Keith Richards Thought It Was Romantic to Send Letters Written in Blood

When Keith Richards first met his future wife, Patti Hansen, he was awestruck. So much so that he put his actual blood into winning her over. She revealed that the musician used to write letters in blood when they first began dating.

Keith Richards fell hard when he first met Patti Hansen

Richards and Hansen met at Manhattan’s famous Studio 54 in 1979. Hansen and her friends wanted champagne after last call, so they relied on the rock and roll legend to get them a bottle. Hansen walked off with the champagne without a second thought, but Richards was struck by her.

“I didn’t see her again for a while, but the vision stayed in my mind,” he wrote in his autobiography, Life.

Months later, at his birthday party, they met again. Hansen didn’t know much about Richards, but she agreed to go after a friend invited her. 

“The moment I saw Patti, we looked at each other, and I said, ‘Hello, something’s happening to me,’” Richards told Vanity Fair.

He fell for her very quickly, and the two began dating after the party.

“There was life before Patti and life after,” he said. “We just clicked, and she rescued me from, shall we say, dark periods…without going into too much detail.”

He pulled out all the stops to woo her

Richards was enamored with Hansen and did his best to impress her while they were dating.

“Keith was constantly making me mix tapes, and he would do beautiful drawings on them,” Hansen told Harper’s Bazaar. “That was his method of communication.”

She added that he made collages of photos of her from magazines and snapped pictures. Some of his efforts were a bit more gruesome, though. He would frequently write her notes written in his own blood.

“It looks disgusting when it dries, but he loves the color red,” she said. She guessed at how he may have gotten the blood. “Maybe he cut himself shaving? Or picked a scab?”

Though she was a bit disgusted by the notes, Hansen admitted that she kept them all.

“I have everything in boxes. Thousands of those tapes. I’ve saved everything.”

Keith Richards and Patti Hansen have been happily married for years

Though Richards’ tokens of affection were a bit macabre, they worked. Hansen and Richards have been married since 1983. They have two daughters together and one grandchild. The couple traded their Manhattan lifestyle for a quieter one in Connecticut. Despite their rock and roll courtship, they’ve settled into a very normal life in the suburbs. 

“Patti and I go out once a week, if there’s something on in town — take the old lady out for dinner with a bunch of flowers, get the rewards,” Richards told Rolling Stone.

Hansen agrees that their home life has become very normal.

“When the girls were young, Keith would drive them to cheerleading and to their Brownies meetings,” Hansen said. “We’re an old married couple.”