Keith Richards

Keith Richards (born December 18 1943 in Dartford, Kent), is a British guitarist and songwriter, best known for his work with The Rolling Stones, the band he founded with vocalist Mick Jagger and Brian Jones in 1962. In addition to his work with The Stones, Richards also has worked as a session guitarist with artists as varied as Gram Parsons, Tom Waits, Bono and The Edge of U2, Nona Hendryx, John Phillips and Aretha Franklin.

Public image and private life

Richards is best known publicly for his drug habit and not his songwriting or music. Richards and the Stones cultivated a decadent and counter-culture image during the 1960s and '70s, and Richards' frank admission that he used narcotics often made him a poster-boy for teens and adults who sought refuge in - as Keith sings in Before They Make Me Run - "booze and pills and powders." In a famous 1971 Rolling Stone magazine interview, he discussed his drug use. Ten years later, in another Rolling Stone magazine interview, he expressed little regret about the heroin habit that almost destroyed his life and music career. To this day, Richards wears a bracelet which resembles a pair of handcuffs as a reminder that he never wants to be arrested again. Perhaps also appropriate is that he wears a Totenkopf ring portraying a human skull without a jaw, a gift from a friend and New York jeweller, although he has said publicly that it represents the fact that "beauty is only skin deep."

Related Topics:
Counter-culture - Narcotics - 1971 - Rolling Stone magazine - Heroin - Totenkopf

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Two famous arrests came ten years apart, the first in 1967 with Jagger and friends at Redlands, Richards' Surrey estate, which placed him in custody and trial before the courts of public opinion and of Her Majesty's. Although the conviction was quashed after two days of imprisonment, Richards' famous testimony regarding England's "petty morals" made him a target for establishment backlash.

Related Topics:
1967 - Surrey

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

However, there was a more ominous, serious and life-changing arrest in February 1977 at Toronto's Harbour Castle Hotel (Regina v. Richards). Registered at the hotel under the pseudonym 'Redlands', Richards was arrested by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (or Mounties) for heroin and cocaine possession (he had 2 ounces of each at the time of his arrest), and charged with importing narcotics, an offence with a minimum sentence of seven years in prison according to the Criminal Code of Canada. For the next three years, he lived under threat of criminal sanction as he sought medical treatment in the U.S. for heroin addiction. During this period, the Rolling Stones released their biggest-selling album (8 million copies) Some Girls, which included their last North American Number 1 pop chart single, "Miss You". After the Ontario Court of Appeal had upheld Richards' original sentence - the somewhat unorthodox charity concert at an Oshawa hockey arena (a concert attendees remember as being thick with marijuana smoke) - Keith emerged healthy and in love with a young New York model.

Related Topics:
February - 1977 - Toronto - Mounties - Heroin - Cocaine - Ontario - Marijuana

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Patti Hansen was a top fashion model when they met, and has since starred in Hard to Hold, a Rick Springfield film, in 1984. She and Richards married in 1983. They have two daughters, Theodora and Alexandra, who have followed their mother into modelling. Richards also has a son, Marlon, and another daughter, Angela (nee Dandelion), from his relationship with Anita Pallenberg. He has never distanced himself from the mother of his first three children (one baby died in infancy). He often refers to having two wives, in the traditional sense of Rastafarian polygamy, although he never officially married Pallenberg — the former girlfriend of Brian Jones, and an actress in Performance and Barbarella.

Related Topics:
Patti Hansen - Rick Springfield - 1984 - 1983 - Anita Pallenberg - Polygamy - Performance - Barbarella

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~