November 1 & The Day of the Dead
All Saints Day, also called The Day of the Dead in Spanish-speaking countries, was Gus’s actual birthday. Its happy skeleton images also interested and inspired Gus as he grew older. It was this image, the skeleton, that Gus chose as his first symbol when he began to call himself Lil Peep and make himself visible to his SoundCloud listeners.
Gus worked with a young man who called himself “Designa Drugs” to create the Lil Peep skeleton logo with the scythe. He had a hundred shirts made at a local shop in Island Park, and he sold them on Big Cartel. I was tasked with buying the padded envelopes at Staples. Gus’s friend Ian helped him organize the orders and walk the packages over to the Post Office (about a block from our home in Long Beach). Gus hated to go outside and it took Ian guiding him through the process to get those t-shirts sent out to fans.
Gus’s last birthday card from his grandfather
A (slightly torn) print of skeleton friends with a Talking Heads lyric that his grandmother gave him
Gus at his fourth birthday party
Gus's birth certificate
A photo Gus took of his first “merch” and a selfie he took wearing one
For one of his Instagram posts, as he neared what was to be his birthday, Gus posted a photo of another person born on November 1—Anthony Kiedis. Gus admired Mr. Kiedis’s work greatly, and enjoyed listening to it. He had read (as had I) Kiedis’s biography Scar Tissue. When he was home in August, 2017, Gus had been studying track #14 entitled “Hey” from the Stadium Arcadium album, listening to it over and over again. I know Gus would have wanted to meet Anthony Kiedis one day.