Let It Bleed

KEITH RICHARDS: “There’re probably a million different reasons why you take smack. I think it’s maybe to do with working on the stage. The high levels of energy and adrenaline require, if you can find it, a sort of antidote. And I saw smack as just becoming part of that. Why do you do it to yourself? I never particularly liked being that famous. I could face people easier on the stuff, but I could do that with booze too. It isn’t really the whole answer. I also felt I was doing it not to be a ‘pop star.’ There was something I didn’t really like about that end of what I was doing, the blah blah blah. That was very difficult to handle, and I could handle it better on smack. Mick chose flattery, which is very like junk – a departure from reality. I chose junk. And also I was with my old lady Anita, who was as avid as I was. I think we just wanted to explore that avenue. And when we did, we only meant to explore the first few blocks, but we explored it to the end.”

VICTOR BOCKRIS: “To their fans, everything the Stones did appeared to be perfect.  They particularly liked Keith’s new look, which reeked of contempt for all the sartorial symbols of the status quo, from the glittering, sequined blouses of a female fashion model, which he borrowed from Anita, to the carapace of shoulder-length black hair that set off his wolfish skull and ghoulish face painted the colors of Nosferatu and emphasized his nodding head and hooded eyes.  Despite Mick’s desire to pull back from the edge of the devil’s pit, once the music started a fervor gripped the crowd.  Riots, arson, arrests – entropy – accompanied every show.”

NICK KENT: “Mick would only stay the center of attention until Keith walked into the room. At which time all eyes would shift towards the guitarist and pretty much stay that way for the rest of the evening. Keith wasn’t what you’d call a ‘mingler.’ He’d lope into a room, often accompanied by a couple of unsavory individuals who seemed destined to have their faces turning up on some FBI ‘Wanted’ posters in the not-too-distant future, slump down on a chair, turn his back to the milling throng and glower a lot. Talk about drop-dead cool.”

LESTER BANGS: “Keith was obviously one of those people (like Bob Dylan circa ’66) who look the absolute best of their entire lives when they’re clearly on the verge of death… He looked like everything dark and tragic that the Stones trip had ever threatened: soul flattened, skin sallow, bone scraped, and behind the reflector-shaded eyes the suggestion of a diseased intelligence too cancerous to spit imprecations anymore. Fucked up. It was beautiful.”

RONNIE SCHNEIDER: “I could give you a million stories about Keith being a man’s man.  I remember a guy comes up and bothers Charlie’s wife and Keith smashes him over the head with a beer bottle, while holding a baby, as he pushes the guy down the stairs.”

ANITA PALLENBERG: “I wasn’t really an actress, in the sense Marianne Faithfull was, doing Shakespeare and all that, no, my attitude was – it’s only me, pay me a fee and you can borrow my face.  But I gave up acting when I had a son in 1969.  Keith and I took Marlon with us when the band traveled.  As a toddler, he went to rehearsals and recordings, and during performances he even sat on a stool next to Keith while he played.  Marlon was a true rock baby.”

KEITH RICHARDS: “There is something inside me that just wants to excite that thing in other people, because I know it’s there in everybody. There’s a demon in me, and there’s a demon in everybody else. I get a uniquely ridiculous response – the skulls flow in by the truckload, sent by well-wishers. People love that image. They imagined me, they made me, the folks out there created this folk hero. Bless their hearts. And I’ll do the best I can to fulfill their needs. They’re wishing me to do things that they can’t. They’ve got to do this job, they’ve got this life, they’re an insurance salesman… but at the same time, inside of them is a raging Keith Richards. When you talk of a folk hero, they’ve written the script for you and you better fulfill it. And I did my best. It’s no exaggeration that I was basically living like an outlaw. And I got into it! I knew that I was on everybody’s list. All I had to do was recant and I’d be all right. But that was something I just couldn’t do.”

KEITH RICHARDS: “Usually when I got on stage, I’d just got up. Getting out of bed is one thing, waking up is another. It takes me three or four hours. Then I’ve got to put the rig on. The shortest time between getting out of bed and getting on stage was probably one of those where I was supposed to be on stage an hour ago. ‘What am I wearing?’ ‘Pajamas, Daddy.’ ‘OK, quick, where’s me fucking pants?’ Usually I had crashed out in what I was wearing to play anyway. Half an hour later, it’s ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the Rolling Stones.’ It’s an interesting wake-up call.”

