Delusions and the damage done: Keith Richards’ terrifying stint without sleep
The so-called Russian Sleep Experiments are part horror movie myth, part terrible truth. But for Keith Richards, they’re just something to partake in when time is spare. The Rolling Stones guitarist is likely one of the hardest partiers the rock and roll world has ever seen. Richards has forgotten more wild nights than most of us have ever had. This wayward lifestyle means that his longest run without sleep is frighteningly impressive.
The guitarist has been an ever-present at the rock and roll royal court ever since he and The Rolling Stones broke out into the music business. But while their music was charged with an uncanny ferociousness, it was these same animalistic tendencies that defined their lives off-stage, too. For the Dartford lads, rock and roll didn’t just present the chance for a creative career, it open the door to break free from banal normality entirely.
Richards and the band weren’t exactly quiet about their raucous behaviour either; they celebrated it as part of their artistic arsenal. Neither were the British press, which followed the band wherever they went, hoping for a bit of salacious commentary for their celebrity columns. It even went as far as to have a newspaper try to set up the band for a police drugs bust. But to no avail.
It’s easy to point the finger at the media but you could hardly blame them. Alongside The Beatles, the Stones were the biggest band in the world but unlike the Fab Four, the Stones had a far more dangerous image. An image they backed up on numerous occasions. Their partying and drug abuse would not only put them on the front pages but also propel them in the charts.
As well as using drugs for that classic trope of artistic inspiration, their substance abuse made them a desirable property to teenagers across the globe. It took its toll on the group and rendered them pretty useless during the mid-to-late-seventies, with a derisory output of music. However, Keith Richards was a machine that was able to push on and keep working.
“Adrenaline is the most amazing thing we have,” Richards told an interviewer in 1992. And during the recording of ‘Before They Take Me Run’ from Some Girls, he navigated a five-day stint, “One [engineer] would flop under the desk and have a kip, and I’d put the other one in and keep going,” remarked Richards in his memoir Life.
Richards’ record, however, is far longer. The notorious guitarist’s longest time without sleep: “Nine days without a wink,” he bragged. “I fell asleep standing up, eventually … I was just putting another cassette back on the shelf, and I was feeling great, and I turned ’round and fell asleep. I fell against the edge of the speaker. Woke up in a pool of blood, wondering, ‘Is that claret?’”
This is, of course, not advisable. And some folks would tell you it’s pretty much physically impossible too. In truth, not much is known about high levels of sleep deprivation. Why? “It’s hard to ethically deprive people of that much sleep,” Dr Michelle Drerup told Cleveland Clinic. At 72-hours, pretty much the limit of ethical medical research, she says, “You’ll be irritable, anxious, depressed and struggle with executive functioning and thinking,” she adds. “You might also start to hallucinate: to see or hear things that aren’t there.”
Beyond delusions, you also start to suffer from illusions. Things appear that aren’t there, but at the same time, you struggle to process things that are there, such as moving trains or your wife. So, quite how Richards not only survived this horror but pushed on through is maddening. But it’s also not implausible, with the world record set in 1963 by a then 17-year-old Randy Gardner, who stayed up for a near-fatal 11 days and 25 minutes.
It’s a testament to Keith’s dedication that he managed to keep going for so long. Whether we’re talking about his drugs or music is up for the debate, and judging by Richards’ command of both, a moot point. We’re just glad Keef gets his 40 winks these days.
