- Three remaining band members have all overhauled their lifestyles to stay healthy – including kicking drugs and cigarettes and staying fit
- Read more: Rolling Stones perform the first night of the US leg of their tour in Texas as they show no signs of slowing down
Such was the collective drug consumption of the Rolling Stones during the height of their early fame in the late Sixties and early Seventies, plenty would have bet against them still performing into their eighth and ninth decades.
Last night in Houston, however, saw the Stones play a triumphant first night of their latest 16-date America and Canada tour, which marks the 60th anniversary of the Stones’ first US dates in 1964.
While drummer Charlie Watts passed away in August 2021 aged 80, following complications from emergency heart surgery, the rest of the Rolling Stones looked in fine fettle as they took to the stage in Texas for the first night of their Hackney Diamonds tour.
The latest string of live dates is sponsored by the American Association of Retired Persons, yet there was no sign of anyone looking like they might finally hang up a guitar or microphone anytime soon.
Two hour concert? No problem, apparently. The Rolling Stones on stage at the NRG stadium in Houston, Texas. The band were kicking off a 16-date tour of North America to promote their Hackney Diamonds album
After decades of drugs and alcohol abuse, The Rolling Stones have defied the ageing process by overhauling their lifestyles with organic diets and exercise. Pictured on stage in Houston on Monday night
Hellraising: Mick Jagger pictured in 1977 – he was arrested for drug possession during the band’s early career, and admitted to recording an entire album – Their Satanic Majesties Request – while high on acid in 1967. Right: Ronnie Wood, who joined the band later, called the Stones’ drug use ‘frightening’ (Pictured in 1973)
Richards pictured drinking on stage during the Rolling Stones’ 1975 Tour of the Americas; the 80-year-old says he now only drinks occasionally after ditching the drink
Mick, whos turns 81 in July, looked lithe as ever in skinny black velvet jeans and a metallic jacket, and still clearly has the moves like, well, Jagger.
Keith Richards, who turned 80 in December, blasted out the band’s new and old tracks – which include Honky Tonk Women, Start Me Up and Angie – from his guitar during the two-hour gig at the NRG Stadium.
Meanwhile, Ronnie Wood, the youngest of the remaining quartet at a sprightly 76 and sporting his trademark dyed black hair, showed little sign of exertion either.
So, just how are the Stones still rolling? FEMAIL looks at the challenges – from health scares to vast booze and drug consumption – that the three rockstar pensioners have overcome to keep thrilling on stages around the globe…
MICK JAGGER: ONCE ARRESTED FOR DRUG USE, IS NOW FITTER THAN MEN DECADES YOUNGER THAN HIM – THANKS TO HEART SURGERY AND STRICT DIET
The frontman rattled through the band’s greatest hits – and tracks from their latest album Hackney Diamonds – in Houston, with his trademark on-stage energy showing no signs of waning
While Jagger spent much of the 60s in a drug-fuelled haze, he now has a holier than thou approach to his health
With his 81st birthday approaching, Jagger – officially Sir Mick Jagger – has long since made preserving his health a top priority in his life.
It wasn’t always that way though, the early decades of the band’s career saw Jagger a slave to cigarettes, booze and drugs.
Five years after the band formed in 1962, a raid on Keith Richards’ country cottage, Redlands saw Jagger and Richards arrested for possession of amphetamines – after 18 police officers swooped.
Jagger pictured in 1966 with a black eye after coming off stage in Paris; the star was reported to have almost died from a drug overdose
His girlfriend at the time Marianne Faithful later said: ‘Poor Mick. The first time he tries acid, half the coppers in Sussex come after him.’
He later admitted that the band had been high on acid while recording Their Satanic Majesties Request, released in 1967.
The star’s drug habit, it has been claimed, almost cost him his life. A book published in 2017 about US magazine Rolling Stone, claimed Mick Jagger came close to death from a drugs overdose at the height of the band’s success.
Jagger and Richards were the subject of a police raid in 1967 after they were tipped off about the band’s drug use in 1967 (On stage in the 1970s)
The singer had a 28-inch waist…and thanks to an organic diet, at 80, he still does
Energy: Despite his early drug abuse, Jagger has always enjoyed exercise – his dad Basil was a PE teacher who lived until his 90s (Pictured: Jagger in LA in 1981)
Jagger performing during the ‘No Filter’ tour at the Mercedes Benz Arena in Atlanta in 2021 – he’s made a full recovery from heart surgery in 2019
Jagger apparently ‘turned blue’ before being rescued by the Oscar-winning actress Faye Dunaway and her husband, singer Peter Wolf – he was rushed to hospital and the incident was kept out of the press.
The father-of-eight – who once sang ‘What a drag it is getting old’ in the hit Mother’s Little Helper – apparently began to get wise to the perils of drug use after falling for Texan model Jerry Hall in 1976.
In Hall’s 2010 autobiography, she claimed she had given the star an ultimatum, saying it was her or the drugs, and revealing he would smoke cigarettes laced with heroin.
