Technician Reviews the Rolling Stones, Nov. 16, 1965
NC State Chancellor Randy Woodson and his wife Susan know exactly what happened to Keith Richards’ rented yellow Chevrolet Impala from the summer of 1975.
The First Couple of the Wolfpack were high school sweethearts back then in Fordyce, Arkansas, when Richards and fellow Rolling Stones guitarist Ron Wood rolled through the nowhere little town with the big-brag motto, “Fordyce: Twice As Nice as Paradise.”
The antiestablishment bandmates and two members of their entourage, fresh off an Independence Day concert in Memphis, stopped en route to a July 6 show in Dallas to have lunch at the 4-Dice Restaurant and Station, a roadhouse buffet where Richards ordered a 16-ounce T-bone steak with fries covered in brown gravy—it was recommended—and Wood had two helpings of fried chicken from the buffet.
The two claimed they didn’t like the food, which may be why they left just a $1.65 tip. So they spent, depending on who is telling the story, a few minutes or three quarters of an hour in the restaurant’s bathroom consuming ‘70s-era recreational stimulants that were stashed in door panels and other secret locations in the Impala. Never mind that the restaurant owner has always said this would have been practically impossible, considering the size of the restaurant’s one-seater john.
This, however, is a story of lore, made famous by Richards in his autobiography Life and grown into legend by the people of Fordyce, each and every one of whom now claims to have been on the steps of city hall when half of the world’s most dangerous band was detained there exactly 40 years ago this week.
“In the whole of the United States there was perhaps no sillier place to stop with a car loaded with drugs—a conservative, redneck southern community not happy to welcome different-looking strangers,” Richards writes in his autobiography.
The Woodsons, of course, don’t agree with that characterization of their hometown, birthplace of legendary Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant and the place where Johnny Cash used to visit his aunt, who happened to live next door to the chancellor’s parents.
What is not disputed is this: When the two rockers and their two followers left the restaurant, Fordyce police officers Joe Taylor and Eddie Childers, saw the Impala swerve a little and decided to pull it over. They found no huge stash of rock-n-roll drugs, just a small bag with less than two grams of cocaine, a gold-plated spoon, trunkful of booze and a leather-sheathed hunting knife that may have been illegal.
According to legend, Richards said: “Do you know who we are? We’re the Rolling Stones.”
One of the officers said: “I don’t care who you are. We’re rolling your a** to city hall.”
They charged Richards with reckless driving and possession of a banned weapon, one of the roadies with possession of an illegal substance, and detained all four at city hall. It was a pretty loose detainment. Wood rode through the hallways on an impounded bicycle; Richards occasionally went to the backdoor to sign autographs. A television crew made the 70-mile drive down from Little Rock, and phone calls came in from around the world. (Read this well-researched account of the incident.)
By 11 p.m., there was a full-on street festival in downtown Fordyce, an earlier version of Packapalooza with a better headliner.
Judge Thomas Wynne—Susan Woodson’s uncle—was called in from a long day on the golf course to issue search warrants for the yellow Impala. After it was inspected by state police officers, Richards, Wood and the two roadies were brought into the courtroom. By all accounts, things got a little heated between the charging officers, the police chief and prosecuting attorney Frank Wynne—Susan Woodson’s father—as the judge tried to figure out what to do with half of rock-n-roll’s biggest bad boys.
“Susan’s dad saved the day, because he had gone to school with the Rolling Stones’ lawyer [Arkansas native Bill Carter],” the chancellor says. “He called Bill up and said, ‘You better get a plane down here and pick these boys up.’”
Carter flew in on a small plane from Memphis for the court appearance and found another plane to shuttle Richards, Wood and the other two to Dallas for the next day’s concert.
Richards pleaded guilty to reckless driving and paid a $162.50 fine. The concealed weapon charge was dismissed. In 2006, then-Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee pardoned Richards.
But what happened to the impounded Yellow Impala? Richards even lamented in his book that he never found out its fate.
“We left it in this garage loaded with dope,” Richards says. “I’d like to know what happened to that stuff. Maybe they never took the panels off. Maybe someone’s still driving it around, still filled with sh**.”
The Woodsons know—at least about the car. They’d like to go backstage Wednesday night when the Stones return to Carter-Finley Stadium for their fourth Raleigh appearance, exactly 50 years after they first played Reynolds Coliseum.
“The lore is that the chief of police would drive it,” Woodson says.
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