The day Keith Richards almost burned down the Playboy Mansion: “There’s all these bunnies all over the place”
If Keith Richards were a cat and had only been given nine lives, he’d have died many decades ago. The Rolling Stones guitarist has acquired himself a cape of immortality, making him rock music’s most invincible figure who has lived to tell the tale of life in the fast lane.
From an early age, Richards has embraced chaos. During The Rolling Stones’ hedonistic heyday, the guitarist happily played up to the debauched image that was depicted of him in the tabloids. While he may have been guilty of occasionally embellishing his antics to seem even wilder, such as claiming to have once survived for nine days without a wink of sleep, for the most part, his stories are true.
Over the years, Richards has unexpectedly found himself in many extreme circumstances, which has helped him become the ultimate rockstar who wrote the book on top-shelf shenanigans. If his degenerate streak could be boiled to one anecdote, it would be when he almost burned down the Playboy Mansion.
Admittedly, this tale sounds like ChatGPT was asked to create the ultimate Keith Richards story, but the incident indeed occurred in 1972. At the time, The Rolling Stones were on another one of their infamous tours of North America, which saw the group cause chaos night after night in each passing town they set foot in, leaving a trail of carnage in their wake.
While there are likely many tales from this tour that Richards doesn’t remember, not even he could forget almost burning the Playboy Mansion. The Stones were in Chicago to perform three shows at the International Amphitheatre, which led them to Hugh Heffner’s abode.
Although they could have afforded to stay in the most luxurious hotel in Chicago, that wasn’t their style. Instead, they called a favour from Heffner, who made sure they had a place to rest their heads free of charge, which he’d later regret. While there had been whisperings for many years about what The Rolling Stones got up to when they stayed at the notorious residence, it took many decades for Richards to come clean about his experience.
In his legendary autobiography, Life, released in 2010, Richards cast his mind back to 1972, explaining how he almost became an accidental arsonist thanks to marijuana. “Bobby [Keys] and I played it a little far when we set fire to the bathroom,” he explained. “Well, we didn’t, the dope did. Not our fault. Bobby and I were just sitting in the john, comfortable, nice john, sitting on the floor, and we’ve got the doc’s bag and we’re just smorgasbording.”
Richards continued to hazily recall: “‘I wonder what these do?’ Bong. And at a certain point… talk about hazy, or foggy, Bobby says, ‘It’s smoky in here.’ And I’m looking at Bobby and can’t see him. And the drapes are smouldering away; everything was just about to go off big-time… There was a thumping on the door, waiters and guys in black suits bringing buckets of water. They get the door open and we’re sitting on the floor, our pupils very pinned. I said, ‘We could have done that ourselves. How dare you burst in on our private affair?'”
Although Richards was able to laugh about the incident in his humorous book, it could have ended disastrously if nobody had come to their aid.
Furthermore, Richards again discussed that near-fatal night with Q Magazine in 2016, sharing, “There’s all these bunnies all over the place—don’t throw that lot in front of the Stones, you know. We had a tour doctor we used to love to raid. We’d get him stoned and take his bag. Bobby and I stashed ourselves in this john and were trying everything from the doctor’s bag. Somewhere a fire started. There’s bells ringing and people running down the corridor. As we left the bathroom, it burst into flames.”
Somehow, he escaped from the fire unscathed and left with nothing more than an amusing anecdote for his book. If, as Richards claimed, the Playboy Mansion was moments away from burning down to smithereens, then many other lives could also have been lost.
