The Rolling Stones’ Keith Richards has never been the quiet and calm type. Back in the day, when he wasn’t bringing that explosive energy to the stage, he was engaging in about as much debauchery as you would expect from a famous rock star. Falling out of a palm tree was pretty wild, but Keith Richards did some really stupid stuff in his early years. Let’s look at a few examples, shall we?
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1. He Stayed Awake for Nine Days
I’m not going to lie, I didn’t think staying awake for nine days was possible. But through specific illegal drugs, anything is possible, including extremely dangerous things like not sleeping for over a week. According to Richards himself in his own autobiography, the guitarist once stayed up for nine days in 1978 while working on Some Girls.
“One [engineer] would flop under the desk and have a kip, and I’d put the other one in and keep going,” said Richards of the particularly wild recording process for “Before They Make Me Run”. “Nine days without a wink. I fell asleep standing up, eventually, I was just putting another cassette back on the shelf, and I was feeling great, and I turned ’round and fell asleep. I fell against the edge of the speaker. Woke up in a pool of blood, wondering, ‘Is that claret?’”
2. He Did Acid With John Lennon of The Beatles
This wild antic is surprising, considering that Keith Richards and John Lennon were often pitted against each other in the media and among fandoms. They were part of the biggest rock bands of their era, after all. While it’s not clear if the two were friends, they did hang out on at least one occasion. And that occasion, which Richard detailed in his autobiography, was insane.
According to Richards, the pair travelled to Torquay, took a lot of acid, and did who knows what for three days. Richards admitted that he didn’t remember much, and neither did Lennon. This would be a great setup for a season of White Lotus.
3. He Threatened Famed Author Truman Capote
Famed author and playwright Truman Capote was sent by Rolling Stone magazine to see what The Rolling Stones were up to at the height of their careers in 1972. Naturally, considering Capote’s intelligence and education, Richards wasn’t happy to see him. He really hated the “elites” and saw Capote as one of them.
This is another wild antic that Keith Richards admitted to in his autobiography. Richards trashed Capote’s hotel room, threw homophobic slurs around, and tossed ketchup everywhere. Things took a turn when Richards threatened Capote by yelling “I’m going to beat the sh*t out of you.” Nothing came of the threat.
4. He (Allegedly) Snorted His Father’s Ashes
This has to be the wildest of Keith Richards’ wild antics. According to lore, Richards once tried to snort his father’s ashes back in the day. He even admitted to it in an NME interview.
“The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort?” he said, matter-of-factly. “My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared; he didn’t give a shit. It went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.”
Richards has since retracted the statement in a vague way, and then went full circle to insist that he did, actually, snort his dad’s ashes. I guess we’ll never know the truth.
Photo by Paul Natkin/Getty Images
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