“Drug dealers and freaks and crazy people left over from the 60s – all defiant and distorted”: The story behind the Rolling Stones’ iconic Exile On Main Street album cover

Photographs of The Rolling Stones and the cover of the Exile On Main Street album cover.

The recording of the Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main Street was a seedy affair. Laid down in the basement of Stones guitarist Keith Richards’ Nellcôte mansion on the Côte d’Azur in France, as vast quantities of heroin and a succession of opiated hangers-on blew through the premises, the classic 1972 album caught the Stones at their hedonist best.

It’s fitting then, that the album’s sleeve explored similar themes of self-abuse and chaos. “The general tone of the time was one of anarchy,” designer John Van Hamersveld explained. “Drug dealers and freaks and crazy people left over from the 60s – all defiant and distorted.”