It took a while to convince Keith but when he’d finished off his dad all of the Stones joined the ‘Just say no’ campaign
You know about that most optimistic & happy-clappy Bible book Ecclesiastes, I suppose. Or at least you will recognize the following sound bite, ‘What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.’
That may very well be the case but sometimes mere mortals like us do have to raise the occasional eye-brow. Like today, when the news came that Castro had resigned. That one is a bit of a shocker – and definitely one of the famous thunder & blue sky persuasion. It was, in a way, just as unsuspected and weird as yesterday’s message from the Rolling Stones:
The Rolling Stones, the band for whom the term sex and drugs and rock’n'roll could have been invented, have called on their younger counterparts to live healthier lifestyles. In an astonishing case of “do as I say, not as I did” Keith Richards and Sir Mick Jagger, have warned younger pop stars not to take drugs because they are bad for them. The pair, both 64, singled out the troubled singer Amy Winehouse, telling her she should “get her act together”.
I don’t think I exaggerate when I say that neither Rolling Stones’ fans nor Young Conservatives for Christ would have expected Nick and the gang to join president Bush’s ‘Just say no’ campaign.
Of course, for some the Stones may still function as role models, so it can’t hurt that for once they will try to set a good example. Especially Keith Richards has his work cut out for him if he wants to undo all the damage done by the more amusing examples he once set – like this rather famous one:
He is the embodiment of rock and roll excess. But Keith Richards’ latest admission is likely to surprise even his most hardened fans. The Rolling Stones guitarist has told how he snorted his own father’s ashes in a drugs binge.
“The strangest thing I’ve tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father,” he said, before explaining how he mixed the ashes with cocaine and inhaled them: “He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. It went down pretty well. And I’m still alive.”
So yes, it’s probably a good idea that the Stones have gone over to the enemy’s ‘Just say no’ camp.
What was that? Oh, you’re saying not even the most idiotic junkie – let’s call him Pete Doherty – would have followed the kind of examples old Keith set when he still was in his wildest wild boy phase? Well, I can’t speak for Doherty (God be praised) but for the rest you’d be dead wrong, I’m afraid:
A JUNKIE burglar has been jailed for 22 months for stealing the ashes of a South Yorkshire man’s dead wife. Heroin addict Wayne Fieldsend, aged 28, broke into a neighbour’s unoccupied home in Athersley, Barnsley, hoping to find goods to sell to feed his addiction, Sheffield Crown Court heard. He stole a box believing it contained jewellery which turned out to be an oak urn containing the remains of 62-year-old Margaret Lucas who had died three weeks earlier.
Speaking after Fieldsend was jailed for 22 months, Mrs Lucas’ husband Maurice, 66, a retired pit worker said: “The sentence is not long enough. He has caused me a great deal of grief. He must have known what he was taking. There is a plaque with my late wife’s name on the top. It is just disgusting anyone could stoop so low.”
The urn was found abandoned by a rubbish bin near Fieldsend’s home and it was returned intact to Mr Lucas.
Intact maybe but if the junkie wasn’t just a thief but a ‘Kief’ fan as well, the urn was by then most probably also quite empty.
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