Ain't Bad for a Pink

by Sandra Gibson

  Things were hectic. The day after the Festival Des and I were interviewed at WRFG at 7.30 in the morning. We hadn’t made it to bed until about 4.30 after a night of talking on the porch. It was a very shaky start but the interview was good. I performed “Louis Collins” first then stitched Des up to sing a song. He wasn’t going to sing originally but I put him on the spot by announcing over the air that he would be. So he retaliated by singing at a pitch that would make it hard for me. He sang low and I sang from my boots! I finished with a thrashed “Groundhog” then there was another call from Cora Mae saying how good she thought we were. Quite a long conversation and what a compliment.

  Because Harlan and Sandra were expecting other guests, Des and I were moved to Dunwoody, a gated condominium with a gymnasium and apartments forming a quadrangle built round a large swimming pool. It was one of many: a vast development of hundreds of apartments as far as the eye could see, aimed at Atlanta executives, or people on short-term contracts or people waiting to purchase. It had a shifting impermanence, like a hotel, which it resembled, and steel security gates for which you needed a pass card and number.

  Our apartment was modern, luxurious and spacious. We were asked to keep this exclusive stockbroker arrangement to ourselves because none of the other musicians were receiving anything. Rhonda, the complex manager and our host was connected to the radio station so that’s why we were there: another five-star plus experience all on the strength of my musical efforts.

  We named our gated accommodation the “Golden Ghetto”. It was a sterile environment with no sense of community – not even in the pool. We played some music to stay sane and counteract the flatness; my journal entries for this time express a heavy sense of waiting around, of too much TV and beer, of expeditionary quests to find food and drink that suited our pocket. Why do people pay so much to live in an open prison? It was comfortable enough but there was a lack of stimulation and in spite of the luxurious trappings, we were short of cash and we missed the sense of community we experienced with Sandra and Harlan. Their mansion had a different kind of exclusivity: it was a cultural salon whose doors were open to musicians and writers but where mere money wouldn’t gain you access. It was intellectual dynamite and reassured me that not all Americans are bigots and racists.

  We were invited by Rhonda to a “blues fest” but we declined because we were hard-up; we were waiting for a phone call from Tom Hubbard to make arrangements to go on to his place and I wasn’t that keen on the sort of music offered. She was offended but the Tom Hubbard connection was important: I wanted Des to see the aspects of the South I had experienced in Newnan and also felt it was disrespectful not to visit him since we were in Georgia.

  Finally, we left Dunwoody and started a long hot journey, our discomfort emphasised by Des’ bag splitting open and our lack of a vehicle in a country dominated by freeways. If you arrive somewhere without a car you may as well be carrying a loaded gun – people are that suspicious of you. We arrived at Little Five Points: a haven for me throughout my times in America. Phew! The Pabst was sweet – three pitchers before Tom arrived to collect us.

  So, we found ourselves with Tom and Kathy in Newnan. Events were not auspicious: travelling a hundred miles to play to a nearly empty room followed by our “usual sponsored beefburger” sums it up. The journal pages are labelled: “Day 12, Day 13, Day 14” but nothing is written there. Was I too busy? No. The pages are empty because there was nothing to write. Perhaps this sounds a bit pathetic and perhaps if I’d had a manager in Georgia things would have gone better. I’ve always managed myself and never knew how to ask someone else to do it. After the amount of publicity I received with my CD I was presuming someone would contact me with some gigs. In retrospect they were no doubt presuming I’d been signed up at my age!

  On the fifteenth day we persuaded Tom to drive the 400 miles to Nashville via Chattanooga. As with New Orleans my expectations surpassed what was possible. Considering Nashville’s musical significance and its importance in the Civil Rights Movement, it was a bland experience characterised by urban and rural sprawl spanning several counties. Then my journal records Day 16: “back to Newnan and the wrath of Kathy”.