She wrote: ‘I told him I couldn’t see him if he took drugs, saying, “Go away and don’t come back until you’re straight.'”
Since embracing a healthier lifestyle, Jagger has become impressively fit – via workouts of at least an hour every day of his life.
Since quitting drugs and booze – although he’s reported to have the occasional tipple, the star has suffered just one major health crisis – a heart valve replacement in 2019.
The rock icon had undergone a routine scan that alerted doctors to an unexpected issue and the band rescheduled their North American No Filter Tour so that Jagger could have surgery.
The heart valve procedure took place at New York-Presbyterian hospital and the singer bounced back quickly, in part due to his strong fitness.
The rocker’s father Basil was a PE teacher who lived to 93 and taught him the value of regular exercise.
Diet? He has reportedly tried the Keto diet – a high-fat, low-carb regime – but generally follows an organic regime consisting primarily of fresh fruit and veg, whole grains, legumes, chicken and fish.
Remarkably, he has the same 28-inch waist he always did, with his weight barely fluctuating since his youth.
RONNIE WOOD: SWAPPED ‘FRIGHTENING’ DRUG ABUSE FOR NATURAL HIGHS AND DEFEATED LUNG CANCER AFTER 50 YEARS OF SMOKING
Rocking out in Houston: Ronnie Wood looked sprightly on stage in Texas with his fellow bandmates of 60 years
Ronnie Wood, pictured in 1982, says he prefers Netflix to drugs these days, but admits the tour parties still go on
Now 76, Ronnie Wood has long left behind the rock star lifestyle that made him famous – and now favours sipping green juice and watching Netflix rather than going out partying.
Ronnie has been open about his previous battles with addiction and abused cocaine, heroin and alcohol for years before getting clean for good in 2010.
Speaking to The Sun this week, he said: ‘The natural high is the best one you can have, it exceeds drugs or alcohol.
‘I like to have my green juices now and I do workouts with my trainer just light workouts and stretches to keep my circulation going, which is what you need when you’re older.’
Ronnie told how at one point he would ‘do anything’ to get his hands on a crack pipe (pictured in 1973)
‘Someone up there must like me’ Wood says he’s been ‘bloody lucky’ to abuse his body so much and still be here to tell the tale (Pictured in 1976 in Brussels)
In the early days of the band, Ronnie found doing drugs before a performance enhanced his confidence on stage (The Rolling Stones pictured in 1970)
He added: ‘It’s always a big party on the road but I like to have my quiet time. I’m addicted to Ripley.’
Ronnie has spoken about his frequent drug use in the 1970s, including how at one point he would ‘do anything’ to get his hands on a crack pipe.
Speaking on the BBC series My Life As A Rolling Stone, Ronnie told how he eventually realised his addiction got ‘out of hand’ and his fellow bandmates stepped in to help him.
He said: ‘We used to party heavy, there was a whole series of decades where we were all really high, even in our most spaced out days there was a little switch where we’d go, ‘Okay, I’ve got to go on stage now, I’ve got to get it together.’
‘I think that’s what saved my life a lot, and all our lives during the heavy using years was the actual focus of having to get it together to be in front of an audience and give them what they wanted.’
Clean living: The musician has brought wife Sally, 46, and seven-year-old twin daughters Alice and Gracie with him on the band’s latest tour
His bandmate Keith added: ‘Obviously the downside of it, it depends what drugs you’re talking about, it depends how they react on your body. The hard stuff, it ain’t called the hard stuff for nothing and you better be hard enough to deal with it.’
While band-mate Keith gave up drugs in 1978, Ronnie carried on using and would sometimes bring his pipe with him to parties and tell fellow attendees about it.
He said: ‘It got to the point where it wasn’t funny anymore, you know. Just getting high with that pipe was frightening, I’d do anything for it. When it came to freebasing [taking pure cocaine], this is nuts you know. It had to stop.’
Ronnie eventually went to rehab and spent several years trying to put an end to his addiction before he eventually got clean in 2010 at the age of 63.
His unhealthy lifestyle – including 30 cigarettes a day for 50 years – caught up with him in 2016 when a scan revealed he had lung cancer. However, it was successfully treated and the guitarist has continued to have good health since.
In 2017, the father-of-six told the Mail on Sunday: ‘There was a week when everything hung in the balance and it could have been curtains, time to say goodbye.’
He said: ‘I was prepared for bad news but I also had faith it would be OK. Apart from the doctors, we didn’t tell anyone because we didn’t want to put anyone else through the hell we were going through. But I made up my mind that if it had spread, I wasn’t going to go through chemo, I wasn’t going to use that bayonet in my body.’
He added: ‘It’s more I wasn’t going to lose my hair. This hair wasn’t going anywhere. A week later they came back with the news that it hadn’t spread and I said, “Let’s get it out now.” Just before I closed my eyes for the operation, I looked at the doctor and said, “Let battle commence.”‘
The star, who joined The Rolling Stones more than 40 years ago, said after the surgery was a success that given everything he has been through he has been ‘bloody lucky’.
