David Remnick on Keith Richards

Keith Richards is 66.  He's a grandfather.

Where he used to have a wolfhound named Syphilis, he now has a golden Lab named Pumpkin.  He and his wife pack Pumpkin onto a private jet and go to relax at their spread in Turks and Caicos.

"People think I'm still a goddamn junkie.  It's 30 years since I gave up the dope!  Image is like a long shadow.  Even when the sun goes down, you can see it."

(From a review of Keith's recently published autobiography, Life.  On this date in 1967, Keith spent the night in Wormwood Scrubs Prison in west London after he was convicted of allowing marijuana to be smoked at his Sussex estate.  He was released on bail the next day, and his one-year sentence was later overturned on appeal.)     

Keith Richards

We were in Jacksonville, Florida [in August 1975] and we were going to Hampton, Virginia, and [our American lawyer] had heard that the plane was going to be searched when we got there. . . . And so to avoid that, we collected everyone's contraband.  Everyone's guns, knives, drugs, anything that could be considered illegal, and packed it in two suitcases, and I took a private plane from Jacksonville to Hampton . . . with those two suitcases and drove to the hotel. . . . The drive was nerve-wracking.  I was going 50 miles an hour. . . . And then I got to the hotel, I went into a room, not mine, and put it all out on the bed.  And as they came in a couple of hours later they all picked up their stuff.  Annie Lebovitz has a picture somewhere of the treasure that was in those suitcases. 

(From Keith Richards' Life.  This excerpt was written by Mary Beth Medley, who was 27 in 1975.  She handled travel arrangements and other logistical matters for the band's "Tour of the Americas '75."  I saw the Stones at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City about two months before the incident described here.)

Keith Richards

I prepared two equal piles of about eight grams [of Merck pharmaceutical cocaine] each for Keith [Richards] and myself . . . . I made two lines, grabbed a straw and with swift action snorted my eight grams. "Now let's see if you can do that."  In my entire adult life I had never, ever seen anyone indulging in a quantity of this magnitude.  Keith looked, stared, grabbed the straw and duplicated my effort with no difficulties. . . .

Pharmaceutical cocaine cannot be compared in any way to cocaine produced in Central or South America.  It is pure, does not bring on depression or lethargy.  A totally different type of euphoria, one of creativity, exists immediately when it is absorbed by the central nervous system  There are absolutely no withdrawal symptoms.

(From Keith Richards' Life.  The speaker is Freddie Sessler, an old friend of Keith's.  The incident took place at Sessler's home in Dobbs Ferry, NY.  Sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, baby!)

Keith Richards

Flo . . . was one of my favorites, lived in L.A., one of a band of black chicks.  Flo had another three or four groupies around her.  If I was a bit short of weed or whatever, she would send her crew out.  We slept together many times, never f*cked, or very rarely.

(From Keith Richards' new autobiography, Life.  I don't know about you, but I see a BIG difference here between "never" and "very rarely.")

Keith Richards

The last thing I think the [UK government] expected when they hit us with super-super tax is that we'd say, fine, we'll leave.  We'll be another one not paying tax to you.  They just didn't factor that in.  It made us bigger than ever, and it produced "Exile on Main St.," which was maybe the best thing we did. . . . We didn't know if we would make it, but if we didn't try, what would we do?  Sit in England and they'd give us a penny out of every pound we earned? . . . And so we upped and went to France.

[From Keith Richards' autobiography, Life.  Over the past 20 years, with the help of some very smart tax lawyers, the Rolling Stones have paid just 1.6% on their earnings of 242 million pounds.  Sic semper tyrannis!]

Keith Richards and his son Marlon in France