Life

by Keith Richards

  The verdict was guilty, but the judge concluded, “I will not incarcerate him for addiction and wealth.” He must be freed, said the judge, to get on with his treatment, with a condition. He will perform a concert for the blind. Very intelligent, I thought. The most Solomon-like judgment that had been handed down in many a year. And this was to do with a blind girl who had followed the Stones everywhere on the road. Rita, my blind angel. Despite her blindness, she hitchhiked to our shows. The chick was absolutely fearless. I’d heard about her backstage, and the idea of her thumbing in the darkness was too much for me. I hooked her up with the truck drivers, made sure she got a safe lift and made sure she got fed. And when I was busted, she actually found her way to the judge’s house and told him this story. And this is how he arrived at the concert for the blind. The love and devotion of people like Rita is something that still amazes me. So aha! A way was found.

  From that appearance on Saturday Night Live, Lil and I used to hang with Dan Aykroyd and Bill Murray and John Belushi in their club, the Blues Bar, in New York, around 1979. Belushi was an over-the-top man. You can say that again. I said to John once, as my father says, there’s a difference between scratching your arse and tearing it to bits. John was hilarious, and nuts to hang with. Belushi was an extreme experience even by my standards. A case in point.

  When I was a kid, I’d pop round to Mick’s house. You want something to drink. Open the fridge, there’s nothing in it except maybe half a tomato. Big fridge. Thirty years later, walk into Mick’s apartment, open the fridge, it’s an even bigger fridge, what’s in there? Half a tomato and a bottle of beer. One night around this time, when we’d been hanging out with John Belushi in New York, we’d been in session all night and Ronnie and Mick and I had gone back to Mick’s apartment. There’s a knock at the door, and there’s Belushi, dressed in a porter’s uniform, and he’s got a trolley. And he’s got twelve fucking boxes of gefilte fish. And he ignores us all, trundles it straight to Mick’s fridge, bundles all the gefilte fish into the fridge and says, “Now it’s full.”

  Riding high on the success of Some Girls and on the outcome of the court case, we repaired to Nassau in the Bahamas, to Compass Point Studios. There were ripples of argument between Mick and me that would grow into a rumble soon, but not quite yet. We got playing and composing songs for Emotional Rescue. While we were doing this, Pope John Paul II paid an unexpected visit to Nassau on a refueling stop. The Bahamas are strongly Catholic, at least while the pope’s there, and it was announced that he would conduct a public blessing in a football stadium. I decided that since Alan Dunn, our road manager, was a Catholic and eligible for a blessing by the pope, he should take the tapes we were making up to the stadium and have them blessed too. Why not? You never know. Alan got a ticket through the local school and took the tapes up in the heat—big two-inch tapes that weighed a ton, and weighed even more when the handles of the straw basket he was carrying them in broke, so he told me. He clutched them to his chest as the pontiff waved his blessing over them and over Alan. It certainly worked for Alan, who was miraculously rescued out at sea a few days later when his dinghy carried him and his girlfriend across the reef and into deep water. He had a broken outboard and no oars. It should have meant certain death, but Alan’s mother reckons that the passing boat that rescued them was a gift from God, via the pope.

  One of the great sessions I have played on happened around this time, when Lil and I went to Jamaica and I fell in with Sly Dunbar and Robbie Shakespeare, who were making a Black Uhuru album. Sly and Robbie were one of the best rhythm sections in the world. We did seven tracks together in one night, and one of them, called “Shine Eye Gal,” became a great big hit and a classic. Another was an instrumental called “Dirty Harry” for Sly’s album Sly, Wicked and Slick. And I’ve still got the rest. All done on four-track at Channel One, Kingston. We played anything anybody felt like playing. Most of it was just made out of riffs, but it was a supreme band: Sly and Robbie; Sticky and Scully, who were Sly’s percussion men and did all the little fiddly bits; Ansell Collins on organ and piano; me on guitar; another guitar player, might have been Michael Chung. It was a brilliant night. At the time, we said, let’s split the tracks, I’ll take three and you take three, but they made a big hit out of “Shine Eye Gal.” They came touring with us in the next couple of years.

