HAVING a rock star for a father must seem like a dream to many youngsters. Unless that father happens to be Keith Richards, of course.
For Theodora Richards, daughter of Rolling Stone Keith (both pictured), growing up could be more like a teenager’s worst nightmare.
There was the occasion when her hell-raiser father threatened her boyfriend with extremely painful – and permanent – consequences when he caught them in an amorous clinch.
And then there were the strict rules – no lipstick before the age of 16 and no singing at the kitchen table.
However, the guitarist, 70, admitted his protective streak developed only later in life, and confessed to using his older children from a previous relationship as lookouts to spot the police during his drug-taking party years.
Theodora, 29, one of the Rolling Stone’s two daughters with US actress and model Patti Hansen, said: “Dad could be strict with us, and it was often over small things such as ‘no singing at the dinner table’ or ‘no lipstick ’till you’re 16’. When it came to boyfriends, he was usually great, but there were ones who were too scared to talk to him, or just too eager. When I was 16, I’ll never forget the time he said to one of them: ‘Cut it out, or I’ll cut it off.’”
Recalling the incident, Keith said: “He was getting too hot and horny on the porch.”
Theodora said she had no idea about her father’s drug-taking past until she looked him up in the library, having been convinced as a child that he was a fireman because of the pyrotechnics set off during the Rolling Stones’ concerts.
The model and illustrator said: “I was about 11 when I found out about dad’s history of drugs and jail. Jay Leno had made a comment on his TV show about dad buying a drugs test for his kids, and the next day at school this kid asked me about my ‘track marks’ (scars from injecting drugs). I didn’t understand what that meant, but I knew it was a reference to dad, so I looked him up in the library. I found out he’d been in jail and what heroin was. I didn’t talk to him about it right away, but after that I became very protective of my family.”
Keith said he was happy to be open with his children: “They could read about me, so there was no point hiding it. They were fascinated, actually: ‘Oh, Daddy was a junkie? Wow!’”
Meanwhile, Theodora has no desire to learn any more of her father’s colourful history and has even avoided his 2010 memoir, Life.
She said: “There are things I don’t want to know because I’m too protective of Mom. There were other women before her? No! Can’t read that.”
The Rolling Stone married Hansen in 1983. The couple have another daughter, Alexandra, now 28. He already had three children with actress Anita Pallenberg – Marlon, 45, Angela, 43, and son Tara, who was born in 1976, but died aged 10 weeks.
Keith pinpoints having his two younger daughters as the start of a “more settled” time in his life following his party years: “Back then, it was kind of on the run. Marlon’s job was to spot the unmarked police cars outside the door.”
However, his health now seems robust, with his daughter telling the Sunday Times Magazine: “The doctor says he has the body of a 35-year-old who doesn’t smoke! Can you imagine? The guy who has done all that to his body and he smokes!” – Daily Mail