Ain't Bad for a Pink

by Sandra Gibson

  Grey Power

  As I’ve got older and greyer people have underestimated my strength. I was jostled at a bar by a paratrooper. There were several of them and their arrogant, elitist attitude annoyed me. “Firstly, you don’t know how hard I am,” I said, “secondly, I’ll just be a little old man in court.” I don’t know if he got the subtlety of my threat but his mate said it was well put.

  I was walking the dog along the Nantwich canal; it was Bank Holiday Sunday in the daytime. Four youths wearing hoodies were spread out along the towpath fishing – one of them sitting on a camp bed. They had two pit bull crosses harnessed but not on a lead. I had Dobro on a lead and I was anxious about how he would react when the dogs approached us, which they did. I’ve seen Dobro hurl a boxer in the air like a toy so I asked the lads to control their dogs. They poured abuse over me. “Fuck off you fucking cunt you old bastard. Dye your hair you dirty old fucker.” The one on the camp bed said he’d got a knife and he’d stab me. I lost my temper and threatened their tackle – fishing tackle that is. The first thing to hand was a rod rest which I pulled round the youth’s neck. He went very white. “Where’s your knife now?” I shouted, furious. “Where’s his knife?” I asked the rest of them. It was a rhetorical question. He got paler. I cooled down. “Make sure your knife’s closer next time and watch who you threaten.” Something had annoyed me about his ill-prepared and foolhardy threat. I let him go and I realised that throughout this I still had Dobro on the lead.

  Good job for them and their dogs.

  But as I walked away they still did the name calling. I’ve thought a lot about this nasty incident and come to the conclusion that I don’t blame them. I don’t blame this generation for wanting to knife or gun down the generation of people who have, or have had, what they don’t have. It’s war; they’ve got nothing and no prospects and no power. You’ve got a nice house – let’s trash it. You’ve got a nice car – let’s trash it. You want us to behave in a certain way that you think is right for you – fuck off! I’ll stick a knife into you. And they would. They would risk being incarcerated to do it. This senseless, almost random violence, triggered by the tiniest amount of resistance to their behaviour is in the media all the time.

  The paradox is, these kids with impoverished outlooks live in a society of excess; even the poorest people never go hungry. My camper-van was splattered with eggs the other day. Kids had obviously stolen eggs from Sainsbury’s and then they did this mindless thing. They live in a society in which eggs aren’t food because they never experience hunger. This is one of the reasons Zoe likes to go to Tanzania; she feels the values are more real and more sane and to an extent I agree with her. It’s terrible to come across these young people who have no values. The revolution in the Sixties tore everything down and didn’t replace it with anything.

  But I wasn’t being stupid in tackling the towpath kids although I was outnumbered. They were spaced out along the canal bank. I knew that if things got any uglier I could take one at a time and I might not have needed to set more than two waterborne examples. Dobro would have joined in if I had been in any danger. I only spoke to them because I was genuinely concerned about the welfare of their dogs. Dobro is a massive dog and there is some Rotweiler in him. He has claws that come right out like a cat. But they were too busy reacting violently to realize this, or to know that although I am older now I can still handle myself the way I was trained to do. The skill is still there; the instinct is still there; the adrenalin does the rest.

  This isn’t the only time I’ve been threatened with a knife. Within the past three years someone came into the shop and threatened me. Fred was here to witness it. The bloke in question had phoned me about selling me an amp and I had agreed, though no arrangements were made. Then one day he just appeared out of the blue with the amp and expected me to pay him. There were two problems: I don’t have a lot of cash lying around so I need advance warning. The other thing was that he didn’t bring the flight case for the amp. This was important; it was a beautifully made mahogany cabinet, purpose-built by a master carpenter and worth £200. So: no deal. The bloke was furious and that was when he threatened me with a knife. I phoned the police at this point and he went. This would be at eleven in the morning.

  A bit later I had a phone call: “I believe I’m lucky to be alive?” It was my apologetic assailant. He’d been talking to John Darlington.

  A police constable arrived at five. Too late mate.

  The Hands Dealt By Fate

  There’s one thing over which I am powerless. The situation wasn’t caused by a big bad policeman or over-indulgence or risk-taking or the foolishness of others or neglect or accident. I have a problem with my hands – a genetic legacy over which I have no control – which recently became a crisis because of complications. All the survival skills I had developed, all the lucky breaks I might have, all the cursing in the world could not help me in this particular instance. All I could hope for was that fate would decree a skilled surgeon who could do as good a job on my right hand as had been done on my left hand in 2000.

