Freddie Sessler

Arden Frederick "Freddie" Sessler (26 May 1923 – 18 December 2000) was the brother of London restaurateur and club owner Siegi Sessler, and a long-term intimate of the Rolling Stones, particularly Keith Richards, to whom he supplied drugs. A raconteur, Sessler claimed to have met and become friends with a number of important figures in twentieth century music. He attributed his manic lifestyle of partying and drug use to being almost the only one of his family to escape extermination by the Nazis during the Second World War. He was one of seven children. He was aged 16 when the Nazis invaded Poland and Kraków became the Third Reich's administrative capital of the region. Initially, a Ghetto was created for the Jewish population of 200,000 (within two years there would be none left) during which time many, including his grandfather and youngest brother, who was four years old, were shot in the town square. Soon after, the regime began sending them to three concentration camps, Bełżec, Płaszów and Auschwitz, and Sessler and the surviving members of his immediate family were sent to Kraków-Płaszów concentration camp - from where he once again managed to escape, reaching Russia, only to find himself interned in Siberia.

Keith Richards Sessler was particularly close to Keith Richards and Victor Bockris believes that Richards saw Sessler as a father figure. However, Sessler's lifestyle was problematic for Richards when later he was battling drug addiction.

Drugs Glenn Hughes of Deep Purple and Black Sabbath remembered "I was also friends with Ron Wood and the guy who carried the Stones' pure pharmaceutical cocaine in the 60s and 70s, Freddie Sessler... I remember he put a huge mound of glittering, thick cocaine on a plate for me once" and Iggy Pop described him as "the kind of guy who can make a party happen". According to Ronnie Wood: "Freddie's real claim to fame was that he'd spent decades providing pharmaceuticals to everybody who was anybody in rock. I'm talking about a man who showed up with milk bottles full of high quality Mallencrodt and Merck."

Sessler lent his name to the slang used by the Stones. The drugs he supplied were known as "Sessler’s Helpers" and his coterie of groupies, who changed from tour to tour, were known as the "Sesslerettes". When his Miami institute was closed down by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Sessler opened the Fairfield Hospital in Jamaica.