How many countries is Keith Richards banned from?
One of the key requirements of being a global rockstar has to be the ability to travel. How can you dominate the world if you’re not jet-setting around it, touching down in different countries, wowing crowds and then hitting the road again? However, in Keith Richards’ world, another requirement was also doing a lot of drugs and often, those two things don’t match.
See, the thing with the ‘sex, drugs and rock and roll’ attitude is that the middle section is, in fact, illegal. While all three can prove occupational hazards, sex and rock and roll can’t even hold a candle to the danger illicit substances have caused musicians throughout history. The stories range from the light-hearted to the severe, the silly to the fatal, the puff of a joint to insane, all-consuming addiction, and Richards alone seems to make up a good portion of them.
Some of the craziest drug-fueled stories in music come down to Richards. In his whole career as a young rockstar and a big-time drug taker, there are stories that truly boggle the brain. He’s brushed with death many times as the intoxicated haze sent him into a stupor, causing housefires, overdoses, falls from palm trees and much more. It’s caused many interpersonal issues, too, as his relationships, from his bandmates to his ex-partners, were routinely and gravely impacted by his dependencies. But mostly, Richards’ love for drugs caused him major legal problems.
In fact, Richards’ love for drugs was such a legal issue for the band that it routinely saw The Rolling Stones facing off against governments. It all started in the UK when the police’s major raid on his Redlands Estate was all part of a government war against drugs where rockstars became a target as if Richards and co were single-handedly sending British kids down a path towards pure drug-fueled hedonism. But even after that happened in 1967, landing Richards and Jagger in a jail cell, the rockers didn’t stop and neither did the consequences.
Instead, they took it international. For the next few years, for as long as Richards was using, the band were have run in after run in with the law, leading to there being whole countries that the guitarist couldn’t go to.
Which countries is Keith Richards banned from?
Keith Richards once claimed that he wasn’t allowed in nine countries at one point or another. The evidence seems to be non-existent, but there are definitely at least three and a half examples.
The first came in 1971 when Richards and the rest of the band were basically banned from their own home country of England. When Allen Klein’s devious dealings were revealed, making it clear that the band owed an obscene amount in tax money, they fled the country, exiling themselves to France. So, while it was more of a self-imposed ban, the amount they owed, paired with the long list of other legal issues Richards had already racked up in the country, made it pretty risky to step inside.
Then next was later that same year as he ruined their safe haven. Richards was banned from France for two years after being convicted and fined for drug trafficking in Nice while they were recording Exile On Main St. out there.
Two years later, in 1973, he added another country to his banned list and made it the most severe and long-lasting one yet. Right after the Stones announced a concert in Japan, the country’s authorities seemed to do some digging and realise who they were dealing with, deciding to ban the band from performing as they stated they were a “poisonous influence” on the country.
“I always figured they were making a big mistake. It only made people wonder why you weren’t letting us in. What are you scared of? We’re just a bunch of guitar players for Christ’s sake,” Richards said about that one, but Japan stuck to it’s guns for decades, only lifting the ban in 1990.
The other half comes in the form of the US. While Richards has never been officially and fully banned from the country, now even calling it his home, his career was dogged by a long list of bust-ups with authorities, which caused him to be chased out of states and struggle with visa issues as a consequence.
Luckily now, all of those issues seem to be behind him. The world has given Richards sins and now he’s clean, the Stones tours can continue to tear around the world, decidedly more stress-free than they used to be.
