By the mid-Seventies, Keith Richards was a drug-bust veteran, but this one topped them all and threatened to derail the Rolling Stones at their peak. In February 1977, Canadian cops found roughly an ounce of heroin in Richards’ hotel room. Charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking, and looking at a potentially lengthy prison term, Richards posted bond and wangled a special visa permitting him to undergo an experimental addiction cure in the U.S. By the time his case came up, in October ’78, “there were five to six hundred people outside every time I turned up in court, chanting, ‘Free Keith, free Keith,'” the guitarist recalled. Between this avid fandom, a halfhearted prosecution and a muscular defense, Keith was found guilty but walked anyway. (While out on bail, he even partied with Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau’s frisky young wife, Margaret, who was hanging out with the band.) His community-service sentence: to play a benefit concert for the blind — a nod to Rita, the devoted, sightless Stones fan who buttonholed the judge and pleaded on Keith’s behalf. “She hitchhiked to our shows. The chick was absolutely fearless,” Richards wrote in his 2010 memoir, Life. “The love and devotion of [fans] like Rita is something that still amazes me.”