Janet Forsyth ran Forsyth Guitars in Edinburgh for 41 years. In 41 years, Janet Forsyth corrected pick technique exactly once without being asked. October 17th, 1984. A man was browsing the guitar display. Janet Forsyth looked at the pick in his hand and said what she had said to hundreds of customers before, “That’s not how you hold it.
” The correction lasted 4 seconds. The response lasted 30 seconds. Janet Forsyth has not corrected a single customer’s pick grip without being asked since that afternoon. The note above her guitar display has been there for 40 years. It reads, “We do not correct grip technique without being asked.
” The man was Keith Richards. Keith Richards never came back. Janet Forsyth has never stopped being grateful that he came in once. Forsyth Guitars had been on Cockburn Street in Edinburgh since 1962. Janet Forsyth had opened the shop at the age of 28 with the specific conviction of a woman who had been surrounded by music her entire life.
Her father had played fiddle at Ceilidh’s across the Lothians. Her mother had taught piano from the front room of their house in Morningside for 30 years. And who had decided in her mid-20s that the instrument business was where she belonged. Janet Forsyth had no business training. Janet Forsyth had extensive knowledge of instruments, of the musicians who played them, and of the specific requirements of the Edinburgh music community, which was serious and discerning and supported its local instrument dealers with the kind of loyalty that comes from trusting the person behind the counter to know what they are talking about. Janet Forsyth knew what she was talking about. Janet Forsyth had spent 22 years building a reputation for exactly that, for knowing her instruments, knowing her stock, knowing the musicians who came through her door and what they needed and what would serve them well and what would not. Janet Forsyth’s advice was sought and trusted. Janet Forsyth was the kind
of specialist that Edinburgh’s music community produced and sustained. Knowledgeable without being condescending, opinionated without being inflexible, willing to tell a customer when they were making a mistake, and willing to be told the same. Janet Forsyth also had strong views about pick technique.
This was not unusual among people who had spent decades in the instrument business. The relationship between a guitarist and their pick, the specific mechanics of grip and angle, and the effect of those mechanics on tone and control was the kind of subject that people with Janet Forsyth’s experience formed views about and shared freely with the people who came through their doors.
Guitar pedagogy in Britain in 1984 had a broadly agreed upon position on pick grip. The pick held between the thumb and the side of the index finger at a specific angle to the string, producing the cleanest and most controlled tone. Deviations from this position were generally understood as beginner habits that would limit a player’s development if left uncorrected.
Janet Forsyth had a specific view about the correct way to hold a pick and had communicated that view to hundreds of customers across 22 years. Janet Forsyth’s view was grounded in the conventional wisdom of classical guitar pedagogy and the specific technical tradition that Edinburgh’s music teaching community had passed down across generations.
Janet Forsyth’s view was correct for a specific kind of playing and a specific kind of music, for the kind of playing and music that the tradition had been designed to produce. Janet Forsyth had never encountered a reason to examine that view carefully. On October 17th, 1984, Janet Forsyth encountered one. Keith Richards was in Edinburgh on October 17th, 1984 as part of a brief personal trip.
The Rolling Stones were not touring in Britain at that time, and Keith Richards was in the city for reasons that had nothing to do with the music industry. Keith Richards had been to Edinburgh before on tour and had the specific affection for the city that musicians often develop for places that have treated them well.
The specific topography of it, the light on the castle in the autumn, the particular quality of the Scottish air that made it different from every other city. Keith Richards had an afternoon free and had done what Keith Richards did with free afternoons in cities. Keith Richards had walked.
Keith Richards had been walking through the Old Town when Keith Richards turned onto Cockburn Street. Cockburn Street in 1984 had the specific character of a street that had been accumulating interesting small businesses for decades. Record shops, bookshops, instrument dealers, a vintage clothing shop that had been there since the 1960s and showed no signs of leaving.
The kind of shops that exist because the people who run them love what they sell and have organized their professional lives around that love rather than around the maximization of return. Keith Richards had spent his entire adult life in the company of people who loved music and had organized their professional lives around it and Keith Richards could identify those shops from the outside with the ease of someone who had been identifying them in cities across five continents for 30 years.
The window display told you whether the person behind the counter was a retailer or a musician who happened to be selling instruments. Forsyth Guitars had the window display of the second kind. Keith Richards went in. The shop smelled the way instrument shops smell when they have been there long enough.
