Beside the big floor standing speakers in the corner stood an older man in round sunglasses, a black t-shirt, a black cap, and a weary posture that listed slightly to one side with a faint tremor. Oussie Osborne had wandered out on his own that day, bored while Sharon was in a meeting about tour business, and had stepped into this showroom on the excuse of looking at a new listening system for the house, but for the last few minutes he hadn’t been paying any attention to the speakers.
He knew that tone of Trevor’s all too well. He’d been on the receiving end of the same looks his whole life. Because of his long hair and his tattoos, he’d been called a devil worshipper. People had asked him to his face, “Are you Oussie Osborne, that lunatic?” As a kid who had grown up in the back streets of Birmingham, without even £3 in his pocket, he knew in his bones what the you don’t belong here look meant.
Ozie looked over the top of his glasses at the man in the long coat once more. That face seemed familiar, very familiar, but his tired mind just couldn’t place it. Then he looked at Trevor and that old familiar something stirred inside him. Oussie took a deep breath. He really hadn’t wanted to get into it with anyone that day.
He was in a sour mood. His knees achd, and all he wanted was a few quiet minutes to listen to some speakers, but he’d never been any good at letting some things slide. There was a reason Sharon had been telling him for 40 years. Aussie, stay out of it. Sit where you are. He stepped away from the speaker and slowly started toward the counter with those slight unsteady steps of his.
Trevor hadn’t noticed him yet. He was still giving the man in the long coat that polite smile, as if to say, “If you’d like, we can look at something more in your price range.” The jazz record on the back wall came to an end at that exact moment, and for an instant a deep silence fell over the whole showroom.
Nobody knew it yet, but the few sentences that would be spoken after that silence would forever change the way both Trevor and everyone else there that afternoon saw music and people,” Oussie stopped in front of the counter, and his voice gently cut through that silence. “Excuse me, son,” he said in a calm but clear tone, that Birmingham accent running through every word.
“If I heard right, you just told this gentleman his ears don’t deserve a speaker like this.” Trevor flinched, noticed the older man as if seeing him for the first time, and reflexively put on that professional smile. “Sir, I was only steering our customer toward the right product. Some systems really are designed for trained ears.
” Ozie raised his hand slightly and stopped him mid-sentence. “Trained ears?” he repeated, a bitter smile forming at the corner of his lips. “Tell me something. What do you look at to decide an ear is trained? The man’s hair? his t-shirt or the money in his pocket. The smile on Trevor’s face stiffened a notch. In the back office, the store’s owner, Diane, had lifted her head and begun to watch what was happening.
Trevor tried to answer, but couldn’t find the right words because for the first time in his life. Someone was asking him this question. Ozie stepped a little closer, and without hardening, his voice grew even warmer. “Look, let me tell you something,” he said. I grew up in Birmingham in a neighborhood called Aston.
When I walked out onto that stage without even £3 in my pocket, the thing that got thousands of people on their feet wasn’t my technique or my money or the clothes on my back. He paused for a moment, looking at Trevor from behind his glasses. My whole life, people just like you looked at me and said, “This man doesn’t belong here.
One time I walked into a store and security hit the alarm. Why? because my hair was long and my arms were covered in tattoos. So that whole I can read a person in 5 seconds trick. I know it far better than you do. And let me tell you this, that trick blows up in your face one day and it blows up big.
Trevor’s throat had gone dry. “Sir, I no offense, but who are you to be telling me all this?” Ozie was just about to answer when a soft voice came from behind him. “It’s all right. Let it go,” said the man in the long coat, and slowly took off his hat. His hair tumbled down to his shoulders. Then he reached up and took off his sunglasses as well.
In that moment, in the showroom’s dim light, the face suddenly looked familiar. Those high cheekbones, a huge, mischievous grin, and one of the most recognizable mouths in the world. The pen in Trevor’s hand dropped onto the counter. “Your,” he began, but couldn’t finish the sentence. The man tilted his head slightly with that famous smirk.
Steven,” he said simply. “Steven Tyler.” All the color drained from Trevor’s face. He had just tried to brush off with a Your ears can’t handle this speaker. A man who’d been on the radio for months, who’d put out his first solo album that very summer, who for 40 years had been singing Dream On and Walk This Way. And he’d done it to one of the most finely trained ears in the world.
But the real shock hadn’t come yet. When Steven said his name, the eyes behind Ouss’s glasses lit up for a moment. So that was why the face had seemed familiar. “Blime me,” he muttered to himself. “I knew that mug from somewhere.” Trevor was still frozen, his eyes wide as saucers, staring at that famous face, not a single word coming out of his mouth.
Then Oussie turned to Trevor, that famous smile appearing at the corner of his lips. A minute ago, you sized this gentleman up and decided who he was,” he said. “Go on, then. Size me up, too.” Then he slowly took off his round sunglasses. Beneath them, those familiar blue eyes appeared, tired, but warm. “And I’m the bloke who bit the head off that bat and says, “Yes, dear to Sharon, every morning,” he said, and shrugged.
“Zussie, Aussie Osborne.” Diane had rushed out of the back office and stood there frozen, her hand over her mouth. Trevor’s world tilted on its axis in an instant. Two rock legends were standing in his own showroom, and for several minutes he’d been trying to brush off one of them.
One of the best ears in the history of music. Oh my god, he whispered. I’m so sorry. I didn’t recognize either of you. Ozie waved a hand in the air as if none of it mattered at all. The problem isn’t that you didn’t recognize him, son,” Ozie said. And his voice was no longer like a man giving a lecture, but more like a man telling a story.
“The problem is this. You judged him before you knew him. Tomorrow somebody completely different will walk through your door in an old t-shirt. Maybe he won’t be famous, and nobody will know who he is, but that doesn’t mean his ear is any worse than yours.” Steven gently cut in with neither arrogance nor revenge in his voice. only a quiet warmth.
“Let me tell you something,” he said. “When I was just three years old, my father was a classically trained pianist who had studied at Giuliard. We had a grand piano in our house, and I’d lie down under the keys and listen to the vibration in the wood. I grew up in the woods of New Hampshire, and I learned music long before any speaker from nature, from my father’s hands, from my own heart.
