Keith Richards may have mellowed with age, but anyone who has read his memoirs can tell for sure, the iconic Rolling Stones guitarist has caused enough hells to fill many lives.
He Never Slept
In fact, his ability not to sleep is almost unbelievable. The guitarist recorded “They Make Me Run” from the 1978 album Some Girls during a five-day drunk in the studio. But his actual record is almost twice as long: “Nine days without a wink,” he boasted.
Acids, Police, and Chocolate Bars Were His Perfect Combo
Richards bought Redlands, a picturesque estate in Sussex, England, for € 20,000 in 1966. A few months later, it became the site of one of the most infamous drug arrests of the 1960s, when 20 police officers arrived at the house looking for illegal substances. Richards, Jagger, and Marianne Faithfull, who were coming from a day-long acid trip, were caught in the raid. It was later revealed that the police had been tipped off by a tabloid newspaper which in turn had been tipped off by Richards’s driver. Rumor immediately spread that the police had interrupted an orgy in which Jagger had been licking a chocolate bar pushed into Faithfull’s part.
Snorted His Father’s Ashes
Five years after the death of Bertrand Richards, Keith’s father, the guitarist implied that he committed an ingenious act that brought him closer to death. The strangest thing he tried to snort was his father Richards told the UK’s New Musical Express in 2007.
Scouts of the Country
As a teenager, Keith spent two years in the Boy Scouts. But this brief flirtation with public service ended after he smuggled a couple of bottles of whiskey into a party and found himself striking out with other members of what he called the “Beaver Patrol.”
The Near-Death Experience
Richards has been near to death several times, but his “most spectacular”: was on December 3, 1965, while he was performing “The Last Time” in the presence of 5,000 audiences at the Memorial Auditorium in Sacramento, CA, his guitar hit his mic stand, a fire shot up and Richards fell to the ground, paralyzed.
He Was A Babysitter
During the band’s tour in Australia, 1973, Richards met a single mother with excellent pharmaceutical contacts to purchase coke. Sincerely, the guitarist moved in with her during her residence in that country. “Living in the Melbourne suburbs for a week with a mother and her son was weird,” he recalled in his memoir
Setting Hugh Hefner Home On Fire
In 1972, while on tour in Chicago, Richards and saxophonist Bobby Keys were invited to stay at Hugh Hefner’s (Playboy) Mansion and nearly set it on fire while taking drugs in the bathroom. “Bobby said, ‘There’s smoke in here,'” Richards recalls in Life. There were waiters and men in black suits carrying buckets of water. They opened the door and the two were sitting on the floor, wide-eyed. The house was saved, but as Richards notes, Hefner changed the address of the Playboy Mansion to Los Angeles.
Keith and John in the Sky With Diamonds
In Life, Richards describes his infamous experiences with psychedelics between 1967 and 1968. But there is one LSD trip in particular that stands out from the rest. He arranged to meet John Lennon one day and the two embarked on what the Rolling Stones guitarist describes as “an acid road trip” that took them to the cities of Torquay and Lyme Regis for two or three days.
He Loves Meatloaf
The 1989 Steel Wheels tour is The Rolling Stones’ biggest to date, but Richards still likes to feel at home. In December, during a visit to Toronto, Canada, the catering team recreated an English pub with cricket sticks, a jukebox, and bar food. When someone ate the meatloaf (shepherd’s pie), Keith refused to go on stage until they brought another one. Jagger was furious, but the concert was delayed until Keith got his special request.
Naked and Scared
In the late 1970s, Richards was in a relationship with Swedish model Lil Wergilis, whom he describes in Life as: “Extremely funny, very smart, and great in bed.” One night, they were in a rented house in Los Angeles when Wergilis woke him up in the middle of the night because the next room was on fire. (The cause of the fire was never known). Both of them jumped out of the window naked and scared to death.