  Mick didn’t want to tour in 1979, but I did. I was put out and frustrated. But it meant I could shoot off. Ronnie was going on the road, and he put together the New Barbarians, which was an incredible band—Joseph “Zigaboo” Modeliste on drums, one of the best ever. And that’s why I immediately jumped in. Drummers from New Orleans, of which Ziggy is one of the giants, are great readers of the song and how it goes; they feel it, tell the way it’s going even before you do. I’d known Ziggy when the Meters worked with the Stones for several tours. George Porter on bass. The Meters had a big influence on my appreciation of funk. They are uniquely New Orleans in rhythm and the use of space and time. New Orleans is the most different city in America, and it shows in the music. I’ve worked with George Recile, who is now Bob Dylan’s drummer, another one from that city. Bobby Keys was there with the New Barbarians. Ian McLagan on keyboards. On bass was the great jazz player Stanley Clarke. It was a fun tour and we had a lot of laughs. I didn’t have to worry about the things I usually do on tours; I didn’t have to bear responsibility. To me, it was a ball, a riot. I was basically just a sideman hired for the tour. I can’t even remember much of it, it was so much fun. To me, the important thing was that, shit, I’d managed to avoid doing hard time, and at the same time I was doing what I love to do. And I had Lil with me, the good-time girl for all seasons. Then Lil’s mother got ill, and she had to fly back to Sweden. And I had a temporary lapse in her absence. I bought some Persian brown from a woman named Cathy Smith in Los Angeles. I described myself at the time as “reliving a second rock-and-roll childhood.” Cathy Smith was also the downfall of Belushi. It was just too strong for Belushi. Basically he was a very strong bloke, but he just pushed it over the limit. Also he wasn’t in shape. He was freebasing, as Ronnie had started doing at this time. There was a high death rate among the cast of Saturday Night Live. John died at the Chateau Marmont. He’d been up too many days, too many nights, which he used to do regularly. Too many nights and too much weight to carry.

  Maybe it was the coming off dope, the slow resurfacing of buried impulses or feelings. I don’t know. But when I went back to Paris to finish Emotional Rescue at Pathé Marconi, again with Lil, my finger was on the hair trigger, metaphorically speaking. My reactions were certainly quicker, and my anger too. There are times when my blood gets heated and I get irate. A red curtain falls before my eyes, and I’m going to do anything. It’s a horrific thing. I hate the person who puts me in that position where force comes up. You’re almost more scared of yourself than you are of whoever it is on the other side. Because you know that you’ve gone to the point of no return and you could do anything, you could kill, just like that, and then have to wake up and say, “What happened?” “Well, you ripped his throat out.” When it has happened to me, I’m scared of myself. It may be something to do with getting used to taking beatings when I was a kid, being the smallest guy in the class. It’s certainly a very old thing.

  My security man and friend Gary Schultz was there with me once in a nightclub in Paris, and this little French fucker was really being obnoxious. He was just out of it. And I was with Lil, bless her heart. He was trying to pull a number on Lil, and I just went, “What did you say?” “What?” And I had a wineglass with a long stem. I cracked off the base so I had the stem. And I put him down. I had him on his knees with the stem of this wineglass at his throat. And I’m hoping I’m not going to crush the bowl of the glass because right now, I’ve got the advantage. Because he was with a whole lot of friends, I was dealing with not just him but his buddies, so it was just a matter of being really overdramatic. “Take him away.” And they did; otherwise his mates would have
done us all.

  The blade should be used to play for time only, the shooter to make sure you get your point across sometimes. But you’ve got to be convincing. For example—in one incident I remember from this period—when you’re trying to get a cab in Paris and you’re a foreigner. There’s twenty cabs in the line all just waiting there doing nothing. So you go to the first one, and he’ll send you to the one behind, and then he’ll send you to the front again. And then you realize, oh, business isn’t important, then, you just want to fuck with people, and that’s where you can start to growl objectionably, kick up some sand. It’s their idea of fun just to piss around with foreigners, and I’ve seen them do it to old ladies too. I’d been through that enough. I put the blade to one of them and said, “You’re taking me.” Only later did I realize they’re even worse to French people from the provinces.

  It was in Paris that I realized I had finally said good-bye to heroin. I went to dinner in Paris a year or so later with Wonder Woman Lynda Carter and Mick and some others. I don’t know why Mick did this. He’s weird this way. He said, “Come with me to the Bois de Boulogne. I’m going to meet this guy.” Mick thought he was getting cocaine. So we did the deal in the park, the party broke up and we went home. And the bag was full of heroin, not coke. Typical Mick Jagger. He didn’t know. Mick, this ain’t coke, man. And I looked at it, this great big beautiful bag of smack. And it was raining outside the apartment in Rue Saint-Honoré. I looked at it, I admit I took a gram out and put it in a little packet, and then I just tossed the rest onto the street. And that’s when I figured that I was really no longer a junkie. Even though I’d been basically off the stuff for two or three years, the fact that I could do that meant I was out of its power.

