Keith Richards: 'I really DID snort my father's ashes'



It sounded like the stuff of rock and roll legend, but Rolling Stone Keith Richards has confirmed that he really did snort his late father’s ashes.

The 66-year-old caused uproar three years ago when he allegedly told New Musical Express magazine that he had inhaled the cremated remains of his father, Bert.

Afterwards, his aides insisted the comments had been ‘made in jest’.

But Richard refused to confirm or deny anything, merely insisting the quotation had been taken out of context.



Near Fatal: Keith Richards leaving the Ascot Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand, after having brain surgery in 2006

Now, the guitarist has chosen to come clean about the incident in his autobiography, Life.

In the book, he reveals he acted on impulse after some of the ashes blew on to a garden table as he was about to scatter them around an English oak tree.

He said: ‘The truth of the matter is that after having Dad’s ashes in a black box for six years, because I really couldn’t bring myself to scatter him to the winds, I finally planted a sturdy English oak to spread him around.

‘And as I took the lid off of the box, a fine spray of his ashes blew out on to the table. I couldn’t just brush him off so I wiped my finger over it and snorted the residue.

‘Ashes to ashes, father to son. He is now growing oak trees and would love me for it.’

And writing in his autobiography Life, which came out yesterday, Richards, 66, also revealed how he nearly died after falling out of a tree while on holiday in Fiji.

The star fractured his skull when he fell from the tree whilst on holiday with wife Patti Hansen, 54, Stones bandmate Ronnie Wood, 63, and his ex-wife Jo Wood, 55. At the time, reports had claimed the tree was 40 feet high - but Richards insisted it was no more than 'seven feet.' Treatment: The Ascot Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand, where Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards was staying following the fall

He also revealed he did not think anything of the accident until two days later when he developed a headache while on a sailing trip.

‘Forget any palm tree. This was some gnarled low tree that was basically a horizontal branch.

‘It was obvious that people had sat there before because the bark was worn away. And it was, I guess, about seven feet up.’

Richards, who had earlier been swimming, told how he decided to climb out of the tree when it was lunchtime.

‘There was another branch in front of me and I thought I’ll just grab hold of that and gently drop to the ground.

‘But I forgot my hands were still wet and there was sand and everything on them and, as I grabbed this branch, the grip didn’t take.

‘And so I landed hard on my heels, and my head went back and hit the trunk of the tree. Hard. And that was it. It didn’t bother me at the time.’

Unbeknown to Richards at that time, he had just fractured his skull.

Two days later, he wrote how ‘a blinding headache’ came on whilst they were on a boat trip.

He explained: ‘I found out later I was lucky that the second jolt happened.

‘Because the first one had cracked my skull and that could have gone on for months and months before being discovered, or before killing me. It could have kept on bleeding under the skull.

‘But the second blow made it obvious.’

Richards was given a record-breaking £4.6million advance for his memoirs.

