When Keith Richards had a brain hemorrhage in 2006, did the Stones think they were done?

In April 2006, Keith Richards fell out of a palm tree in Fiji and ended up with a subdural hematoma — basically a brain bleed that required emergency surgery. The A Bigger Bang tour was mid-run, and suddenly the band that had been rolling for 44 years faced a real “what now?” moment. Ronnie Wood later said the unspoken fear was that if Keith didn’t bounce back, that could have been it for the Stones; there was no Plan B that involved replacing him.

But Keith being Keith, he was back on stage within three months, playing the first rescheduled show in Milan that June. Doctors were stunned. He later deadpanned that he “came back from the dead” and that the whole thing was “a bit of a wake-up call, but not too much.” The tour resumed, the band kept rolling, and the hemorrhage became just another wild Keith story — not the end of the road.