JOHN DUNBAR: “They were totally freaked out.  They’d see Mick and they were going ‘Mick!  Mick!’ Guys weeping – it was like the fucking holy virgin.  I was on stage with them.  I was watching horrible shit, watching all of these people.”

KEITH RICHARDS: “Levitation is probably the closest analogy to what I feel – whether it’s ‘Jumpin Jack’ or ‘Satisfaction’ or ‘All Down the Line’ – when I realize I’ve hit the right tempo and the band’s behind me. It’s like taking off in a Learjet. I have no sense that my feet are touching the ground. I’m elevated to this other space. People say, ‘Why don’t you give it up?’ I can’t retire until I croak. I don’t think they quite understand what I get out of this. I’m not doing it just for the money or for you. I’m doing it for me.”

VICTOR BOCKRIS: “Keith’s hotel rooms took on his personality, as he draped the lamps with scarves, put on some funky R&B, stuck pictures on the walls, lit up a cigarette, and poured himself a drink.  In this ‘bubble’ he constantly worked on his music.  Charlie thought he was a Bedouin, capable of setting up or striking camp in an instant.”

SPANISH TONY: “The scene confirmed every accusation of decadence ever launched at the Rolling Stones. It was the best suite in the best hotel in the world, the Ritz. A crystal chandelier sparkled from the ceiling like a duchess’ diamond necklace, and beneath it Keith, Anita and I sat cross-legged around an ornate Oriental pipe. Keith was bare-footed and wore trousers the color of fire that had been made up from a roll of curtain material he had bought in Marrakesh. Anita wore an African caftan, but its voluminous folds were not loose enough to conceal the swelling in her belly. She was five months pregnant. It was early afternoon, and we were smoking pure Chinese opium, the Remy Martin of drugs.”

CHRISTOPHER SANDFORD: “Whether in San Diego, Dallas or Chicago, Keith, said Ian Stewart, ‘would traipse into a dumpy motel room and inside of ten minutes fix it.’ The preferred look honored distant roots in Dartford, crossed with a Moorish hash den: a world of ashtrays, bottles and darts boards, all shut in by velvet shawls and batik scarves flung over lamps.”

MARLON RICHARDS: “I was never even curious about drugs. I found all those people bloody ridiculous; I just found it really silly what they were doing. Anita tells me I did smoke lots of spliffs when I was four or so in Jamaica, but I don’t believe that at all; that sounds like an Anita story. I found the drugs repulsive, but I did learn to clean I up and not to touch it and not to leave it lying around. If I saw it, I’d put it away. And there was always the occasion where I’d pick up a magazine or a book, and lines of blow would be on it and would go all over the place. Keith wouldn’t get too mad.”

MARLON RICHARDS: “Keith would always read me stories. We used to love Tintin and Asterix, but he couldn’t read French, and they were French editions, so he’d make the whole bloody thing up. It was only after years that I realized when I read a Tintin that he didn’t know what the hell the story was about; he’d bluffed his way through the whole thing. Given all the smack, nodding out and that sort of thing, that is quite remarkable.”

ANITA PALLENBERG: “In the early days it was kind of fun.  But then when things started to get bigger, I didn’t enjoy the lifestyle at all.  I didn’t like the whole scene.  Honestly, I can say now if I knew they’d become that famous, I’d have moved out and disappeared long before.”

MARIANNE FAITHFULL: “I always envied Keith and Anita because they looked into the jaws of death together. It was never like that with Mick and me.”

NICK KENT: “In the seventies it was really Keith and the danger around Keith.  He lived, and continues to live, an incredibly dangerous like and he doesn’t give a fuck.  He lives his life like it’s a movie.  Keith Richards was the Godfather.  Everyone wanted to go be like Keith Richards.  He was the big Lord Byron figure.  He was mad, bad, and dangerous to know.  It was a nonverbal thing and it was the seventies and Richards wore it so well.  He had immense personal charisma.  When he plays guitar in a room he really feels something.  He just sits there and he is the center of attention in that room and Jagger is like a little boy running around doing silly things to get attention, but the power base of the Rolling Stones emotionally is there, and there’s always been and there always will be this thing about Keith.”

NICK KENT: “I had stayed away from the relationship between Keith and Anita because Anita made me uncomfortable.  She was an incredible woman but there was something disturbing about her.  She liked to mess with people.  Her attitude was ‘Come into my web and we’ll play a little game,’ and Keith wasn’t into that.”

