Every Night's a Saturday Night: The Rock 'N' Roll Life of Legendary Sax Man Bobby Keys by Bobby Keys & Bill Ditenhafer

Author:Bobby Keys & Bill Ditenhafer [Keys, Bobby & Ditenhafer, Bill]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781582437835
Publisher: Counterpoint
Published: 2012-02-28T05:00:00+00:00

7

IN THE SPRING of 1971, Mick Jagger married Bianca Pérez-Mora Macias in Saint-Tropez on the French Riviera. May 12, 1971. Mick’s wedding was my first trip to the south of France. It was beautiful.

There were two ceremonies. I was a participant in the civil ceremony, not the church service. Bianca, being Catholic, had to have a Catholic wedding, and Mick, being, I don’t know, non-Catholic, had a civil service. I was Mick’s best man.

I did not, however, have to give a speech. I would have, but I don’t think anybody was gonna ask me. I would’ve been happy to talk. I had very little to do, actually. All I remember is Ahmet Ertegun was there and I sat next to him. And we all got very fucked-up before the ceremony. Everybody was at the Hotel Byblos in Saint-Tropez, and Marshall Chess and Ronnie Wood and Keith and I were in the bathroom of Marshall’s suite. That’s the first time I met Ronnie face to face. Or, rather, nose to nose.

The wedding itself was just an excuse to have a giant party, as far as most of us were concerned. Paul McCartney was there and Pete Townshend and Ringo, Eric Clapton, George Harrison. Even the downtime was fun. I remember one of the perks of staying at the Byblos was that, from the window of my room, I could watch the French movie actress Brigitte Bardot sunbathing au naturel outside of the hotel on the beach.

Not long after Mick’s wedding, the Rolling Stones moved to the south of France en masse. They were driven abroad by the crazy tax laws they had in England, and since they were gonna be recording their next album there, they brought me and Jim along. Of course, I thought they had millions and millions of dollars. They had all these hit records. I didn’t know that they were really dollar-strapped. It’s hard to think of someone needing money when everybody, myself included, was living in a big villa in the south of France. It was a beautiful part of the world, it was a beautiful time of life, and if my math serves me well, we were all still in our twenties. God almighty. There we were in paradise—and it was a paradise. I mean, it was just beautiful. You’d wake up every morning and you’d go out there and you’d look at this beautiful harbor, and these big, old homes—old, old homes, not new McMansions like you see nowadays. Well, look at Villa Nellcôte.

Nellcôte was the house Keith rented that overlooked Villefranche harbor on the Côte d’Azur. It was also where we ended up recording Exile on Main St. I stayed at Nellcôte a whole lot. My residence was about five minutes away if you walked and about two minutes away if you drove. Charlie and Bill, now they lived out in the country. They didn’t want to live around the Eurotrash. But, see, they didn’t just choose their places because an album was being made, they chose ’em because they were gonna set up housekeeping for several years.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.