Keith Richards, a guitarist of Rolling Stones British Rock Group, is still nursing a sore head in an Auckland hospital after falling out of a tree in Fiji last week. The English Guitarist, 62, was airlifted brought from Fiji to Auckland by air and admitted to the Ascot Hospital with mild concussion.
Richards suffered a head injury and concussion after falling from a coconut tree at a luxurious resort in the Fiji Islands on April 29, where Richards and fellow band member, Ron Wood, 58, were apparently climbing the tree.
After initial treatment in Suva-the capital of Fiji, he was airlifted to a private hospital in Auckland, New Zealand, where he was given a brain scan to check for neurological damage.
However, neither the Hospital nor the air ambulance company which transported him to Auckland from Fiji said anything about his fall or his condition. During the treatment his wife, Patti Hansen, was beside him at the hospital. They had been staying at the luxury Club Resort on Wakaya.
Richards-the songwriter, best recognized for his work with The Rolling Stones, is better known for his drug-related outlaw image than for his songwriting contributions, to the general public.
Richards is no stranger to unforeseen injuries as in 1998 the Stones had to delay a tour after he fell off a ladder while trying to find a book in the library of his Connecticut residence. He needed treatment for rib and chest injuries and there were even fears he had punctured a lung when he fell while stretching amid the library’s floor-to-ceiling shelves. In another incident, according to band mate Ron Wood, he once slipped on a frankfurter lobbed on stage while playing a concert in Frankfurt, Germany.
The fall story of the guitarist is on the top of Newspapers and news networks throughout America and the United Kingdom, who are giving the story a good airing. An American newsreader tried to conceal her laugh as she asked, after reading the story, why was the Stone up a tree in the first place.
According to the overseas reports, the reformed heroin addict and one-time hell raiser – who still smokes and drinks – was halfway up the five-meter tree when he slipped and fell, hitting his head.
Richards, who once kicked a serious heroin habit by having his entire blood supply replaced in a Swiss clinic, fell out of the tree on Wednesday but refused to go to hospital until his holiday ended on Friday.
The rock star, who is nearly into his seventh decade, does not let the age come between him and his good time.