Keith Richards Didn't Snort Dad
Rolling Stone guitarist denies snorting late father's cremated ashes
Comments made in magazine interview by 63-year-old rocker were a joke, band spokesman says
Reports boiled over on the Internet on Tuesday that Keith Richards had admitted to snorting cocaine mixed with the ashes of his late father after his body was cremated. It was an astonishing bit of news about the aging Rolling Stones guitarist. And it was completely untrue.
The tidbit first appeared in the pages of a U.K. publication, New Musical Express. The magazine quoted the 63-year-old rocker as saying, “The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father. He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn’t have cared… It went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.” Richards' father, Bert, died in 2002, at 84.
It was a delicious, if unbelievable quote and was picked up by newspapers, wire services, TV and online outlets around the world. The Associated Press to Forbes, The Drudge Report, Breitbart, and E! Online all reported it.
Curiously, no one followed up with Richards’ representatives. MTV finally killed the story by getting in touch with Richards’ longtime manager, Jane Rose. They asked her point-blank about the snorting quotes. MTV published the contents of her e-mail response:
“Said in jest,” Rose wrote. “Can't believe anyone took [it] seriously.”
Another Rolling Stones spokesman, Bernard Doherty, told The Chicago Sun-Times that 'It was an off-the-cuff remark, a joke, and it is not true. File under April Fool's joke.”
But TME magazine said on its Web site that the remark was “no quip, but came about after much thinking” by the guitarist.
“He didn’t offer the information, I had to ask him a couple of questions to get the information out of him,” said interviewer Mark Beaumont. “He didn't come straight out with that.”
In a statement posted on the Rolling Stones web site, Richards said: “The complete story is lost in the usual slanting! The truth of the matter is that I planted a sturdy English Oak. I took the lid off the box of ashes and he is now growing oak trees and would love me for it!!! I was trying to say how tight Bert and I were. That tight!!! I wouldn't take cocaine at this point in my life unless I wished to commit suicide.”
Also in the NME story, Richards revealed his friends once thought he had "died" after a "bad" drugs binge.
The ageing rocker said: "Someone put strychnine in my dope. I was comatose but totally awake. I could listen to everyone, and they were like, 'He's dead, he's dead!'"
