Keith Richards' hepatitis C treatment gave him a second wind for the 2014 tour

For decades, Keith Richards carried hepatitis C without knowing it. He’d picked up the virus from shared needles back in the 1970s, but it stayed silent until a routine checkup around 2010. By then, the infection had been quietly damaging his liver, which helps explain some of the fatigue and general weariness he’d been chalking up to age and rock-star mileage.

The treatment wasn’t fun — Richards called it “absolute hell” — but a new wave of antiviral drugs cleared the virus completely. Once his liver started bouncing back, his energy reserves came with it. When the Rolling Stones launched the ‘14 on Fire’ tour in 2014 (a year after their 50th-anniversary shows), Richards was noticeably sharper onstage: moving more, grinning wider, and playing with the kind of reckless stamina that had faded in the 2000s. He later said it felt like “a new lease on life,” and you can hear that second wind in the loose, driving guitar work across that tour’s setlists.