Did Lorne Michaels help Keith Richards avoid life in prison?
Keith Richards has erred on the side of trouble his whole life, but you can never make a case for him being heinous. Music has had its fair share of troublesome, abusive characters throughout history, some of whom have been reprimanded for dangerous crimes, but Richards was more of a happy-go-lucky rule breaker, largely concerned with his one true aim of getting high wherever possible.
It’s hard to imagine the legendary Rolling Stones rocker behaving with any urgency or concern, even when the authorities are knocking at his door. He was the poster boy for the carefree side-effects of mass drug-use, a one in a million human being who can seemingly survive the physical and mental pitfalls of consuming everything in sight and in turn, is a damaging case study to those trying to initiate any meaningful conversations about problematic nature of rock and roll hedonism.
We all know the glossy reputation of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll had a dark underbelly, but somehow Richards eluded it. An idea compounded by the lawlessness of his celebrity status, which ultimately saw him evade a life sentence behind bars.
The world megastardom of The Rolling Stones meant that Richards’ debauchery could go globetrotting. And in 1977, he was arrested at a Toronto hotel after Canadian Mounties (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) found 22 grams of heroin in his suite. A hefty amount for the legendary drug user, and a figure that led authorities to not just charge the musician with possession, but possession for the purpose of trafficking. It was a crime that in Canada could be prosecuted at anywhere between seven years to life, leaving Richards’ future firmly in the balance. Richards was able to post bond, but had his passport confiscated and was subsequently held in Canada until he secured a special medical visa to undergo addiction treatment in the States.
The episode didn’t prove to be strong enough of a deterrent, and come October 1978, when his trial rolled around, Richards was still using. That month, the band were scheduled to be musical guests on the season four premiere of SNL, an experience that proved to be problematic for the production, resulting in several cuts of Richards’ appearance in skits.
Somewhat concerned, Mick Jagger roped in the legendary leader of SNL, Lorne Michaels, who was a Toronto native, asking if he could testify on behalf of Richards during his Canadian trial. Understandably, the fear of perjury loomed over Michaels, who had seen firsthand that Richards wasn’t clean, so instead leant into the more arbitrary defence of his creative qualities. He proceeded to label Keith as “the catalyst of the band,” and brought weight to their cultural relevance by explaining his decision to cast The Stones over Muhammad Ali as SNL hosts, calling the group “the number one rock and roll band in the world.”
It was rumoured he anchored his argument in this point on the grounds that “Canadians would not want to put a real artist in jail.”
Thankfully for The Stones, Michaels’ intuition was well placed and Richards eventually got off with a suspended sentence and a community service obligation that required him to play a benefit concert for the blind, a decision rooted in the fact that one of his other character witnesses that day was a young blind fan named Rita.
Richards appeared on SNL once more in 1988, filling a simpler role of musical guest. While he largely escaped authorities from ‘77 onwards, he never really took rehabilitation seriously, something Michaels may have grappled to come to terms with in the 11 years between his SNL appearances.
