By the mid-Seventies, Keith Richards was a drug-bust veteran, but this one topped them all and threatened to derail the Rolling Stones at their peak. In February 1977, Canadian cops found roughly an ounce of heroin in Richards' hotel room. Charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking, and looking at a potentially lengthy prison term, Richards posted bond and wangled a special visa permitting him to undergo an experimental addiction cure in the U.S. By the time his case came up, in October '78, "there were five to six hundred people outside every time I turned up in court, chanting, 'Free Keith, free Keith,'" the guitarist recalled. Between this avid fandom, a halfhearted prosecution and a muscular defense,
Keith was found guilty but walked anyway. (While out on bail, he even partied with Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau's frisky young wife, Margaret, who was hanging out with the band.) His community-service sentence: to play a benefit concert for the blind — a nod to Rita, the devoted, sightless Stones fan who buttonholed the judge and pleaded on Keith's behalf. "She hitchhiked to our shows. The chick was absolutely fearless," Richards wrote in his 2010 memoir, Life. "The love and devotion of [fans] like Rita is something that still amazes me."
Adrenaline is the most amazing thing we have," Richards told an interviewer in 1992.
Indeed, his ability to go without sleep is almost beyond belief. He recorded "Before They Make Me Run," from 1978's Some Girls, in a five-day studio binge ("One [engineer] would flop under the desk and have a kip, and I'd put the other one in and keep going," he wrote in Life). But his actual record is almost twice that long: "Nine days without a wink," he bragged. "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?'"
"I learned to ski when I was a complete junkie," Richards once boasted. In 1972, Richards — exiled from France on drug charges and from Britain for tax reasons — moved to a chalet in Montreux with Anita Pallenberg and their family. Pallenberg fondly remembered driving around in Bentleys and Ferraris with a revolving cast of friends. Amid all the partying, Richards found time to take up skiing, and those present recalled him as a risk-taker on the slopes. "The reason I made it through [his exile status] was because it was all top-quality shit," he said of his drug supply while in Switzerland. "You'll do anything to get your hands on it, and if you've got to move across international borders, then you better start figuring it out!"
Richards was partying at his home on Cheyne Walk in London's Chelsea neighborhood — with guests that included the great Chicago-blues record producer Marshall Chess — blasting reggae records and getting lit. Then the police broke in and turned up heroin, marijuana, Mandrax tablets, a handgun, a rifle and 110 rounds of ammunition. Faced with 25 charges, Richards got off with the help of his "brilliant lawyer" Richard Du Cann. "He was, soon after my case — in spite of it, perhaps — made chairman of the bar."
The Stones were in top form on their legendary 1975 Tour of the Americas, and for a good reason: "[It] was fueled by Merck cocaine," Richards wrote in his memoir, referring to the ultrapure pharmaceutically manufactured form of the drug. "It was when we initiated the building of hideaways behind the speakers on the stage so that we could have lines between songs. One song, one bump was the rule between Ronnie and me." Richards also had a supply of heroin that was cut into lines and hidden amid the amplifiers, along with heroin-laced cigarettes — or "dirty fags," as they were known. Things went fairly smoothly until Richards and his cocaine supplier, on a detour to get some good barbecue, were arrested in Arkansas. But they called in some favors, paid a $162 bail and were soon back on the road.
