Free Life by Keith Richards; James Fox Page B

under fog, but there was a fog of words that settled between people too. One didn’t show emotions. One didn’t actually talk much at all. The talk was all around things, codes and euphemisms; some things couldn’t be said or even alluded to. It was a residue of the Victorians and all brilliantly portrayed in those black-and-white movies of the early ’60s— Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, This Sporting Life . And life was black-and-white; the Technicolor was just around the corner, but it wasn’t there yet in 1959. People really do want to touch each other, to the heart. That’s why you have music. If you can’t say it, sing it. Listen to the songs of the period. Heavily pointed and romantic, and trying to say things that they couldn’t say in prose or even on paper. Weather’s fine, 7:30 p.m., wind has died down, P.S. I love you.
    Doris was different—she was musical, like Gus. At three or four or five years old, at the end of the war, I was listening to Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Big Bill Broonzy, Louis Armstrong. It just spoke to me, it was what I listened to every day because my mum played it. My ears would have gone there anyway, but my mum trained them to go to the black side of town without her even knowing it. I didn’t know whether the singers were white, black or green at the time. But after a while, if you’ve got some musical ears, you pick up on the difference between Pat Boone’s “Ain’t That a Shame” and Fats Domino’s “Ain’t That a Shame.” Not that Pat Boone’s was particularly bad, he was a very good singer, but it was just so shallow and produced, and Fats’s was just so natural. Doris liked Gus’s music too. He used to tell her to listen to Stéphane Grappelli, Django Reinhardt’s Hot Club—that lovely swing guitar—and Bix Beiderbecke. She liked jazzy swing. Later on she loved going to hear Charlie Watts’s band at Ronnie Scott’s.
    We didn’t have a record player for a long time, and most of it, for us, was on the radio, mostly on the BBC, my mother being a master twiddler of the knobs. There were some great British players, some of the northern dance orchestras and all of those that were on the variety shows. Some great players. No slouches. If there was anything good she’d find it. So I grew up with this searching for music. She’d point out who was good or bad, even to me. She was musical, musical. There were voices she would hear and she’d say “screecher” when everyone else would think it was a great soprano. This was pre-TV. I grew up listening to really good music, including a little bit of Mozart and Bach in the background, which I found very over my head at the time, but I soaked it up. I was basically a musical sponge. And I was just fascinated by watching people play music. If they were in the street I’d gravitate towards it, a piano player in the pub, whatever it was. My ears were picking it up note for note. Didn’t matter if it was out of tune, there were notes happening, there were rhythms and harmonies, and they would start zooming around in my ears. It was very like a drug. In fact a far bigger drug than smack. I could kick smack; I couldn’t kick music. One note leads to another, and you never know quite what’s going to come next, and you don’t want to. It’s like walking on a beautiful tightrope.
    I think the first record I bought was Little Richard’s “Long Tall Sally.” Fantastic record, even to this day. Good records just get better with age. But the one that really turned me on, like an explosion one night, listening to Radio Luxembourg on my little radio when I was supposed to be in bed and asleep, was “Heartbreak Hotel.” That was the stunner. I’d never heard it before, or anything like it. I’d never heard of Elvis before. It was almost as if I’d been waiting for it to happen. When I woke up the next day I was a different guy. Suddenly I was getting overwhelmed: Buddy Holly, Eddie Cochran, Little Richard,