He said: ‘I had this thought after I gave up smoking, “How can I get through 50 years of chain-smoking, and all the rest of my bad habits, without something going on in there?”‘ He added: ‘Someone up there must like me.’
KEITH RICHARDS: KICKED HEROIN AND COKE AND SURVIVED FAMOUS TREE FALL IN 2006 – WHICH LEFT HIM WITH A METAL PLATE IN HIS HEAD
Arthritis is Richard’s biggest bugbear these days but the guitarist, pictured in Houston on Monday, says he’s found new methods to ensure he can still blast out the hits
Richards pictured during a 1980 portrait session in New York; the band member had a decade-long love affair with heroin and was also a heavy cocaine user
Kent-born Keith Richards also cut a lively figure on stage in Texas as the Hackney Diamonds tour kicked off – after also celebrating, like Mick, his 80th birthday in 2023.
His biggest enemy on stage now? Arthritis. Although he insists everybody in the band is still in ‘good fettle’, the musician admitted he has been forced to change the way he plays the guitar as he has grown older – but has found new methods to keep playing.
Speaking about the way the condition affects his musicianship, he told the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme last year: ‘Funnily enough, I’ve no doubt it has, but I don’t have any pain: it’s sort of a benign version. I think if I’ve slowed down a little bit it’s probably due more to age.’
Ahead of the band’s 60th anniversary tour in 2022, Richards said he was feeling ‘fitter than ever’ after he finally quit smoking after 55 years.
The Rolling Stones are so famed for their hedonism and debauchery that their actions in the bands heyday have set the bar for what it meant to be a decadent rock star ever since.
The star once joked he has survived because he took a better class of drug to everyone else and exercised moderation, saying: ‘I was very meticulous about how much I took. I’d never put more in to get a little higher.’
Richards at the World Premeire of ‘Shine a Light’ at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York in 2008, two years after he underwent brain surgery after falling out of a tree
He said he felt like he had ‘more air in his lungs and voice’ after giving up the unhealthy habit.
He told CBS’ Sunday Morning: ‘I didn’t notice things until I started rehearsing for the tour last year and when I started working, I noticed I had more air in the lungs and in the voice.’
Richards has been known for his wild partying, heavy drinking and drug use as well as smoking.
He gave up his heroin habit in 1978 and eventually stopped using cocaine after he famously fell out of a tree in 2006; the accident left him requiring brain surgery and with a metal plate in his skull.
Richards and Ronnie Wood had taken their wives for a week-long break during the A Bigger Bang Tour on an island off Fiji to recover ahead of shows in Italy.
Keith Richards (right) with Ronnie Wood in 1975; both men are now largely sober after kicking long-standing booze and drug habits
After an afternoon of swimming at their exclusive resort, Richards perched himself on a tree – described as a ‘gnarled low tree that was basically a horizontal branch’ only a few feet off the ground.
But as he tried to jump down and head for lunch, he slipped and hit his head on the trunk, ‘hard’.
Richards claimed not to have felt much at the time, until days later he suffered from a ‘blinding headache’ while out on a boat ride. The same night, his wife Patti Hansen woke up to Richards having seizures in bed and called for medical help.
He was then flown on an excruciating four-hour flight to Auckland, New Zealand where it was discovered Richards had cracked his skull open and had a potentially fatal blood clot on his brain.
Referring to the journey in his book Life, Richards called the flight ‘the worst of my life’, adding: ‘They strapped me in a straight jacket on a stretcher… I couldn’t move. I was cursing the motherf*****. ‘Give me painkillers, for Christ’s sake’.’
He underwent a successful cranial surgery with hospital neurosurgeon Dr Andrew Law.
‘I woke up feeling great,’ Richards said. ‘And I said, ‘Well, when are you going to start?’ to which Law said, ‘It’s all done, mate.”
It was a wake up call though when it came to drug use. He said afterwards: ‘I’ve given up everything now – which is a trip in itself’.
The guitarist, who was arrested five times for his drug use, has also joked the secret to his longevity is treating his body like a ‘temple’ by only taking ‘high quality drugs’.
He said in his memoir Life: ‘When I was taking dope, I was fully convinced that my body is my temple. I can do anything I want with it and nobody can tell me yea or nay.’
He had a decade-long love affair with heroin and was also a heavy cocaine user.
But he explained in his memoir why he thinks he survived while many of his peers overdosed and died at an early age.
He wrote: ‘It’s not only the high quality of drugs I had that I attribute my survival to. I was very meticulous about how much I took. I’d never put more in to get a little higher.
‘That’s where most people f*** up on drugs. It’s the greed involved that never really affected me.’
The last thing to go? Booze. Richards revealed in 2018 that he’d pulled the plug on drinking around a year ago, having finally grown tired of it after a decades of partying. ‘It was time to quit,’ he said. ‘Just like all the other stuff.’
While he still allows himself the ‘occasional’ glass of wine or beer, Richards admits curbing his drinking has been an ‘adjustment’.