Life by Keith Richards, James Fox (Contributor) Page B

Hill we went to look at the stars, with Mr. Thompson, of course. "Don't know if we can make it home tonight," said Gus. So we slept under a tree.
    "Let's take the dog for a walk." (That was the code for we're moving.)
    "All right."
    "Bring your mac."
    "It's not raining."
    "Bring your mac."
    Gus once asked me (when I was about five or six years old) while out for a stroll:
    "Have you got a penny on you?"
    "Yer, Gus."
    "See that kid on the corner?"
    "Yer, Gus."
    "Go give it to him."
    "What, Gus?"
    "Go on, he's harder up than you."
    I give the penny.
    Gus gives me two back.
    The lesson stuck.
    Gus never bored me. On New Cross station late at night in deep fog, Gus gave me my first dog end to smoke. "No one will see." A familiar Gusism was to greet a friend with "Hello, don't be a cunt all yer life." The delivery so beautifully flat, so utterly familiar. I loved the man. A cuff round the head. "You never heard that." "What, Gus?"
    He would hum entire symphonies as we walked. Sometimes to Primrose Hill, Highgate or down Islington through the Archway, the Angel, every fucking where.
    "Fancy a saveloy?"
    "Yer, Gus."
    "You can't have one. We're going to Lyons Corner House."
    "Yer, Gus."
    "Don't tell your grandmother."
    "OK, Gus! What about the dog?"
    "He knows the chef."
    His warmth, his affection surrounded me, his humor kept me doubled up for large portions of the day. It was hard to find much that was funny in those days in London. But there was always MUSIC!
    "Just pop in here. I've got to get some strings."
    "OK, Gus."
    I didn't say a lot; I listened. Him with his cheesecutter, me with my mac. Maybe from him I got the wanderlust. "If you've got seven daughters off the Seven Sisters Road and with the wife it makes eight, you get out and about." He never drank that I can recall. But he must have done something. We never hit pubs. But he would disappear into the back rooms of shops quite frequently. I perused the merchandise with glowing eyes. He'd come out with the same.
    "Let's go. Got the dog?"
    "Yer, Gus."
    "Come along, Mr. Thompson."
    You had no idea where you'd end up. Little shops around the Angel and Islington, he'd just disappear into the back. "Just stay here a minute, son. Hold the dog." And then he'd come out saying, "OK," and we'd go on and end up in the West End in the workshops of the big music stores, like Ivor Mairants and HMV. He knew all the makers, the repair guys there. He'd sit me up on a shelf. There'd be these vats of glue and instruments hung up and strung up, guys in long brown coats, gluing, and then there'd be somebody at the end testing instruments; there'd be some music going on. And then there'd be these little harried men coming in from the orchestra pit, saying, "Have you got my violin?" I'd just sit up there with a cup of tea and a biscuit and the vats of glue going blub blub blub like a mini Yellowstone Park, and I was just fascinated. I never got bored. Violins and guitars hung up on wires and going around on a conveyor belt, and all these guys fixing and making and refurbishing instruments. I see it back then as very alchemical, like Disney's The Sorcerer's Apprentice . I just fell in love with instruments.
    Gus was leading me subtly into getting interested in playing, rather than shoving something into my hand and saying, "It goes like this." The guitar was totally out of reach. It was something you looked at, thought about, but never got your hands on. I'll never forget the guitar on top of his upright piano every time I'd go and visit, starting maybe from the age of five. I thought that was where the thing lived. I thought it was always there. And I just kept looking at it, and he didn't say anything, and a few years later I was still looking at it. "Hey, when you get tall enough, you can have a go at it," he said. I didn't find out until after he was dead that he only brought that out and put it up there when he knew I was coming to visit. So I was being teased in a way. I think he studied me