The Rolling Stones, Donald Trump and a backstage standoff: “Keith pulls out his knife”
Back in 1989, Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards was seen as an ageing rocker. Nearly four decades later, he’s seen as an ageless legend.
While in the late 1980s, he may have been a rock star, apparently on his way out of the hedonistic lifestyle, he was still setting trends. Namely, the dislike of the President of the United States, Donald Trump.
At the time, the Rolling Stones were coming to the end of their massive Steel Wheels tour with a huge pay-per-view show to increase the massive cash-in opportunity. The band have never been afraid to grab their nearest swag bag and make off with as much loot as humanly possible, and if you give them a venue, they are likely to fill it with enough merch-buying rock lovers to make any show worthwhile.
A live performance on TV was a perfect marriage for the time, and saw the Stones salivating at the prospect. The only problem was that the only venue they could find was Donald Trump’s Plaza Hotel & Casino in Atlantic City. At the time, the level of hatred aimed squarely at the soon-to-be orange man in power was a more unique proposition.
Trump had yet to be cast as the TV chief in charge of The Apprentice and certainly hadn’t begun to enact his will on the American people with a king-like ruthlessness that hadn’t been seen since George IV. So disliking him was actually a pretty cultish thing to do, based purely on the dislike of his character, vulgarity and greed. Richards simply detested the man behind the myth.
With Richards’ vitriolic hate of Trump known by most of the band, then Rolling Stones manager Michael Cohl had a lot of work to do to ensure smooth sailing.
He told a Pollstar event: “I opened my big mouth in the meeting with The Rolling Stones, where they go, ‘This is all great, but we’re not going to be affiliated with Donald Trump. At all. Screw you’. And I go, ‘I will control Donald Trump! Don’t you worry!'”
With the band confident in their manager’s ability to control a situation, they agreed to the venue and signed the contract to have their next gig at Trump’s casino. With that flick of a pen, the biggest band on the planet was set on a collision course with the monstrous ego of the future Republican Party leader. It would not go well.
The band were getting ready for an interview, set at a specific time to get as many contacts in the press room at one time as possible, when they learnt that the room had been occupied by somebody else. Yes, you guessed it, Trump had taken the room, as Cohl explains: “I give him the [come here gesture]. ‘Come on, Donald, what are you doing? A) You promised us you wouldn’t even be here and, B) you promised you would never do this’. He says, ‘But they begged me to go up, Michael! They begged me to go up!’ I say, ‘Stop it. Stop it. This could be crazy. Do what you said you would. Don’t make a liar of yourself’.”
While this confrontation creates an imagery of a petulant and oblivious Trump that is all too easy to conjure up, the real drama would unfold once Cohl told the Rolling Stones, and more notably, Keith Richards.
Cohl later said: “They call me back, at which point Keith pulls out his knife and slams it on the table and says, ‘What the hell do I have you for? Do I have to go over there and fire him myself? One of us is leaving the building – either him, or us’. I said, ‘No. I’ll go do it. Don’t you worry’.”
It’s hard to say whether Cohl is offering some distinct elaborations here. Chances are, Keith Richards has threatened one or two people in his time, and the President of the United States might just be one of them. But one thing is for sure, if there was one member we would bet on having a knife on them at all times, it is Keith Richards.
Possibly embodying his future role as the ultimate pirate father, Captain Jack Sparrow’s dad in Pirates of the Caribbean, we’re enjoying the thought of a half-cut Richards with a knife between his teeth, threatening a swashbuckling ass-whooping for Donald. The moral of the story? Keith Richards is a bona fide rock and roll pirate.
