Keith Richards is known for a lot of things. His musicianship is bar none and his songwriting is legendary. But, there is another aspect of Richards that has caught the attention of fans: his wild life style. Rock fans have long been enamored by the volatile way rock stars live–especially their relationship with partying and drugs. Richards is intrinsic to that conversation.
Richards has suffered many drug busts (both real and imagined). Find three of the most infamous, below.
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3 of Keith Richards’ Most Infamous Drug Busts
1. the police or The Police?
When most people–especially those with drugs in their possession–hear that the police are at their door, they don’t tend to assume it’s a legendary rock band. That was unfortunately the case for Richards when the Stones’ manager told him “the police” were coming to their dressing room. Expecting the room to be raided momentarily, he flushed his contraband down the toilet. As he would soon discover, their manager meant that Stewart Copeland and Sting were paying a visit.
“There was a knock on our dressing-room door,” Richards once recalled. “Our manager shouted, ‘Keith! Ron! The Police are here!’ Oh, man, we panicked, flushed everything down the john. Then the door opened and it was Stewart Copeland and Sting.”
2. “The Stones have been busted, but I have sprung them”
Sometimes the powers that be must choose the greater good. Despite Richards and his bandmates getting arrested in Boston–where they were due to play a show–a quick appeal to the mayor got them released just in time to step on stage.
“The Stones have been busted, but I have sprung them,” Mayor Kevin White said at the time. Talk about scoring some major points with the younger demographic.
[RELATED: The Story Behind Keith Richards’ “Gambling” Solo Song, “Something for Nothing”]
3. a Polish Prince
When going up against the police with copious amounts of contraband–including heroin, syringes, guns, and more–it helps to have a scapegoat. Richards got lucky in that department in the early ’70s. He suffered a police raid in London in 1973. While, for many people, that would’ve been certified jail time, given all he had in his possession, the attendance of a Polish monarch took the heat off of Richards.
Somehow, Prince Jean Christien Stanislaus Klossowski got blamed for the whole debacle. Richards survived to rock another day.
(Photo by Erika Goldring/Getty Images)
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