Keith Richards Leaves Hospital After Brain Surgery, Has Most Lucid Moment Since 1964

Satire from What I've Learned So Far...
May 15, 2005

Legendary Rolling Stone Keith Richards was released from a New Zealand hospital yesterday following brain surgery to repair injuries incurred when he fell out of a palm tree at a Fiji resort.

Shortly after the accident Richards was pressed to explain how he had come to be in the tree in the first place; "Well, everybody's got to be some place, haven't they? I mean, either you're in a palm tree or you're not in a palm tree is the way I look at it. So I was in the bloody palm tree. Then, perhaps a bit too rapidly, I wasn't."

The 62-year-old guitarist and wife Patti Hanson had a brief scare in the Auckland hospital when the admitting physician interviewed Keith and declared him clinically dead. The error was quickly corrected and, though, and Richards was admitted as a patient. "That sort of thing's been happening to me for thirty years," said Richards. "I'm used to it."

Visitors the day following surgery were surprised to find Richards sitting in his room with a bandage on his head quoting the "Thou, nature, art my goddess…" soliloquy from King Lear in a perfectly cultured Shakespearian dialect. He then proceeded to sing the "Modern Major-General" patter-song from Pirates of Penzance while riding around the room on a unicycle, juggling an I.V. bottle, a veal cutlet from his lunch tray, and a bedpan.

Surprise turned to alarm a little later that afternoon when someone handed Richards a guitar and discovered that his entire repertoire consisted of ten chords. "Relax Mate," said Richards, "That's eight more than I knew before the surgery."

Richards is expected to make a full recovery.