How a 1977 heroin bust forced Keith Richards to get clean for 'Some Girls'

In February 1977, Keith Richards was arrested at the Toronto Harbour Castle Hilton with 22 grams of heroin—an amount that could have meant life in prison under Canadian law. The timing was brutal: Richards had spent most of the mid-70s in a blackout haze, shooting up daily, and the arrest forced the band into an indefinite holding pattern while his legal team scrambled. More than the street value, the bust exposed just how far his addiction had gone—he looked skeletal, and doctors later said his liver was shot.

To avoid extradition and prison, Richards agreed to a deal that included a court-ordered detox and a promise to perform two benefit concerts for the blind. That stretch of forced sobriety—his first real break from heroin in years—happened just as the Stones started laying down tracks for Some Girls. Richards has said the album wouldn’t have come out nearly as sharp if he’d still been using; the clean, hungry energy in songs like “Miss You” and “When the Whip Comes Down” came directly from him being pulled out of his own wreckage. The band’s hiatus had been unintentional, but the detox gave them the only thing that could salvage their career: a clear-headed rhythm guitarist who was suddenly playing like he had something to prove.