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Rolling Stones quotes: Keith Richards Recalls the 1967 Bust and Morocco
Keith Richards remembers 1967 as the year the party suddenly stopped being quite so amusing. The Rolling Stones were experimenting with LSD, annoying the establishment and discovering that fame came with an increasingly unwelcome police presence. Then came the infamous bust, followed by a decision that sounds almost absurdly casual in hindsight: get out of England and head to Morocco. Richards later looked back on the episode with his usual mixture of defiance, sarcasm and barely concealed contempt for authority. His account offers a fascinating glimpse into the Stones at their most rebellious—and into why Morocco suddenly looked like a much better place to be.
“We had just started to turn on to acid. Yeah, we had picked it up in America in ‘66, on that last tour in the summer and we came home and just laid back and started to get it on. We had been working for a long time without stopping, without thinking, for along time. For three years. The bust ended it. We knew it was going to be heavy… The English are very strange. They’re tolerant up to a point where they’re told not to be. You get to a point up there where somebody turns around and swings a little finger. They’ve had it in their hands so long, the power. They haven’t been fucked since Cromwell, man. First they don’t like young kids with a lot of money. But as long as you don’t bother them, that’s cool. But we bothered them. We bothered ’em because of the way we looked, the way we’d act…
…Because we never showed any reverence for them whatsoever. Whereas the Beatles had. They’d gone along with it so far, with the MBEs and shaking hands. Whenever we were asked about things like that we’d say, Fuck it. Don’t want to know about things like that. Bullocks. Don’t need it. That riled ’em somewhere… After the bust everyone’s reaction was to get out of England. Although the bust happened in February we weren’t charged then. They just took some substances. We weren’t even arrested. For a while it was hoped that the lawyers could get the whole thing dropped. In the meantime everybody thought the best idea was to get the fuck out of England so nothing else could happen. We decided to go to Morocco.” (Ref. 1967)
By 1967, The Rolling Stones had already spent several years operating at a speed that would have exhausted most bands. Then Keith Richards and his bandmates discovered LSD, brought the experience back from America and began exploring a very different kind of musical and personal freedom. For Richards, the change was more than recreational: after years of relentless work, the Stones were finally slowing down, experimenting and refusing to behave according to the rules expected of young British stars. Naturally, this was precisely when the authorities decided they had seen enough. The notorious 1967 drug bust became a turning point, even though the Stones were not immediately arrested or charged. Suddenly, the band’s relationship with the British establishment looked considerably less friendly—and Morocco began to sound like an excellent idea.
Richards recalled that the Stones had picked up acid during their 1966 American tour and returned to England ready to experiment. After roughly three years of working almost without a break, the band was entering unfamiliar territory: fewer rules, more drugs and considerably more interest in simply seeing where the music and their lives might go. The bust effectively brought that period to an abrupt halt.
But Richards saw the confrontation as something bigger than drugs. In his view, British authorities had tolerated the Stones only up to the point where the band’s appearance, behavior and attitude became too difficult to ignore. The Stones were young, wealthy and conspicuous—and, perhaps most irritatingly, they showed very little reverence for the establishment.
Richards particularly contrasted the Stones with The Beatles. While the Beatles had accepted honors such as MBEs and were willing to shake the right hands, the Stones were much less interested in politely joining the establishment’s club. Richards believed that attitude had helped make them targets.
It is a very Keith Richards interpretation of events: the problem wasn’t simply what the Stones were doing, but the fact that they were doing it without asking permission. Their clothes, behavior and public defiance all contributed to the tension. In other words, the band wasn’t exactly sending thank-you cards to the people who ran the country.
The February 1967 bust initially produced uncertainty rather than an immediate courtroom showdown. The Stones weren’t arrested at the time, substances were taken by the police, and their lawyers hoped the matter might eventually disappear. While everyone waited to see what would happen, another idea took hold: leave England.
For Richards and the others, getting out of the country seemed like the safest option while the legal situation remained unresolved. Morocco became the destination, offering distance from the British authorities and, presumably, considerably better scenery than waiting around for the next knock on the door.
The episode therefore becomes more than a story about a drug bust. In Richards’ telling, it captures a crucial moment when The Rolling Stones realize that their growing fame, rebellious image and refusal to conform have consequences. The trip to Morocco is almost the punchline: when Britain became too complicated, the Stones simply looked elsewhere.
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