At Fiji's pricey Wakaya Club, leisure activities include snorkeling, golf, even daydreaming. Resort guest Keith Richards reportedly pursued a higher-elevation pastime: coconut picking.
Richards was up a palm tree plucking coconuts on a Wakaya Club-owned island last Thursday when the notoriously hard-living Rolling Stones guitarist fell from his perch and injured his metaphorical coconut, reports said.
According to Australia's Melbourne Herald Sun, Richards did not act alone--bandmate Ron Wood was also plucking coconuts. And, in fact, the newspaper said coconut plucking is a "popular activity" at Wakaya Club and presumably not a hobby exclusive to those who belong to the greatest rock and roll band in the world.
Citing an unnamed newspaper, the Associated Press said a Jet Ski has also been implicated in doing harm to Richards, possibly some time after the palm tree got in its licks.
While the band has not confirmed the palm tree or Jet Ski stories, it has confirmed Richards was hurt--and hospitalized. (Wood apparently emerged from his downtime unscathed.)
"Earlier this week, [Richards] suffered a mild concussion while on holiday in Fiji," a spokesperson for the rocker and the band said in a statement Monday on the Stones' official Website.
The rep noted that "as a precautionary measure," the 62-year-old Stone was flown "to a hospital by his wife Patti for observation."
Reports pegged the hospital as Ascot Hospital in Auckland, New Zealand, about the closest major landmass to Fiji. New Zealand's TV3 showed Richards' wife and crew taking bags and three guitars into the facility, observing that it looked "like the veteran rocker was in for a long stay." The same report, however, noted that Richards was walking around and "in pretty good condition."
The doctors at the Melbourne Herald Sun described Richards as having been "seriously injured" in what it said was a 5-meter--nearly 16 and a half feet--palm-tree plunge. But the paper also said the rock 'n' roll survivor "could be discharged early this week."
The Stones wrapped the latest leg of their tour Apr. 18 in Wellington, New Zealand. The still-rolling senior rockers are supposed to invade Europe for a series of shows beginning May 27.
In 1998, the Stones lost a handful of European concert dates when Richards had an earlier run-in with gravity, dinging his ribs in a fall from a ladder at his home library in Connecticut. At the time, Richards' rep made a point of noting that the rehab-familiar guitarist "had not been drinking" at the time of the tumble.