Keith Richards reveals agony of losing baby son Tara to cot death

ROLLING Stones guitarist Keith Richards says the tragic death of his baby son nearly drove him to suicide but that he was saved by the band.

Loss ... Keith Richards has opened up about the tragic death of his youngest son.

ROLLING Stones guitarist Keith Richards says the death of his youngest son from cot death nearly drove him to suicide but that he was saved by the band.

Richards was on tour with the Stones in Paris in June 1976 when he got the devastating news from his then partner Anita Pallenberg that their three-month-old son Tara had been found dead.

The 71-year-old was criticised at the time for not cancelling the concert but now says his decision to go on stage that night saved his life.

Loss ... Keith Richards has opened up about the tragic death of his youngest son.

“It was such a shock, at the time especially,” Richards, who recently released new solo album Cross-Eyed Heart, told BBC Radio 4’s Desert Islands Discs show.

“I’m getting a phone call in Paris and this happened in Geneva and I thought, ‘I am going to go mad unless I do this show tonight. If I don’t do something that I am supposed to do, if I just sit here with this idea, I don’t know what I’d do.’ Maybe it was just a sense of self-preservation.

“I also wanted to shield (eldest son) Marlon from it at that moment. It wasn’t necessary for him to know immediately because we were on the road. It was a rough, rough thing.

“I had a feeling, ‘This is a show, I must go on stage and I will worry and grieve and think about all this after the show.’

“If I didn’t go on the stage, I would probably have shot myself.”

Family ... Anita Pallenberg and Keith Richards, with their eldest son Marlon, had three children together.

Richards and Pallenberg — who had a famously volatile relationship marred by heroin addiction — had two other children, Marlon, 41, and Angela, 38.

He went on to marry supermodel Patti Hansen and they had two daughters, Alexandra and Theodora.

Partnership ... Keith Richards later married Patti Hansen and they had two daughters.

The rock legend previously spoke of his ongoing grief and guilt over his youngest son’s death in his autobiography Life, saying “leaving a newborn infant (to go on tour) is something I can’t forgive myself for.”

Richards also told Desert Island Discs host Kirsty Young he thinks of Mick Jagger like a “brother” and also confirms the story that he wrote one of their most famous hits, 1965’s (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction, while he was asleep.

Originally published as Keith Richards reveals agony of losing baby son Tara to cot death