Back in Tommy's custody following their mother being institutionalized, the boys didn't fare a great deal better. Tommy had been smuggling hashish from Afghanistan for several years but 1971 saw him and his sons living with the Keith Richards entourage in a villa in southern France during the making of Exile on Main Street. Two things solidified Tommy's place in that world. Puss had become friends with Richards' girlfriend, Anita Pallenberg, in a mental health facility. Sealing the deal, though, was that Tommy smuggled in a kilo of cocaine as a wedding present for Mick Jagger (all of which was consumed long before the wedding). How did Tommy do it? He taped the cocaine to his sons' bodies, figuring they were least likely to be searched by customs officials.
Although Tommy would live until 2006, much of the balance of his life was spent in the throes of heroin addiction and he would spend time in prison. His sons, meanwhile, ended up living with relatives. Charley and Jake somehow survive their upbringing and become primary sources for author Robert Greenfield. Greenfield, who has written extensively about the Rolling Stones, met Tommy at Richards' villa during the recording of Exile on Main Street. Puss provides the most direct insight, though, as a variety of her letters have survived. They clearly portray her crumbling mental state and her love for Tommy and her children.
While Greenfield does a good job of biography, it still remains hard to really care about Tommy or Puss. To some extent, their story could be a metaphor for their era, a tale of promise that, with liberal doses of "sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll," devolved into self-absorption and self-ruin. Yet, aside from hanging out with famous people and being part of "the scene" themselves, their journey of self-destruction often doesn't even rise to the level of the car wreck you can't look away from. Instead, it is more like pricey cars rotting from the inside.
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