  Things went beyond any point of return with Anita when her young boyfriend blew his brains out in our house, on the bed. I was three thousand miles away, in Paris making a record, but Marlon was there and he heard Anita screaming and then saw her running down the stairs covered in blood. The boy had shot himself in the face, playing Russian roulette, the story goes. I had met him. He was this crazy little kid, aged seventeen, Anita’s boyfriend. I said to her, listen, baby, I’m leaving, we’re over, we’re finished, but this is not the guy for you. And he proved it. The reason she went with this guy, who was an absolute prick, was, I think, to piss me off. By then, I wasn’t actually living with her anyway. I would pop up to get my crap out of there, or come to see Marlon. I saw the guy once, playing with Marlon, when I came back, and I warned him off, and he certainly resented that. And I said to Anita, dump this fucker, but I didn’t mean it that way.

  Marlon: The movie The Deer Hunter was recently out. And there’s the Russian roulette scene, and that’s what he was doing, he was playing Russian roulette. Very dark. He was about seventeen. He kept telling me—a really nasty kid—he kept saying he was going to shoot Keith, and that upset me, so I was kind of relieved when he shot himself.

  I remember the date, July 20, 1979, vividly because it was the tenth anniversary of the moon landing. I remember he was only around for a few months, but Anita was being very self-destructive. This was the time Keith was off with Lil, so Anita was like, right, I’m gonna show him, get her own back so to speak. So she flaunted him quite blatantly; Keith met him, actually. I was watching the anniversary of the lunar landings and I heard one pop. It didn’t really sound like a bang or anything, it was a pop. And then Anita comes running down the stairs, covered in blood, screaming.

  I went, my God, Jesus Christ. I had to have a little peek, so I did go up and saw all this brain matter all over the walls. And then the cops came pretty damn quickly. Larry Sessler, one of the Sessler boys, was there to sort it all out, and the next morning I left. I went to Paris and met Keith. And poor Anita had to stay and deal with that. There were all these stories in the press at the time saying that she was a witch, that people were having Black Sabbaths. They were saying all sorts of things.

  It literally was just bad luck. I don’t think he intended to shoot himself, really, just an idiot of seventeen who was stoned, angry, playing with a pistol. Anita didn’t recognize it as a shot, but she turned round and heard this gargling noise, she said. She saw there was blood coming from his mouth and her first instinct was to pick up the gun and put it on the desk, so it had her fingerprints all over it. One bullet in the chamber, one bullet in the mouth, and that’s it; it wasn’t like it was fully loaded. But then we had to move out of that house quite sharpish. Anita was in the papers every day and had to hide in a hotel in New York.

  When the cops found out, they wanted first to question me, but I was in Paris. Hey, damn good shot with a Smith & Wesson from Paris. And Anita? I was going to make sure she didn’t go to jail when they lost interest in me. It was a miracle how that case just disappeared. I believe it was to do with the fact that the gun was traced back to the police, bought in some gun market in the parking lot of a police station. Suddenly it wasn’t an issue. The case was put down as suicide. The boy’s parents tried to bring a case for corruption of a minor, which didn’t stick. So Anita moved to New York, to the Alray Hotel, and began a different kind of existence. That was the final curtain for me and Anita, apart from trips to see the children. It was the end. Thanks for the memories, girl.

  Jane Rose

  Chapter Eleven

  In which I meet Patti Hansen and fall in love. I survive a disastrous first meeting with her parents. Grief is brewing with Mick. I fight with Ronnie Wood and dig out my dad after twenty years. Marlon’s tale of Gatsby mansions on Long Island. Marriage in Mexico.

