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tropical
TROPICAL DISEASE
Working title for the EXILE ON MAIN ST. album. The name may have derived from the extreme heat and humidity in the basement of Nellcote, Keith’s French villa where the band recorded it, also considering the nature of some of its songs. Tropical Disease was just one of the working titles for the Exile On Main St, album, and eventually somehow it felt it would fit the album when considering the themes of some of its songs (songs like “Ventilator Blues” was inspired by the conditions…)
Since the Stones recorded a large part of the album in Nellcôte’s basement (which was described as a maze of dividers and cubicles that produced a murky sound) additionally there would also be a lot of heaby weather during the summer sessions, which would make guitars constantly out of tune. And even when the environment inspired the the working title of the albuym, it was the the dust that Keith recalled most vividly. “It was a dirt floor,” he told Guitar World magazine in 2010. “You could see somebody had walked by, even after they disappeared ’round the corner, because there’d be a residue of dust in the air. It was a pretty thick atmosphere. But maybe that had something to do with the sound – a thick layer of dust over the microphones”