MARSHALL CHESS: “I spent a lot of hours taking drugs with Anita, sitting in the same room with her, the two of us, for days at a time.  It was Anita who introduced me to heroin, which at the time was rather a rarity.  Speed, acid and grass were the drugs, but I became heavily involved with smack.  Anita and Keith had been into it for a long time.”

KEITH RICHARDS: “I like a high-spirited woman. And with Anita, you knew you were taking on a Valkyrie – she who decides who dies in battle.  She was unstoppably self-destructive. She was like Hitler; she wanted to take everything down with her.  I loved the woman; I’d do anything. She’s got a problem? I’ll take over. I’ll help out.”

MARSHALL CHESS: “Anita, Keith and I did go for ‘cures’ in Switzerland, given by a doctor, who put us on Elucidril and barbiturates.  He’d put us to sleep for five, six days.  The Elucidril did nothing.  What we really did was sleep through the withdrawals, but he didn’t cure whatever it was that made us addicted, so three days later, after we finished the cure, we were right back on smack.  It was a joke.”

ANITA PALLENBERG: “We even did a detox together at the end of the European tour. Me, Keith and Gram, with two nurses William Burroughs had recommended. I have crazy memories of that, of Gram always running away and hiding and never being there when they were looking for him.”

RON SCHNEIDER: “Anita was a tough chick.  The best example I can give of what kind of woman Anita was happened in Sweden.  The promoter of the Gothenburg show was having this dinner just outside of town – with the band, dignitaries and other people invited – there were about twenty to thirty people.  Anita was sitting next to Keith and I was sitting next to Anita.  Anita asked the waiter what was the strongest alcohol they had.  The waiter went off and brought back some third-grade alcohol or something, the guy then brings the bottle over to her and she fills her glass and chugs the whole lot down.  She then turned to Keith and put the empty glass in front of him and says, ‘Now prove to me that you’re a man.’”

ASTRID LUNDSTROM: “I remember being impressed with how strong Anita seemed when she got pregnant with Marlon.  When I saw her again at the airport in August 1970 as the Stones were about to go on tour in Europe, I was blown away because she was totally strung out and a mess.”

ELIZABETH WINDER: “Throughout the year of 1970, Anita’s drug intake continued to skyrocket.  Barbiturates for breakfast (usually Tuinals, pierced with a needle to speed up efficiency).  Mandrax or Quaaludes with afternoon tea.  And of course, speedballs of heroin and cocaine.

ELIZABETH WINDER: “Making her own money, throwing her things in a bag and jetting off to another European city alone, no one to answer to, her luggage stuffed with leather, silks, and lace she bought herself.  A snakeskin jacket, a Whitby brooch, button-hooked boots she found in Milan.  So many lost now, so many treasures lost on the road.”

ANITA PALLENBERG: “With my lifestyle, I lost everything.  Especially the things I liked.”

KEITH RICHARDS: “Off of Bill Burroughs, I got apomorphine, along with Smitty, the vicious nurse from Cornwall. The cure that Gram Parsons and I did was total anti-heroin aversion therapy. And Smitty loved to administer it. ‘Time, boys.’ There’s Parsons and me in my bed, ‘Oh no, here comes Smitty.’ Gram and I needed to take a cure just before the farewell tour of 1971, when he and his soon-to-be-wife, Gretchen, came over to England and we went about our usual ways. Bill Burroughs recommended this hideous woman to administer the apomorphine that Burroughs talked endlessly about, a therapy that was pretty useless. But Burroughs swore by it. I didn’t know him that well, except to talk about dope – how to get off or how to get the quality you’re after. Smitty was Burroughs’ favorite nurse and she was a sadist and the cure consisted of her shooting you up with this shit and then standing over you. You do as you’re told. You don’t argue. ‘Stop sniveling, boy. You wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t screwed up.’ We took this cure in Cheyne Walk, and it was Gram and me in my four poster bed, the only guy I ever slept with. Except that we kept falling off the bed because we were twitching so much from the treatment. Our only outlet, if we could stand up, would be to go down and play the piano and sing for a bit, or as much as possible to kill time. I wouldn’t recommend that cure to anybody. I wondered if it was Bill Burroughs’ joke, to send me to probably the worst cure he’d ever had.”

ANITA PALLENBERG: “I felt I had to protect Keith. He was flying so high in the music world. He couldn’t recognize a face or anything. He sat for hours and hours in the bog. And then when evening came he just got very nervous and didn’t know what to do with himself, basically, because he had this routine of being on stage. It was very hard for him.”