  There was a nasty incident. A black family’s car had broken down and to Tom’s annoyance Kathy went out to them with the phone. “I’ll go get my Glock.” Tom loaded and primed his gun and placed it on his knee. “You can’t trust this black shit.” When the black woman and her ten-year-old son came into the house to use the toilet, Tom’s like John Wayne playing with the gun. A ludicrous but menacing display and I felt devastated. Des felt worse. These people presented no threat; Tom just wanted to humiliate them. It was the culmination of lots of small incidents that had Des and me ringing Sandra to ask for asylum then fleeing as political and emotional refugees to the freedom of Harlan and Sandra’s home. She sounded so sweet and kind – I was crying with relief. “The same two rooms are ready and waiting for you,” she said.

  This bust-up had been brewing for some time. Although I was grateful to Tom and very fond of Hoyt, I felt more and more stifled by the cultural barrenness at Newnan and couldn’t identify with their values. If you’re just visiting a place you’re better off living by their rules and although there were some difficult moments in America, I was able to shut out my feelings and get on with things in the interests of my music. But only up to a point and that point had been reached: my nerve went at the moment Tom’s racism threatened a woman and child in his own house – the very antithesis of hospitality.

  The intensity of my relief testified to how troubled I was about the clash of values.

  Interestingly, Des and I realised that our experiences at Newnan and at the Golden Ghetto were aspects of the same thing: both equally narrow and fruitless. The short, expansive stay at Heartfield was the best of all the Georgian times in terms of human values. But wherever we stayed, the squalid shacks of the poor were always visible. How can a verandah be squalid? These were and I felt intrusive when I photographed them.

  Fourth Time Lucky?

  You’d think I wouldn’t want to go back to Georgia. But I did go: on the strength of musical promises I went once again for my music. One of the gigs was at Blind Willie’s in Atlanta; the ideal twelve string guitar for this came my way and I learned Blind Willie McTell’s “Reckless Disposition” to honour the occasion. Yet in spite of my musical high hopes my fourth visit to Georgia in April 2003 was characterised by loneliness and dwindling resources. I was genuinely poor, increasingly unable to earn any money and trapped for three weeks.

  This was much worse than Leeds!

  Bad Moon On The Rise

  The omens were not auspicious: I arrived with a gastric bug courtesy of the airline and Tom was late to collect me. I was unimpressed by Jim the new lodger and found I had been relegated to the couch. “Virtually next to the road…I feel like an outlaw” I wrote in my journal. Back home, my dog Dobro had been bitten and now, coincidentally with my (unusual) chronic headache, the worst type of weather was hitting the state: “turn to news program – worst storm and possible tornado to hit Atlanta ever. Golf ball then baseball hail. Freeway blocked. Windshields smashed in cars”. References to home as “Blighty” are quite frequent in this final section of my journal and express an “up against it” siege mentality as my sense of isolation and danger increased.

  My anxiety about those at home manifested in troubling dreams and a blister on my ring finger. I was clearly not where I wanted to be and then I was hit by another kind of bombshell: a big festival was attracting every big name in the music industry so my gig at Blind Willie’s was postponed. Expecting to earn six hundred dollars in three weeks I was now upstaged and down to forty dollars. Desperate to get an early flight home but prevented by the rules and the cost of an alternative ticket, I was sentenced to a further twelve days in worsening weather:

  Evening – WW III broke out – never known anything like it – lightning and thunder, torrential rain – power’s off – beer�
��s warm. Everything including the new ‘Woodstock’ will be an absolute washout. Writing by candlelight.

  Warm beer! Could things possibly get worse? The weather deteriorated:

  More tornado warnings – house shaking like bomb attacks. Tornado is now heading for Newnan – 10 minutes – headache is back…the foundations of the house are shaking again and a waterfall is pouring from the sky. Oh!!! For England.

  Good grief man! Get a grip! I got an itch. When the storms abated there was a stifling and uncomfortable heat, accompanied by insect bites that inhibited the normal functions of living, let alone creative effort – speaking of which, by the fourth visit six of the original clubs available for gigs no longer existed. There was an abysmal jam session with an out-of-tune bass, poor keyboards and a shit drummer which even the Mexican lunch didn’t compensate for. Could things get any worse? Well, yes. My credit card was rejected during the last alcohol run, leaving me broke in more ways than one with two more nights to go. It was my darkest hour.