Advertisements
The specific combination of wood and polish and the accumulated presence of music that has been played in a space over years. Keith Richards recognized the smell. Keith Richards had been in rooms that smelled like this since he was 19 years old. The shop was quiet on the afternoon of October 17th. Janet Forsyth was behind the counter when Keith Richards came through the door.
Janet Forsyth noted the arrival of a customer in the automatic way that shop owners note such things, registered the presence, assessed the general category, returned to what she had been doing. The customer was a man in his early 40s in a dark jacket with rings on his fingers. The customer moved to the guitar display and began to look at the instruments with the attention of someone who knew what they were looking at.
Janet Forsyth did not recognize Keith Richards. Keith Richards was not dressed in the way that Keith Richards was dressed in photographs. There was no visual statement, no particular performance of the persona. Keith Richards was wearing what Keith Richards wore when Keith Richards had an afternoon free in a city and nobody was watching.
Keith Richards looked like a musician in the specific way that certain people look like musicians regardless of what they are wearing, something about how they stand near instruments, how their attention moves through a room that contains them. But looking like a musician on Cockburn Street in Edinburgh in 1984 was not remarkable.
Looking like a musician on Cockburn Street was essentially a precondition for entering most of the shops. Keith Richards picked up a guitar from the display stand. Keith Richards examined it with the focused attention of someone assessing an instrument, the neck, the frets, the condition of the body, the way the weight distributed when he held it.
Then Keith Richards picked a plectrum from the sample tray on the counter and held it between his fingers in the way that Keith Richards had held picks for 30 years, which was the way Keith Richards had developed through 30 years of playing and which produced the specific sound that Keith Richards produced and which was not the conventional way that guitar pedagogy taught you to hold a pick.
Janet Forsyth looked up from what she was doing. Janet Forsyth looked at the pick in the customer’s hand. Janet Forsyth said what Janet Forsyth always said in this situation, “That’s not how you hold it.” The customer looked at the pick in his hand. The customer looked at Janet Forsyth. The customer adjusted his grip to the position Janet Forsyth had indicated.
Then the customer played something. Janet Forsyth has described the 30 seconds that followed many times in the 40 years since October 17th, 1984. Janet Forsyth has described them to her family, to her staff, to the customers who ask about the note above the guitar display, and to the occasional journalist or interviewer who has come to the shop over the years and heard the story.
Janet Forsyth has never described those 30 seconds as the sound of conventional pick technique producing conventional results. Janet Forsyth has described them consistently and without embellishment as the 30 seconds in which Janet Forsyth understood that the framework she had used for 22 years to assess correct pick technique had a significant limitation and that the limitation was this.
The framework assumed that conventional technique was the goal and that any deviation from conventional technique was an error to be corrected. What the 30 seconds demonstrated was that conventional technique was one path toward a specific destination and that Keith Richards had found a different path toward a different destination that conventional technique could not reach.
The sound that came from that guitar in those 30 seconds was not the sound of someone playing despite an incorrect grip. It was the sound of someone playing because of a specific grip, a grip that had been developed across 30 years of making music that required something that conventional pedagogy had not anticipated and had not accounted for.
Janet Forsyth stood behind her counter and listened for 30 seconds and did not say anything. The customer finished playing. The customer placed the guitar back on the stand. The customer placed the pick back in the sample tray. The customer looked at Janet Forsyth with an expression that Janet Forsyth has described in consistent terms across 40 years.
Not unkind, not triumphant, not the expression of someone making a point, the expression of someone who has done something and is is finished with it and is ready to move on to whatever comes next. The customer left the shop. Janet Forsyth stood behind her counter for a moment. Then Janet Forsyth went to find out who the customer had been.
It took Janet Forsyth 3 days to find out who had been in the shop that afternoon. The information came through a contact in the Edinburgh music community, a music teacher named Robert Cairns who gave lessons from a studio two streets away and who had seen Keith Richards on Cockburn Street that afternoon and had recognized him immediately and had mentioned it at a Tuesday evening gathering of Edinburgh music educators that Janet Forsyth attended.
Robert Cairns had not known that Keith Richards had gone into Forsyth Guitars specifically. Robert Cairns had simply mentioned in the casual way that people mention notable sightings that he had seen Keith Richards walking on Cockburn Street on Thursday afternoon. Janet Forsyth had listened to this information.
