Keith Richards breaks down his drug use and the effect it had on his songwriting process

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Keith Richards knows there is no need to be coy about his drug use and the effects it had on his songwriting. The Rolling Stones‘ guitarist dabbled in drugs for the better part of his career and has spoken honestly about it in the years that followed. From allegedly snorting his father’s ashes to the time he was unable to be arrested because police couldn’t wake him up, Richards has some legendary stories relating to substance abuse.

But the guitarist believes the drink and drugs of the rock ‘n’ roll era informed his career in a number of ways. One way it helped is his songwriting, with Richards even saying he “got more out” of cocaine than it got from him. Legendary five-night stints in the studio were the result of such substance abuse, with Richards saying he managed to cut out the noise and focus on just his work, to an almost lethal result.

He told MOJO Magazine: “It’s difficult to say once you’re on it. It’s like all those jazz players who took heroin because they thought they’d be like Charlie Parker. But no! All drugs are different and, yes, I would say I got a whole lot out of cocaine; I got more out of it than it took out of me. It made me concentrate more – I’d stay up four or five days.

“In that time, other people had changed their clothes, they’d shaved, they’d gone to work and come back. I found it’s something not to recommend – you’re not going to make any better music out of it. But you’re certainly not going to make any worse. Sometimes I’ve chased songs for four or five days until I got it right. And I certainly didn’t do it on organic food!”

Richards would write up a song for Some Girls, the band’s 1978 album, during a nine-day stint where he didn’t sleep. Richards says he wrote the song without a wink of sleep over the near two-week period, while frontman Mick Jagger puts the energy of the times down to one thing, drugs. Jagger confirmed that the song was written during a time when “everyone was using drugs.”

It was not just narcotics but the band’s own popularity in the run-up to making Some Girls. Featured on the album is Before They Make Me Run, a song which was finished after a five-day session in the studio with Richards at the helm. The veteran guitarist would then fall asleep “standing up” once recording had concluded.

Writing in his autobiography, Life, Richards shared: “One [engineer] would flop under the desk and have a kip, and I’d put the other one in and keep going. Nine days without a wink. I fell asleep standing up, eventually… I was just putting another cassette back on the shelf, and I was feeling great, and I turned ’round and fell asleep.”

Though Richards would finally rest after the five-day recording session for Before They Make Me Run, it was when he woke up that he discovered a problem. He added: “I fell against the edge of the speaker. Woke up in a pool of blood, wondering, ‘Is that claret?'”