  The power was off again.

  My actual poverty reflected the poverty of musical experience that had shattered my American dream and the violence of the weather punctuated the gun-riddled racism I had lived amongst. There were two main reasons for the musical desert: many once-available venues had been shut down and we had no control over the economic forces in action there. In spite of the promises Tom had not been pro-active where he did have some control. He hadn’t done any organising; he had not checked dates; he wasn’t on the case. He hadn’t seen the implications of the biggest music festival since Woodstock with regard to my Blind Willie gig. Tom Hubbard’s musical career had imploded and he was certainly not nurturing mine. Probably too depressed.

  But I can’t blame anyone because my illusions were crushed. I had created them by having large expectations of people and places – expectations for which I had no real basis. Knowing what I know, why did I expect audiences to appreciate the country blues? I had anticipated something far more vibrant and inspiring but the US had no more musical pizzazz than the UK at that time. Where were the blues? It appears that I had taken them home to Georgia but the welcome had only been partial.

  It had been my dream to play the blues in Georgia, to touch the places touched by my musical heroes and I had achieved this and celebrated it as “a mountain climbed”. The only way after this was down and sure enough despite a few musical high spots, the impetus ran out and the fourth visit yielded nothing but a sense of hollowness. Not only this but the things I had read about racism had been enacted for me as part of the Georgian way of life I experienced at Newnan. Although a non-believer in the conventional sense, nevertheless I have a well-defined set of values. My music is the nearest thing to a spiritual dimension in my life and my hatred of the bully is part of my humanistic ideology. The music I love and have championed over the years defines the experiences of an oppressed people; despised, hated even, by people such as Tom, whose sense of white supremacy is absolute. I was never going to be able to reconcile my stand against bullying in all its forms with Tom’s perpetration of it.

  The conflict between Tom and I was not really personal. Tom looked after me during each of my visits and was kind enough to compensate for the lack of gigs by recording some of my songs. I’m grateful for this. The conflict was between two sets of irreconcilable ideas. The last visit to Georgia completed my rejection of Southern values in particular but also American values in general. I couldn’t forgive Georgia its lack of respect for musicians, its racism, its crass materialism – on our way to New Orleans I saw a double-stretch black Cadillac limo with jacuzzis in the back – and its violence. It does seem a strange country where people believe they’re free but where there is so much violent threat: a procession of police vehicles and aerial reconnaissance seems to be the accepted norm.

  It is no coincidence that I felt nauseous the minute I arrived and throughout the final visit; nor that the heavens were torn apart by tempest and my musical Odyssey had been reduced to trips with Tom to inspect meat! The gods were angry. During my first trip, coffins in Albany were floating out of graves because of flood waters and Tom Hubbard joked about the old bluesmen coming up to meet me. Perhaps the statement was far more apposite than either of us knew.

  The hurricane put a stop to the second ‘Woodstock’ and Tom Hubbard’s house and barn have since been destroyed by hurricanes; the connection is severed.

  Maybe.

  I returned from Georgia exhausted, broke and disillusioned. And now my other hand was going.

  Notes: Section Four

  A lot of the quoted material for this section comes from my Georgia Journal.

  (1) Coweta County, of which Newnan is the county seat, was ceded by the Creek people in 1825. The Koweta Indians were a sub-group of the Creeks. It is one of the few Georgia counties to have an African American museum.

  (2) Thea Gilmore interview: Total Guitar August 1999, Issue 59. I forgive her – it’s a good name!

  (3) Living Blues magazine, Jan/Feb. 1998.

  (4) Michael Gray: Hand Me My Travelin’ Shoes, published by Bloomsbury Press.

  (5) Living Atlanta: An Oral History Of The City 1914 -1948 by Cliff M. Kuhn, Harlan E. Joye and E. Bernard West, forward by Michael Lomax, University of Georgia Press.