Janet Forsyth had thought about Thursday afternoon. Janet Forsyth had thought about the customer in the dark jacket with the rings. Janet Forsyth had made the connection herself without saying anything to Robert Cairns or to anyone else at the gathering. Janet Forsyth had driven home and sat with the connection for the rest of the evening and most of the following day before doing anything about it.
What Janet Forsyth did about it was make the note. Janet Forsyth wrote seven words on a piece of card, had the card framed by a framing shop two doors down from Forsyth Guitars, and placed the frame above the guitar display. We do not correct grip technique without being asked.
The note has been there since October 1984. The note has been in two different frames across 40 years. The original frame was replaced in 2003 when it began to show its age, but the card itself, the original card with Janet Forsyth’s original handwriting, is the same card that Janet Forsyth wrote in October 1984.
Janet Forsyth ran Forsyth Guitars until she retired in 2003 when her daughter Margaret took over the shop. Margaret Forsyth has been running the shop since then, 21 years as of this writing, and the note has been above the guitar display throughout Margaret’s tenure as it was throughout her mother’s.
The two different frames are the only change the note has undergone across 40 years. The card itself, Janet Forsyth’s original handwriting in blue ink on white card, is the same card that was framed in October 1984. Margaret grew up hearing the story of October 17th, 1984. Margaret was 12 years old when it happened.
Margaret remembers the specific evening her mother came home from the shop and described the afternoon with the intensity of a person who has been taught something important and is processing the teaching in real time. Not distressed, not embarrassed, but thoughtful in the way that Janet Forsyth was thoughtful when something mattered.
Margaret did not fully understand the importance of what her mother was describing that evening in 1984. Margaret was 12 and the name Keith Richards was a name she knew from records in the house rather than from any personal context that would have made the story land with full weight. Margaret understood it gradually across the years that followed.
As Margaret grew into the work and formed her own views about instruments and technique and customers and the difference between knowing something and being right about it. Janet Forsyth died in 2018 at the age of 84. Janet Forsyth ran her shop for 41 years and trained several members of Edinburgh’s music retail community and was remembered at her funeral by the people who had known her and worked with her and bought instruments from her across five decades.
The service was held at a church in Morningside, not far from the house where Janet Forsyth had grown up listening to her father play fiddle and her mother teach piano. 43 people attended. Several of them were musicians who had been coming to Forsyth Guitars since the 1960s and who described in the conversations afterward what it had meant to have someone behind that counter who actually knew what she was talking about.
Janet Forsyth was remembered at her funeral as someone who knew her instruments, knew her customers, and knew the difference between being certain and being right, and who on one occasion had discovered that difference in the most instructive way available. The note above the guitar display was mentioned in the eulogy.
The story of October 17th, 1984 was mentioned in the eulogy. Keith Richards was mentioned in the eulogy with the specific appreciation of a family that understood what his 30-second visit to a shop on Cockburn Street had produced across 40 years of better practice. Keith Richards has never mentioned the shop or the afternoon.
Keith Richards browses instrument shops in cities when Keith Richards has free afternoons, and the specific occasion on which a shop owner in Edinburgh corrected his pick grip and then heard what his pick grip sounded like is not, from Keith Richards’ perspective, a story that requires telling. Keith Richards adjusted his grip.
Keith Richards played for 30 seconds. Keith Richards put the guitar back. Keith Richards left. The note is still above the display. Forsyth Guitars is still on Cockburn Street. Margaret Forsyth still runs the shop. If you go in on a quiet afternoon and ask about the note above the guitar display, Margaret will tell you the story.
Margaret tells it the same way Janet told it, without embellishment, without adjusting the details to make Janet look better or worse, without making it larger than it was because it does not need to be made larger. It is already exactly the right size. A woman said four words. A man played for 30 seconds.
The woman made a note. The note is still there. That is the whole story. If this story made you smile, subscribe and leave a comment below. Has someone ever corrected you in a way that taught you more about yourself than it taught you about the correction itself? Tell us about it in the comments.
Share this with someone who needs to be reminded that being wrong about something specific can produce the most useful lesson of your professional life. Ring the notification bell for more untold stories about the extraordinary and remarkable human beings behind music’s greatest legends.
