Keith Richards: 'I snorted my father'

The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has acknowledged consuming a raft of illegal substances in his time. But this may top them all.

In comments published today by the British music magazine NME, the 63-year-old musician said he had snorted his father's ashes mixed with cocaine.

"The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father," Richards was quoted by the magazine as saying. His father, Bert, died in 2002 at the age of 84. "He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared," he said. "It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive."

One of rock's legendary wild men, Richards told the magazine that his survival was purely the result of luck, and advised young musicians against trying to emulate him. "I did it because that was the way I did it. Now people think it's a way of life," he said.

"I've no pretensions about immortality. I'm the same as everyone ... just kind of lucky. I was No. 1 on the 'who's likely to die' list for 10 years. I mean, I was really disappointed when I fell off the list." Richards also predicted that British rocker Pete Doherty could be the next casualty of drugs and advises him to leave his current girlfriend, fellow coke-lover, Kate Moss.

He also discussed his worst drug experience: "It was when someone put strychnine in my dope. I was totally comatose, but I was totally awake. I could listen to everyone, and they were like, 'He's dead, he's dead!', waving their fingers and pushing me about, and I was thinking, 'I'm not dead!," he said

MTV decided to dig deeper for facts and check with Richards' longtime manager, Jane Rose. She responded with an e-mail: "Said in jest. Can't believe anyone took [it] seriously." Go figure.

[via Billboard, NME, MTV]