“Would you agree in the ordinary course of events you would expect a young woman to be embarrassed if she had nothing on but a rug in the presence of eight men two of whom were hangers-on and the third a Moroccan servant?”
That was the prosecutor, Malcolm Morris, question to Keith Richards at the court in Chichester, West Sussex, England, on this day in 1967. Richards was facing charges that stemmed from the infamous raid of his Redland estate five months earlier. Though the raid netted very little in the way of actual drugs, what it did net was a great deal of notoriety for the already notorious Rolling Stones. It was during this raid that the police famously encountered a young Marianne Faithfull clad only in a bearskin rug.
“Not at all,” Richards replied Morris.
“You regard that, do you, as quite normal?” Morris asked again.
“We are not old men. We are not worried about petty morals.”
With that one line, Richards emphatically established himself as the spokesman for a generation that did not share the values of the British establishment.
Richards eventually was sentenced to one year in prison. He was sent to Wormwood Scrubs prison in 1969, where he was greeted by his fellow inmates like, well, a rock star. Richards would spend only one night in prison, though, as he was granted bail the following day, also pending appeal.
• Read also JAGGER-RICHARDS DRUG BUST.
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Featured image via GQ.
