How Keith Richards Wrote 'Wild Horses' as a Longing for His Son After a Drug Arrest

The most gut-punching detail about “Wild Horses” is that Keith Richards wrote the opening lines while sitting in bed, nursing his newborn son Marlon. This was right after his 1967 drug bust at Redlands — Richards faced a possible prison sentence and didn’t know if he’d see his kid grow up. The line “Wild horses couldn’t drag me away” wasn’t about some tough-girl lover. It was about a father telling his baby boy he wasn’t going to disappear.

Richards played the song for Gram Parsons almost immediately, and Parsons fell so hard for it that the Stones basically said, “Sure, you can record it.” Gram did cut it with the Flying Burrito Brothers, but his version came out after the Stones’ on Sticky Fingers. The delay was partly legal — the band wanted it for their album, and Gram’s label moved slower. Still, Richards always said the song was “a gift” to Parsons, and the two shared a deep country-rock brotherhood that bled into the DNA of that whole era.