Keith Richards And Ronnie Wood 'Went On 48 Drink And Drugs Marathon'

Rolling Stones guitarists Ronnie Wood and Keith Richards once went on a drink and drugs marathon which lasted 48 hours, and left Richards unable to wake, it's been claimed.

Nick Cowan, who managed Wood for 22 years, says the incident in 1981 took place hours before the band were due to play a concert in Orlando.

Cowan makes the claims in his memoirs, Fifty Teabags And A Bottle Of Rum, which have been serialised in part by the Sun newspaper.

Recalling the incident, Cowan says Wood and Richards' 48 hour “songwriting session” was powered by “a mixture of vodka and cocaine plus pills known as Sessler’s Helpers”.

He writes: “Iron man Keith sees sleep as a weakness and heaps insults on anybody who needs to go to bed before he is ready.

"I am able to slip back to my hotel in the early mornings without attracting too much attention, but by Friday, with a show scheduled for the next day we persuade both of them to take to their beds.

"There is one problem — Keith is so overhyped from his intake of the past few days that he’s unable to sleep. Sessler is summoned and administers a powerful sleeping pill which has the desired effect.”

Cowan reveals that when he returned to the pair's villa, he was unable to wake Richards, and was eventually forced to administer adrenaline.

“It transpires that there were enough barbiturates in the sleeping pill to anaesthetise a horse,” he writes in the book.