Read Online Life by Keith Richards, James Fox (Contributor) - Free Book Online

because he heard me singing. When songs came on the radio, we'd all start harmonizing; that's just what we did. A load of singers.
    I can't remember when it was that he took the guitar down and said, "Here you go." Maybe I was nine or ten, so I started pretty late. A gut-string classical Spanish guitar, a sweet, lovely little lady. Although I didn't know what the hell to do with it. The smell of it. Even now, to open a guitar case, when it's an old wooden guitar, I could crawl in and close the lid. Gus wasn't much of a guitar player himself, but he knew the basics. He showed me the first licks and chords, the major chord shapes, D and G and E. He said, "Play 'Malaguena,' you can play anything." By the time he said, "I think you're getting the hang of it," I was pretty happy.
    My six aunts, in no special order: Marje, Beatrice, Joanna, Elsie, Connie, Patty. Amazingly, at the time of writing, five of them are still alive. My favorite aunt was Joanna, who died in the 1980s of multiple sclerosis. She was my mate. She was an actress. A rush of glamour came into the room when Joanna arrived, black hair, wearing bangles and smelling of perfume. Especially when everything else was so drab in the early '50s, Joanna would come in and it was as if the Ronettes had arrived. She used to do Chekhov and stuff like that at Highbury Theatre. She was also the only one that never married. She always had boyfriends. And she too, like all of us, was into music. We would harmonize together. Any song that came on the radio, we'd say, "Let's try that." I remember singing "When Will I Be Loved," the Everly Brothers song, with her.
    T he move to S pielman R oad on Temple Hill, across the tracks and into the wasteland, was a catastrophe for me for at least one whole year of living dangerously and fearfully, when I was nine or ten. I was a very small guy in those days--I grew into my rightful size not until I was fifteen or so. If you're a squirt like I was you're always on the defensive. Also I was a year younger than everybody else in my class, because of my birthday, December 18. I was unfortunate in that respect. And a year at that age is enormous. I loved to play football, actually; I was a good left winger. I was swift and I tried to shoot my passes. But I'm the smallest fucker, right? One bang into a back and I'm down in the mud, a solid tackle from a guy that's a year older than me. If you're that small and they're that tall, you're a football yourself. You're always going to be a squirt. So it was "Oh hello, little Richards." I was called "Monkey" because my ears stuck out. Everybody was called something.
    The route to my school from Temple Hill was the street without joy. Up to the age of eleven I'd bus it there and walk it back. Why didn't I bus it back? No fucking money! I'd spent the bus fare, spent the haircutting money, done it myself in front of the mirror. Snip, snip, snip. So I had to make my way across town, totally the opposite side of town, about a forty-minute walk, and there's only two ways to go, Havelock Road or Princes Road. Toss a coin. But then I knew that the minute I got out of school, this guy would be waiting for me. The guy always guessed which way I was going. I'd try to figure out new routes, get busted in people's gardens. I'd spend the whole day wondering how to get home without taking a beating. Which is hard work. Five days a week. Sometimes it didn't happen, but at the same time you're sitting in the classroom churning inside. How the hell do I get past this guy? This guy would be merciless. There was nothing I could do about it and I would live in fear all day, which ruined my concentration.
    When I got a black eye from being beaten up, I'd go home to Doris, and she'd say, "Where did you get that from?" "Oh, I fell over." Otherwise you'd get the old lady wound up about "Who did it?" It was better to say you fell off your bike.
    Meanwhile I'm getting these terrible school reports, and Bert's looking at me: "What's