Keith Richards has indulged in more outrageous stunts than most people. The Rolling Stones guitarist was for a long time the live incarnation of rock ‘n’ roll, drugs, and sex; he even gave the legendary Hunter S. Thompson a run for his money.
In addition to the numerous musical achievements Richards has had, his fluctuating existence has captivated many. It is an embodiment of living life on the edge. It’s truly a surprise that Richards has survived as long as he has, considering his several near-death experiences and his current high-kicking ways with fellow musicians and contemporaries like the Texan hellraiser Bobby Keys.
LSD was a drink that Richards particularly loved in the late 1960s when he was at his most indulgent. In 1967, psychedelic rock reached its zenith, acid use peaked, and Richards had two insanely crazy experiences with the drug—all in the same year that the counterculture consolidated its power.
In his gripping book Life, published in 2010, he describes this. Richards claims that he conducted extensive experiments with the emerging psychedelics in 1967 and the following year. That being said, he names one especially perplexing LSD trip in the book. He got together with one of the most well-known people of his time, John Lennon, the frontman of The Beatles, one day in 1967, and they went on a two- or three-day “acid-fueled road trip,” making it as far as the southwest coastal towns of Lyme Regis and Torquay.
Richards used the recollections of Kari Ann Moller, a Norwegian model who was married to Chris, the younger brother of Stones singer Mick Jagger, for the book. Richards and John Lennon are claimed to have driven in circles and once stopped by Lennon’s rural home to “say hi to [Lennon’s wife] Cynthia.” But when the two reunited in New York years later, Richards says the Liverpudlian questioned him, “What happened on that trip?” which is a tribute to how insane they were. Nobody will ever know the full tale, like in a British version of Raoul Duke and Doctor Gonzo.
The second narrative is about Richards’ 1966 £20,000 acquisition of the picturesque Redlands estate in Sussex. However, it is well known that this tranquil haven would be destroyed in a few months when a significant narcotics raid occurred, including the presence of twenty police officers. For Richards, Jagger, and leader Marianne Faithfull—a pop diva who was coming off of a daylong drug trip—it could not have come at a worse moment.
Richards recalls in his memoir, “There’s a knock on the door, I look out the window, and there’s this whole lot of dwarves outside, I’d never been busted before, and I’m still on acid.” The three subsequently learned that the police had gotten their tip from Richards’ driver, an unexpected source, who had passed it along to a tabloid. But when it came to the traitor, he gave in. “He never walked the same again.”
Following this operation, the infamous and false rumor that the police had broken up an orgy surfaced. Actually, the cops discovered what Faithfull called “a scene of pure domesticity” when the bewildered Richards gently opened the door. Still, the two Rolling Stones were finally given short prison terms that were subsequently revoked. “How the Mars bar got into the story, I don’t know,” Richards added. “It shows you what’s in people’s minds.”