Read Online Life by Keith Richards, James Fox (Contributor) - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Keith Richards, James Fox (Contributor)
Tags: BIO004000
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little sod called Stephen Yarde, "Boots" we used to call him, because of his huge feet, was the favorite to be picked on by the bully boys. He was being taunted all the time. And knowing what it was like to be waiting for a beating, I stood up for him. I became his minder. It was "Don't fuck with Stephen Yarde." I never wanted to get big enough to beat up other people; I just wanted to get big enough to stop it happening.
With that weight off my mind, my work improved at Dartford Tech. I was even getting praise. Doris kept some of my reports: Geography 59 %, a good exam result. History 63 %, quite good work. But against the science subjects on the report sheet the form master put a single bracket that enclosed them all--there was no daylight between them for abjectness--and he wrote them all off with no improvement in mathematics, physics and chemistry. Engineering drawing was still rather beyond him . That report on science subjects contained the story of the big betrayal and of how I was turned from a reasonably compliant student into a school terrorist and a criminal, with a lively and lasting rage against authority.
There is a photograph of our group of schoolboys standing in front of a bus, smiling for the camera, in the company of one schoolmaster. I am standing in the front row, wearing shorts, aged eleven. It was taken in 1955 in London, where we had gone to sing at a concert at St. Margaret's Church in Westminster Abbey--a choir competition between schools, performed in front of the queen. Our school choir had come a long way, a bunch of Dartford yokels who were winning cups and prizes for choral work on a national level. The three sopranos were Terry and Spike and me--the stars, you might say, of the show. And our choirmaster, pictured by the bus, the genius who had forged this little flying unit out of such unpromising material, was called Jake Clare. He was a mystery man. I found out only many years later that he'd been an Oxford choirmaster, one of the best in the country, but he was exiled or degraded for boinky boink with little boys. Given another chance in the colonies. I don't want to sully his name, and I have to say this is only what I heard. He'd certainly had better material to work with than us--what was he doing down here? Around us, anyway, he kept his hands clean, although he was famed for playing with himself through his trouser pocket. He hammered us into shape to the point where we were clearly one of the best choirs in the country. And he picked out the three best sopranos that he was given. We won quite a few trophies, which hung in the assembly hall. I've still never played a better gig prestige-wise than Westminster Abbey. You got the taunts: "Oh, choirboy, are we? Fantsy pantsy." It didn't bother me; the choir was wonderful. You got coach trips to London. You got out of physics and chemistry, and I would have done anything for that. That's where I learned a lot about singing and music and working with musicians. I learned how to put a band together--it's basically the same job--and how to keep it together. And then the shit hit the fan.
Your voice breaks, aged thirteen, and Jake Clare gave the three of us sopranos the pink slip. But they also demoted us, kept us down one class. We had to stay down a year because we hadn't got physics and chemistry and hadn't done our maths. "Yeah, but you let us off that because of choir practice. We worked our butts off." That was a rough thank-you. The great depression came right after that. Suddenly at thirteen I had to sit down and start again with the year under. Redo a whole school year. This was the kick in the guts, pure and unmixed. The moment that happened, Spike, Terry and I, we became terrorists. I was so mad, I had a burning desire for revenge. I had reason then to bring down this country and everything it stood for.
I spent the next three years trying to fuck them up. If you want to breed a rebel, that's the way to do it. No more haircuts.
With that weight off my mind, my work improved at Dartford Tech. I was even getting praise. Doris kept some of my reports: Geography 59 %, a good exam result. History 63 %, quite good work. But against the science subjects on the report sheet the form master put a single bracket that enclosed them all--there was no daylight between them for abjectness--and he wrote them all off with no improvement in mathematics, physics and chemistry. Engineering drawing was still rather beyond him . That report on science subjects contained the story of the big betrayal and of how I was turned from a reasonably compliant student into a school terrorist and a criminal, with a lively and lasting rage against authority.
There is a photograph of our group of schoolboys standing in front of a bus, smiling for the camera, in the company of one schoolmaster. I am standing in the front row, wearing shorts, aged eleven. It was taken in 1955 in London, where we had gone to sing at a concert at St. Margaret's Church in Westminster Abbey--a choir competition between schools, performed in front of the queen. Our school choir had come a long way, a bunch of Dartford yokels who were winning cups and prizes for choral work on a national level. The three sopranos were Terry and Spike and me--the stars, you might say, of the show. And our choirmaster, pictured by the bus, the genius who had forged this little flying unit out of such unpromising material, was called Jake Clare. He was a mystery man. I found out only many years later that he'd been an Oxford choirmaster, one of the best in the country, but he was exiled or degraded for boinky boink with little boys. Given another chance in the colonies. I don't want to sully his name, and I have to say this is only what I heard. He'd certainly had better material to work with than us--what was he doing down here? Around us, anyway, he kept his hands clean, although he was famed for playing with himself through his trouser pocket. He hammered us into shape to the point where we were clearly one of the best choirs in the country. And he picked out the three best sopranos that he was given. We won quite a few trophies, which hung in the assembly hall. I've still never played a better gig prestige-wise than Westminster Abbey. You got the taunts: "Oh, choirboy, are we? Fantsy pantsy." It didn't bother me; the choir was wonderful. You got coach trips to London. You got out of physics and chemistry, and I would have done anything for that. That's where I learned a lot about singing and music and working with musicians. I learned how to put a band together--it's basically the same job--and how to keep it together. And then the shit hit the fan.
Your voice breaks, aged thirteen, and Jake Clare gave the three of us sopranos the pink slip. But they also demoted us, kept us down one class. We had to stay down a year because we hadn't got physics and chemistry and hadn't done our maths. "Yeah, but you let us off that because of choir practice. We worked our butts off." That was a rough thank-you. The great depression came right after that. Suddenly at thirteen I had to sit down and start again with the year under. Redo a whole school year. This was the kick in the guts, pure and unmixed. The moment that happened, Spike, Terry and I, we became terrorists. I was so mad, I had a burning desire for revenge. I had reason then to bring down this country and everything it stood for.
I spent the next three years trying to fuck them up. If you want to breed a rebel, that's the way to do it. No more haircuts.
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