  SECTION FIVE

  A View From The Edge

  I’ve lived my life balanced on the edge. Out of my depth, out of my mind, in love, in danger, or about to die, there have been times when the rush of adrenalin has given me such exhilaration that jumping out of aeroplanes seemed completely rational. A sheriff threatened to shoot me but not for riding my horse to work – different movie! Flooding potholes, flamboyant women and exploding petrol tanks have all challenged me. I’ve saved lives, been threatened with knives and I’ve ground a man’s head in the gravel.

  But the danger of losing the use of my hands was the worst.

  Hand Over Fist

  Facing Incapacity

  I arrived back from Georgia to confront worse things than my disillusionment and economic penury. I faced a second hand operation with no guarantee that it would be a success. The idea that I wouldn’t be able to play music was excruciating. If I couldn’t play my guitars I knew that depression would make me indifferent about living on. Not a suicidal impulse: just a slow, sad decline. This was a starkly passive idea for someone so used to active risk-taking.

  Lethal Weapons

  This sounds bizarre: my hands were registered with the police as lethal weapons. My disembodied hands! This is how it happened. My father and I saw six youths kicking hell out of a lad; my father told them to stop; one of them went for him. It ended with three of the thugs hospitalized and me arrested. I had used skills and knowledge learnt from training with the famous heavyweight wrestler Count Bartelli to protect my father and also the set-upon youth. I had not broken the code of honour stipulating the protection of others and self-defence as the only circumstances for such action. When all was explained the charges were dropped but the police re-designated my hands as lethal weapons.

  The Wrong Arm Of The Law

  There came a time when I had to resist using my martial art skills even though I needed to defend myself. It was 1978 and Penny and I and our son had been to the Crown at Audlem to fix the sound system and collect some money. It wasn’t very late – about 9.30 – and when we got back to Crewe I parked in Catherine Street to get some fish and chips for us. Very domestic and ordinary. I was following the hot vinegary smell to the chip shop when a police car drove up and stopped. A constable approached: “I believe you’ve been drinking. Blow into this bag.” I was amazed. “Come off it,” I said, “I’ve only just got my licence back and I haven’t had a drink.” No reply. Then: “You’re under arrest!” At that I was forcibly shoved into the police car. “There’s a baby and a thousand quid in my briefcase in the car,” I said. “She can look after that,” he said. But Penny was frightened and couldn’t drive.

  As we got towards the door of t
he police station the PC twisted my arm up my back. “If I was going to escape I’d have done it by now,” I said. With that I was frogmarched into a side room and the PC started to beat me up. Severely. I’m not just talking about a couple of punches: it was elbows, feet, fists – the lot.

  After a few minutes the Duty Sergeant entered; he didn’t join in but I was on the point of retaliation and I knew the consequences of that, not just for this thug but also for myself. He would have been in hospital and I would have been in trouble. “Get rid of this madman,” I said. My assailant left the room and the Duty Sergeant politely asked me to go to another side room for a breathalyzer test. “Certainly.” It was negative, of course. “What’s all the trouble, then?” he asked me. I explained my side of the story and he seemed satisfied.

  By this time Penny and Nathan had been dropped off at her father’s house and my car had been brought to the station. The Duty Sergeant called for someone to escort me out – the same one who’d beaten me up. “I’m not going down those stairs with him because one of us will end up down the bottom of them. Whichever one – I’m the loser.” So he called an extra escort. At the bottom of the stairs the PC who had beaten me said, “Your number plate’s dirty.” I replied, “Get on your fucking knees and lick it, you cunt.”

  I was so badly hurt Penny’s father insisted on taking me to Leighton Hospital and my injuries were photographed at the instigation of the medics. My letter to the Chief Constable included them with the solicitor’s letter outlining what had happened to me in which, among other things, attention was drawn to my training with Count Bartelli and the restraint I had shown. The reply was an unveiled threat and in no way addressed my complaints: “as the owner of a shotgun certificate you will be aware that this can be revoked at any time”. My solicitor suggested I let the matter drop and predicted a sideways move for my attacker: a bully since school days.