Keith Richards was once mistaken for topless woman after ‘irate’ call to cops

Keith Richards is no stranger to run-ins with the law. From being unable to wake up for an arrest to a shakedown that is now legendary, The Rolling Stones‘ guitarist has been the subject of frequent police visits. But one such incident proved a rather awkward encounter for Richards, who found himself fighting with a police officer over topless women.

Speaking on his awkward arrest in the midwest of North America, Richards claimed that police believed he was a topless woman. The ridiculous story has a ring of truth to it though as Richards outlined what happened when he started arguing with an officer of the law that he was not, in fact, a woman.

Richards told MOJO Magazine: “There were many, many incidents like that, and if Phelge remembers it, it must have happened. Usually, that stuff was like water off a duck’s back. I had far worse in America when we first arrived. In the Midwest we once got arrested for being girls!

“We were in a swimming pool in a Holiday Inn on a highway in Georgia somewhere, and suddenly (makes siren noise), ‘Oh, the cops are coming… and they’re turning in here!’ The cop gets out and shouts, ‘OK, where are the topless women? Someone had called in saying there was a bunch of topless girls in the pool.’ We were like, ‘[Really? (Cups non-existent boobs) This is all we got!’ Obviously, it was some irate person – probably a woman – who called them, thinking we were chicks. She must have had pretty bad eyesight!”

Richards would not explain how the situation ended but it’s one of the many moments the veteran songwriter has had with law enforcement officials. The rock and roll legend kept himself awake for a stretch of more than three days during a Canadian drug bust. Travelling with Rita Berdard, Richards found himself in hot water when a drug enforcement team busted down the door of his hotel room.

The incident arose when the guitarist’s girlfriend of the time, Anita Pallenberg, who had been travelling with Richards, had been nabbed on her flight from London to Toronto with 10g of marijuana and a spoon containing traces of heroin on it, per Far Out Magazine.

Richards and Pallenberg had travelled separately from The Rolling Stones and were trying to catch up to the band in time to record the Love You Live album at El Mocambo, a nightclub in Toronto, Canada.

Pallenberg’s customs issue was enough for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police to raid of Richards’ room at the Harbour Castle Hilton, February 27, 1977. But no arrest of Richards was made as, according to the guitarist, he was undisturbed by the search of his room.

Richards wrote: “They couldn’t wake me. By law you have to be conscious to be arrested. My memory of it is waking up and them going slap, slap, two Mounties dragging me about the room, slapping me. Trying to get me conscious.’” Police found nearly an ounce of high-grade heroin in his room and later charged him with “possession of heroin for the purposes of trafficking.”

The guitarist was eventually released on bail, but returned to court nearly a year later to face the charge. According to Richards, when he arrived at the court, “there were five to six hundred people outside every time I turned up in court, chanting, ‘Free Keith, free Keith.'”

The judge presiding over the case threw out any chance of a jail sentence, instead ordering Richards to “give a special performance at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind,” and attend a drug therapy course.