EXCERPTED FROM THIS....
A conversation with Buddy Vanderhoop
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www.mvmagazine.com]
I’ve heard some stories about you and Keith Richards. Care to share?I’ve known Keith for thirty years: We used to party at the Outermost Inn back in the late seventies. About five years ago, Keith came back to the Island, and I was up at my mom’s restaurant, the Aquinnah Shop, and Keith was walking down from the overlook with a bunch of his friends from London, and he says, “Buddy! Buddy Vanderhoop! What are you doing? I’m here for the whole summer. Let’s go fishing.” So Keith shows up at my boat at 7 a.m., and he’s got a ten-ounce cup in his hand. I say, “What’s in the cup, Keith?” He says [attempting a British accent], “Oh, vodka and grapefruit. Grapefruit’s a morning drink, you know.”
So we went out, we started catching lots of fish, and after every fish he caught, he’d have a cocktail. By the time we got back to the dock at noontime, he was plastered. I have pictures of him laying down on the dock with the fish, with a big shit-eatin’ grin on his face with his cocktail. [Laughing.]
After I filleted their fish, he said, “Buddy, this afternoon, I’m going to freak you out.” I said, “I don’t think so, I’m going to be out fishing.” And he said, “You’ll see.”
I didn’t think anything about it. I got my clients on the boat, we left, and we started catching fish. I was fishing right at the end of Zack’s Cliffs [in Aquinnah], and all of a sudden, around the bend of Squibnocket Point, comes this – I think it was an early 1940s vintage B-17 bomber. My clients were still in the back fishing, and all of a sudden the plane goes into a dive and came within probably one hundred feet of my antenna, and then the pilot crammed all the power of the four engines, and it made such a roar when it buzzed that my clients all hit the deck. Keith Richards was in the front glass gun turret, laughing his ass off, and his son Marlon was in the gun turret on the top, and his friends from London were in the gun turret in the back, and they were just cracking up. They buzzed me four times. It was – pretty unique. It had never happened to me before.
Or since, probably.Right. When he’s here I go over to his house for dinner three or four times. Very dedicated family man, does a lot of things with his kids. He wanted to go fishing with me last year, but it was the end of their tour, and Mick [Jagger] said, “No, we have to practice.” I said, “Practice? You been playing that same stuff for forty years!”
Is it true there’s some interest in your doing a television show together?Keith wants to do a fishing show with me off the Great Barrier Reef. He wants to catch great white sharks – he just wants to catch and release. So it’s in the works with Trevor Gowdy.
And now, one of my best friends has just recently been promoted to head producer of ESPN-East, James Ebron. This isn’t in stone yet, but [fishing charter captain] Jennifer Clarke and I are going to do a show together with ESPN with the Boston Red Sox. I’m going to take out the players and she’s going to take out their wives. We’re going to have a competition