincing them that I needed to live in London to perfect my English. From there, I went to London and met all these musicians while working as a photographer.
Mick Jagger by Dominique Tarlé
AH: Would you say you have a particular photographic style?
DT: Yes, it's very particular. In other words, when I first discovered photography, in the magazines devoted to photography, the photographers were very directive, with a very specific style, whatever the style of photo, whether nude, fashion, portrait, etc. Whereas I have the opposite attitude, i.e., I'm a contemplative photographer. My idea is to be invisible and to be very discreet and patient, waiting for the right moment. For example, I can't work for a magazine or a photojournalism agency that's going to tell me where I need to be and at what time because the photos need to be published. That's just not possible. If nothing happens for three or four hours, I don't shoot. But as soon as the moment arrives, you have to be available and attentive. That's my style, that's it. In fact, I like to say that I am an amateur photographer instead of a professional. Even if the term amateur has become pejorative in today’s language, for me, an amateur is a connoisseur. I'm a music and photo enthusiast, so I try to strike a balance between the two.
AH: That's very interesting. Did you realize that the photos you took during your time at the Villa Nellcote would become legendary one day?
DT: No. The moment a photographer releases the shutter button on his camera, before he's even had a chance to view the image, it's a thing of the past. And we have no idea what it will mean to people 50 years later. It's impossible. But looking back, I'd say that photography and music are wonderful time machines. I never stop. Sometimes I find myself back in 1964, 1971. It's incredible.
Mick Jagger by Dominique Tarlé
AH: Are there any other moments from that period that still stand out for you today?
DT: When I got back from the Villa Nellcote, all the people I knew in the music press industry gave me the cold shoulder. They said, "Yes, your photos are pretty good, but tomorrow the Rolling Stones will be somewhere else with another photographer and they won't be worth a damn".
AH: But that’s not what ended up happening, right?
DT: There was a rumor in the hip circles of the time that the reason I'd stayed with Keith Richards for so long was because I was a drug dealer. But I've never been into that. One day, I'd had enough, so I picked up my father's daily newspaper, Le Figaro, looked at the classified ads, and said to myself, "I'm going to find myself a job in another industry because all these idiots I'm hanging around with in Paris in the music business just don't suit me". And that's when I came across a classified ad: "Looking for a traffic agent.” Since people say I'm a smuggler, I'll become an air traffic controller at Orly airport. Every time I've had the opportunity to discover something new, it's been spontaneous. You have to have experiences that are very different from one another.
AH: The other day, you told me a little bit about the Rolling Stones being inspired by black American artists. Could you expand on that a little? Because it's very interesting.
DT: When I was 14 or 15, I was aware that white America had been built by black African slaves. Before, the land belonged to the Indigenous people of the region. Then, all of a sudden, this gigantic piece of land becomes the property of white colonialists, and the slaves who were brought there against their will were treated in a way that shocks me. For a young teenager like me, it was a completely frightening phenomenon to learn about. The true legacy of blues and rock n roll was important to the Stones. In the recording area of Keith Richards' villa, there was only one piece of decoration, it was a photo of Angela Davis.
The photo of Keith Richards sitting on the floor with a guitar, tells another story. One day, Keith received a guitar case, he opens the parcel and inside, he finds this guitar with a small piece of paper tucked between the strings. It's a gift from Eric Clapton, who searched for this guitar for a very long time because it belonged to a black American bluesman named Muddy Waters. Mick and Keith had been listening to Muddy Waters since they were 14 or 15 years old. And Muddy Waters had written a song called Rolling Stone Blues, hence the name of the band.
Mick Jagger and Keith Richards at Villa Nellcote by Dominique Tarlé/Galerie de l’Instant
AH: So you really get the feeling that they've honored the legacy of black American artists 100%.
DT: Yes, absolutely.
AH: That's impressive.
DT: Again, when the Rolling Stones created their band, what they had in mind was for it to last a few months. They only wanted to find a small club to play in front of 50 people every night. So they were the first to be surprised by their worldwide success. At a time when they were releasing two albums a year, it enabled them to explore a lot of different music, including ancestral folk music, and to bring it back into their own musical taste. It was a musical adventure.
AH: So they were always exploring something new, a bit like you?
DT: Yes, when they leave the stage at a concert, even in recent years, they're laughing their heads off. They’ll say “We played in front of 80,000 people. What the hell? We wanted to play for three weeks or three months in front of 50 people”. Really, it's an incredible adventure.
AH: Can you tell me, are there any other artists who have influenced you?
DT: Yes, the first musical artist I'd ever met introduced me to the Rolling Stones.
AH: What happened?
DT: It's quite simple. I arrived in London in June 1968, and my favorite musical circuit was pub gigs. I would always go to the same pub, and I made friends with a young Englishman. And one day he says to me, "Something incredible is going to happen. I don't know what, I don't know when, I don't know where". A few weeks go by and one evening, at a concert, he hands me a piece of paper and says, "It's here, now". It's December 1968. The next morning, I hop on the tube with my London map under my arm and find the place he's pointed out to me. I find myself outside of London, in the middle of a gigantic industrial wasteland. And then, in the middle of this wasteland, a huge circus tent. And I see a little trailer marked "Press". So I turn up and say "I'd like to come in and take some photos". I have no idea what it's about. I have no information. And they tell me "You don't have a press card, you don't have accreditation, you can't go in". So I walk away and sit down on my camera bag in the middle of the tall grass. With my head in my hands, I ask myself "How am I going to get in there?”. In the distance, I can see the limousines arriving with the Rolling Stones, the Who, Eric Clapton, Marion Spicefool, Taj Mahal, and so on. I say to myself, "This is really bad. I can't go”. And there's a guy I didn't see, who came up to me in the middle of the tall grass, grabbed my wrist, and dragged me inside. When we got inside, the guy turned around. It was John Lennon.
Dominique’s photos are on view at Galerie de l’Instant’s pop up gallery in Biarritz. Read more about his exhibition La Villa, here.
