File reveals police view of drug squad raid on Keith Richards
National Archives releases Met's account of famous drugs bust, which conflicts with Rolling Stones guitarist's own telling
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Music | Keith Richards
File reveals police view of drug squad raid on Keith Richards
National Archives releases Met's account of famous drugs bust, which conflicts with Rolling Stones guitarist's own telling
Alan Travis · 03/11/2011 · guardian.co.uk
Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg arrive at Marlborough Street magistrates court in London on 27 June 1973, to answer charges after the drugs raid. Photograph: Frank Barratt/Getty Images Keith Richards and Anita Pallenberg arrive at Marlborough Street magistrates court in London on 27 June 1973, to answer charges after the drugs raid. Photograph: Frank Barratt/Getty Images
For the Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, this was his most famous drugs bust. He faced 25 charges in all, but in the true piratical spirit of rock'n'roll he walked away with just a £250 fine because it was obvious even to the judge that the police were trying to stitch him up.
That, at least, is the account Richards gives of his arrest in his recently-published memoir, Life. Johnny Depp may have modelled his portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow in the Pirates of the Caribbean series on Richards, but the account in the Metropolitan police file of the raid, released this week by the National Archives, casts him in a somewhat less heroic role.
When the Chelsea drug squad raided his home in Cheyne Walk, London – just a few doors down from Mick Jagger's house – one bright Tuesday morning in June 1973 they found not only the expected collection of grass, cannabis resin, "Chinese" heroin, mandrax tablets, burnt spoons, syringes and pipes but also a .38 Smith and Wesson revolver, a shotgun and 110 rounds of ammunition. It would have seemed an open and shut case that should have attracted a hefty sentence, given Richards's famous record.
When the police arrived they found Richards and Anita Pallenberg, who they described as "his common law wife and a housewife", still asleep in their four-poster bed in their first-floor bedroom.
As Richards and Pallenberg were getting dressed, officers led by Detective Inspector Charles O'Hanlon, found a box full of drugs. The revolver was in a bedside cabinet and the ammunition in a nearby cupboard. In an upstairs bedroom the police also arrested the flamboyant Prince Jean Christien Stanislaus Klossowski, whom they described as "the self-claimed heir apparent to the Polish throne", but known to Richards and Jagger simply as Stash. More drugs were found in his room.
As soon as O'Hanlon challenged Richards about the drugs, he suggested they were "down to Marshall Chess" – the son of the founder of Chess records, the legendary Chicago blues label – who ran the Stones's own record label.
Richards claimed Chess was renting the house and they were just staying overnight after a late night finish to a long recording session. "It's got nothing to do with us. He rents this place. We only came here last night," O'Hanlon claimed Richards said. When the guitarist started to walk towards the bathroom, O'Hanlon said: "Keith, could you come back here?" "Mr Richards to you," came the reply. O'Hanlon insisted, however, that gold records on the walls inscribed to Keith Richards or the Rolling Stones painted a different picture.
Richards admitted he did own the house and that he didn't have a firearms licence for the guns. But he did try to get rid of some incriminating spoons which showed burn marks after being used to cook up heroin. O'Hanlon claimed that Richards had gone downstairs and "ordered a manservant" to bring him and Pallenberg some drinks. He then unsuccessfully tried to get the incriminating spoons from the bathroom to use to stir the drinks but was stopped by the police.
Richards said the revolver, complete with holster, was bought for him by a roadie named Leroy Leonard in San Francisco for $200 because he had just been to Jamaica and was advised he needed it for his protection: "There is some sort of trouble there and if you live there it's best for your own protection to have one. So I decided to get one together in readiness," he said, adding that he had only fired it once to test whether it worked. In his memoirs he claims the shotgun was an antique children's miniature made by a French nobleman in the 1880s. He says that at the trial the police tried to fit him up by charging him as though it were a sawn-off shotgun which carried an automatic year's prison sentence.
Richards says this was the only charge he pleaded not guilty to, and the police action so infuriated the judge that he gave him a £10 fine for each charge.
The police forensic report describes the weapon as a 9mm Belgian shotgun with a short barrel, under 24ins, that had not been used and was in poor condition. The report adds that despite the variety of drugs found the quantities were small.
At the trial Richards pleaded guilty to all the charges but one. As there was no evidence the weapons had been fired the only offence committed was not to have a licence for them – then a minor crime.
The minor nature of the offences may perhaps explain why the rock'n'roll hero escaped on this occasion with a fine rather than a Captain Sparrow-style victory.
