The Tree That Nearly Killed Keith Richards and Shaped 'A Bigger Bang'

In April 2005, while the Stones were deep into recording A Bigger Bang at a private studio in rural France, Keith Richards took a break to vacation in Fiji. He climbed a tree to pick a coconut, the branch snapped, and he fell headfirst onto the ground. The result: a subdural hematoma (blood clot on the brain) that required emergency surgery. The Stones scrapped a planned tour leg while he recovered, and the band’s producer Don Was later said Keith was “writing songs with one foot in the grave.”

That near-death experience seeped directly into the album’s lyrics. Richards’ songs grew darker and more confrontational—tracks like “This Place Is Empty” (a weary blues about mortality) and “Infamy” (a snarling account of his own reputation) feel like a man staring down his own obituary. Even Mick Jagger’s contributions, written during his split from Jerry Hall, carry a bitter, bruised undercurrent: “Let Me Down Slow” and “Back of My Hand” are laced with skepticism and regret.

The album’s title itself—A Bigger Bang—was originally a phrase Richards used to describe the Big Bang theory, but after the accident it took on a grim double meaning. The sessions turned into a raw, lean record, stripped of the glossy overproduction that had weighed down the band’s ’90s work. It’s the sound of a band that knows the clock is ticking, and doesn’t have time to