Marlon Richards: Growing Up on Tour with the Rolling Stones

Marlon Richards was basically raised in the back of a tour bus and the wings of concert stages. Keith and then-wife Anita Pallenberg decided to keep their son with them during the Stones’ wild Seventies tours rather than leave him with nannies — a decision that gave Marlon a front-row seat to rock’s most debauched era before he turned ten.

By the time he was a teenager, Marlon had seen more chaos and celebrity than most adults. He later said that instead of resenting the madness, he absorbed a “soldier’s discipline” from his father: stay sharp, watch your back, and know when to disappear. As an adult he became a filmmaker, documenting his father’s life in the 2015 documentary Keith Richards: Under the Influence, but kept a low profile — a rare example of a rock kid who turned the road’s survival lessons into a steady career behind the camera.