Keith Richards: 'I Snorted My Father's Ashes ... NOT!'

Well, it sounded too reprehensible to be true -- even for Keith Richards -- didn't it?

Not even a day after the famously drug-addled Rolling Stones guitarist confessed to British pop music rag NME that the strangest substance he'd ever snorted was cocaine mixed with the ashes of his cremated father ("It went down pretty well, and I'm still alive"), a spokesman for the band said Richards was only kidding.

"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.

A similar tongue-in-cheek utterance by Richards over 30 years ago inspired one of the great urban legends of rock & roll -- the claim that he kicked heroin by having his entire blood supply replaced in a transfusion administered by doctors at a special Swiss clinic. Would that it were true.

But wait... Update: Keith Richards Says 'I Did Too Snort My Father's Ashes!'

Bonus legend:
• Dumb Burglars Snort Stolen Cremains - Netlore Archive

Further reading:
• April Fools? Richards Denies Snorting Ashes - Associated Press
• Keith Richards: 'I Snorted My Father' - Reuters
• Keith Richards Interview - NME.com