  Losing the use of the hands is something to be feared by anyone but for a guitarist it has an added misery. Do you know the origin of the word “basket case”? It referred to the men with terrible injuries who were carried limbless, in baskets, from the battlefield in World War I. It was easier and safer to remove a whole limb than to try to keep a wound clean. It’s amazing what human beings do to overcome disability, though. I remember Harry, a war veteran who had lost the ends of all his fingers to frostbite. He survived Paschendaele and the Somme and when he returned, his mind was affected by shell shock and he was deaf.

  Childlike and gentle and large, with huge ears, Harry was looked after by a couple who had lost their son in the war. He played the piano with his enormous hands – hands like Fats Waller – but because of his shortened fingers only used the black notes. In spite of being deaf and disabled he could play anything at all, including all the hymns at the Salvation Army Citadel.

  I found myself thinking about Harry when my first hand – my left hand – was becoming disabled. It’s an amazing thought that you can find yourself experiencing events whose causes go back centuries. Dupuytren’s Contractures: a condition inherited from the Vikings, causes the tendons in the hand to contract, owing to the presence of scar tissue. Hard pads of flesh develop and pain arises in the elbow. Like Harry, I gradually adapted my playing, instinctively changing the position of my fingers to get the notes. Imagine the frustration of a thousand trivial acts such as the permanent cupping of the palm, making it impossible to rub shampoo into my hair without it all spilling. Untreated, the condition can only get progressively worse, not only preventing you doing ordinary things but also inhibiting and preventing a skilled musician performing the one thing he needs and loves to do. It is ironic that artists, musicians and athletes often lose the faculty essential to their art. Beethoven became deaf, for example, and Monet had problems with his eyesight.

  My left hand had suffered contractures in each digit, creating a clawlike condition. I had customised slides made in order to accommodate my bent little finger and managed to play guitar for years with this increasingly difficult complaint, before seeking medical help. But things reached crisis point. I felt dreadful about the prospect of being unable to play any more and went through a period of pining, when I lost weight and became very depressed. I was even able to contemplate the loss of some fingers so long as I could carry on with my music. Des insisted I did something. So I saw a consultant who greeted me as, “Mr Johnson, the world-famous guitarist”. The first operation, which took place between my third and fourth visit to Georgia, involved the stripping of the tendons of the scar tissue. It was a success and determination to play replaced the need for physiotherapy. I initially used a glass as a slide. My spirits rose enough to eliminate the anti-depressants although I knew that the condition wasn’t cured and could recur.

  I took comfort from examples of musicians who play i
n spite of handicaps. In 1928 Django Reinhardt’s left hand and right side were badly burned in an accident. He created a new fingering system around the two fingers on his left hand that had full mobility. (3) Tony Iommi of Black Sabbath had an accident at the sheet metal factory where he worked, which left him without the tips of two of his fingers. (4) Jerry Garcia had a hand accident aged four when two thirds of his right middle finger was accidentally amputated by his brother splitting kindling. (5) My namesake, Pete Johnson was an excellent boogie-woogie pianist who lost part of his finger changing a car tyre. (6) Some musicians I know have had serious hand operations and they’re back out there, myself included. I heard this amazing story on the radio about a German aristocrat who was a classical concert pianist who had lost an arm in the First World War. He practised playing one-handed for about eight years and symphonies were written specially for him. Listening to these, you can’t tell that he has only one arm. I admired this dedication.

  Although these were good role models I couldn’t help feeling flat and apprehensive when my second hand became bad. The condition manifested differently in the right hand which was afflicted mainly in the little finger: the contracture had not gone to the second joint but I was worried. I had no way of knowing if things had gone too far. Would my second hand heal as quickly as the first? The operation was scheduled for twelve noon on 7th June 2008 and I had a gig on 8th July. Things were tight.

  Unlike the first operation I was left in a lot of pain; it felt as if the middle part of my hand had been gouged out. But every cloud has a silver lining: whatever drugs they administered gave me a night-long hard-on. I met all my previous partners in a long libidinous dream. More please! I was soon back in the shop – I needed to do things. What I did manage to do was set fire to my bandage trying to light a cigarette! But there was a feeling that an obstacle had been removed; the sense of waiting had gone.

  After two weeks my hand was still very painful – the removal of the stitches had been agonizing. I had an infection and an inadequate dressing; the consultant I saw last time hadn’t seen me, and the surgeon was dismissive and uncommunicative. This was a serious situation for a musician. The slow recovery, the poor and often contradictory aftercare, the realization that this was a botched job made me angry and frustrated. On top of that, Zoe was putting pressure on me to socialize!