  Studio 54 in New York was a big hangout of Mick’s. It wasn’t my taste—a tarted-up disco club or, as it appeared to me at the time, a room full of faggots in boxer shorts, waving champagne bottles in your face. There were crowds round the block trying to get in, the little velvet rope saying you’re in or out. I knew they were dealing dope round the back, which is why they all got busted. As if they weren’t coining enough. But they were having a good time; they were just boys partying, basically. The weird thing is, the first time I met Patti Hansen was in Studio 54. John Phillips and I had run in there because Britt Ekland was chasing me. She had the hots for me. And hey, Britt, I love you, you’re a nice girl and everything like that— sweet, shy and unassuming—but my agenda is full, if you get my meaning. But she wouldn’t let go; she was chasing me all over fucking town. So we thought, the one place to hide, Studio 54! It was the most unlikely place to find me. And it happened to be Saint Patrick’s Day, March 17, which is Patti’s birthday. The year was 1979.

  So we’re hiding away, saying Britt will never find us here. And Shaun, one of Patti’s mates, came over and said, it’s my friend’s birthday today. I said, which one? And she pointed out this blond beauty dancing with wild hair flying. “Dom Pérignon immediately!” I sent over a bottle of champagne and just said hello. I didn’t see her again for a while, but the vision stayed in my mind.

  Then in December it was my birthday, my thirty-sixth, for which, in accordance with the craze of the moment, we repaired to the Roxy roller rink in New York for a party. Jane Rose had kept Patti on her radar all those months, having noticed, apparently, some spark that first night, and made sure Patti was invited. So I caught sight of Patti again, and she caught sight of me catching sight of her. And she left. And a few days later I called her and we got together. I wrote in my notebook in January 1980, a few days after that:

  Incredibly I’ve found a woman. A miracle! I’ve pussy at the snap of a finger but I’ve met a woman! Unbelievably she is the most beautiful (physically) specimen in the WORLD. But that ain’t it! It certainly helps but it’s her mind, her joy of life and (wonders) she thinks this battered junkie is the guy she loves. I’m over the moon and peeing in my pants. She loves soul music and reggae, in fact everything. I make her tapes of music which is almost as good as being with her. I send them like love letters. I’m kicking 40 and besotted.

  I was amazed that she was willing to hang out with m
e. Because I was hanging with a bunch of guys and all we did was go up to the Bronx and Brooklyn to these bizarre West Indian places and record stores. Nothing of interest to supermodels. My friend Brad Klein was there; I think Larry Sessler, Freddie’s son, was there. Gary Schultz, my minder, was there too. He was always known as Concorde, a nickname derived from Monty Python (“Brave, brave Concorde! You shall not have died in vain!” “I’m not quite dead, sir,” etc.). Jimmy Callaghan, my muscle for many years; Max Romeo, reggae star; and a few other cats. Nice to meet you, nice to know you, you want to hang with this bunch of assholes? Up to you, you know? But she was there every day. And I know something’s happening, but how it happens and when and who pulls the spring is another thing. That’s how we hung for days and days. I never put the hammer on hard. I didn’t make a move. I could never put the make on. I could just never find the right line, or one that hadn’t been used before. I just never had that thing with women. I would do it silently. Very Charlie Chaplin. The scratch, the look, the body language. Get my drift? Now it’s up to you. “Hey, baby” is just not my come-on. I’ve got to lay back and see the tension build to a point where something’s got to happen. And if they can hang through that tension, then we’re OK. They call it the reverse molecular version, the RMV, as it’s known. Finally, after an astonishing number of days, she lay down on the bed and said, come on.

  At the time I was living with Lil. Suddenly I disappeared for ten days and took a room at the Carlyle, and Lil was wondering where the hell I’d gone. She got the message pretty quick. I’d been with Lil eighteen months by then, and we were quite handsomely ensconced in a nice apartment. She’s a great girl and I just dumped her.… I had to make it up to Lil.

  I wanted to hear Patti’s version of these events, long ago.

  Patti Hansen: I didn’t know anything about Keith. I didn’t follow his music. Of course listening to the radio, you know who the Rolling Stones are, but it wasn’t music I listened to. It’s March ’79 and it’s my birthday and I’m in Studio 54 and I had just broken up with some guy I had been with for a few years. I was dancing with my girlfriend Shaun Casey, who saw Keith arrive and sit down in a little booth. It was after last call, and she said, it’s my best friend’s birthday, would you please give her a bottle of champagne because they won’t sell us any. And she said, oh, by the way, I’m a good friend of Bill Wyman, and she introduced Keith and me very briefly. I barely remember. And I went back to the dance floor. It was probably three in the morning. I don’t think he had ever been to Studio 54 or ever went back again; that was my place. And so he spotted me.