LONDON (AP) - Rolling Stone Keith Richards was joking when he claimed to have snorted his father's ashes along with cocaine, a spokesman said Wednesday.
"It was an off-the-cuff remark, a joke, and it is not true. File under April Fool's joke," said Bernard Doherty of LD Communications, which represents the band.
Doherty declined to say any more about why Richards made the statement in an interview with NME, a pop music magazine.
"The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father. I snorted my father," Richards was quoted as saying.
"He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow. My dad wouldn't have cared ... It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive."
Richards' father, Bert, died in 2002, aged 84.
In an article published on its website, the magazine said the remark was "no quip, but came about after much thinking" by the rock star.
"He didn't offer the information, I had to ask him a couple of questions to get the information out of him," interviewer Mark Beaumont was quoted as saying. "He didn't come straight out with that."
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Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards says he snorted his own father's ashes.
London - Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards admitted to snorting his own father's ashes in an interview publicised on Tuesday.
"The strangest thing I've tried to snort? My father, I snorted my father," he told the New Musical Express (NME).
"He was cremated and I couldn't resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow (cocaine). My dad wouldn't have cared, he didn't give a ****.
"It went down pretty well and I'm still alive."
Richards, whose father Bert died in 2002 at the age of 84, has been notorious for his drug use since the Stones became worldwide stars in the 1960s.
But he also directed an angry tirade at fellow drug-user Pete Doherty, the frontman of British band Babyshambles currently dating supermodel Kate Moss, who he predicted could be killed by his love of narcotics.
"My advice for Pete Doherty is that he should shut the **** up and leave her," he said.
"I don't know the man, all I know is he's pushing his luck and there it is, but so is Kate, who I know very well.
"Kate wants to play with bad boys and she's done one, and then another one, and then another one. Badabing, badabing, badaboom. She'll live, the boys will die."
As well as co-writing hits such as Brown Sugar, Street Fighting Man and Miss You, Richards has become known in recent years as the inspiration for Johnny Depp's character Jack Sparrow in the Pirates Of The Caribbean films.