  I did play guitar but it was intensely painful and the scar rose after half an hour of playing. The flesh on the palm of my right hand looked grey and dead. It took ages to improve and it never did to the extent of my first hand. My debilitation as a musician had repercussions when I did some recording and it left me bored and depressed and restless and powerless and ashamed. I was on the mend but this wasn’t enough. I was desperate for change and gripped by loneliness – a combination of grief for the past days of activity and the acknowledgement of an incurable condition: old age and death. I remembered the party pace of life but heard only its ghostly echoes. Everything was off-key and all my misery was focused on my hands.

  By August 2008 my hand was breaking out in blisters at the slightest activity. I presumed it was associated with the operation but on visiting the doctor I found this was coincidental. I had a rare condition called Porphyria – something mad King George suffered from, though mine is not the same strain. There are various contraindications: alcohol, cigarettes, sunlight, herbal remedies, stress, trauma – all these can affect the condition. No-one seemed to know much about it but my own gut feeling was that it did have something to do with the trauma of the operation on my right hand, which triggered the genetic predisposition. I didn’t think there was much to be done. Whilst waiting to hear about the biopsy I lay off the drink a bit and that made me short-tempered, especially when people came up with their own diagnosis and prescriptions. At the end of the day I couldn’t really see myself giving up drinking. As part of the fabric of my life – part of the ambience of my musical performances – giving it up would need a radical change in lifestyle. It was all very depressing

  In the end, the feared liver damage was not there. So I went to the pub.

  In the past I had always used my willpower to survive difficult physical situations and avoided hospitals at all costs. It’s related to the visits to see my sick mother when I was very young.

  I once fell downstairs having got up early one morning for a pee. I went cartwheeling down and felt every step – slicing my arm open on a nail in the wall and breaking five ribs. I wasn’t even drunk. There was blood everywhere and I knew it was serious. Dobro was just whimpering by me and Zoe had to lock him away because he would have been distressed by the sight of me on a stretcher.

  After five days I got up to go to the toilet. I was still in agony, my underpants were stuck to me with dried blood and I hadn’t had a crap the whole time. There was a hole in my back – room for a tennis ball – where my ribs were stoved in. The doctor told me that I would always have that. I discharged myself as soon as I could hold a pen, then I went up to Peckforton and subjected myself to a trial of endurance: I did some vigorous climbing. I knew if I expanded my rib cage to the maximum something had to give. It gave. It was excruciating. Then I went back to work.

  The medics were amazed that the hole had disappeared.

  Now I had two weird chronic conditions and medical science had no cures for either of them. But there was to be no radical self-help, no Peckforton moment for my hands: only the anticipation of further operations and less music and also dealing with a crazy condition no-one knew anything about.

  Less music. Was I finally going to lose my balance? And what would become of my ‘girls’?

  My Girls

  Decisions

  My incapacity together with the contraction in business and musical opportunities, forced some decision-making on me.

  Loving the freedom of living close to the skies and the seasons, I seriously thought about selling up and making a living giving music workshops and doing gigs whilst travelling about on my boat, as Eugene did. I used to give music seminars in colleges and community centres and I’ve also taught people how to play and – more importantly – how to perform. As an interpreter and arranger of music my reputation also stands up so there is no question about my qualifications. But there are contraindications: I wouldn’t be interested in teaching anything other than the country blues. Also, I know every pub, every venue in the locale and most would be unsuitable in one way or another. Where are the people who would be interested in this minority music and who would be prepared to pay in the current climate?

  But the economics was less important than an emotional involvement I couldn’t relinquish. Suppose I sold my shop and made a living as an itinerant musician: what would become of my precious guitars – each vibrating with memories stretching back beyond my birth? Leaving space and security to one side, the extremes of temperature and humidity on a boat would damage them and I couldn’t bear that. This had nothing to do with their considerable market value – I just wouldn’t want these lovely instruments to deteriorate. So they’d have to be sold. Then the only guitar suitable for a canal boat would be one made of plywood or a National and this would confine my choice, preventing me from suiting guitar to mood.

  Losing my ‘girls’ was too big a loss to contemplate.

  So I compromised by selling the upstairs flat just at the optimum moment, keeping the downstairs shop and the business – at least it’s ticking over. This accommodated my guitars and released enough capital to buy a new, larger boat and pay a few bills. My solution reflected a workable compromise brought about by a combination of love and economic hard-headedness. This is how I’ve lived my life.

  I am an acknowledged expert when it comes to sourcing information about musical instruments and musical equipment; my information is good because it comes from the heart, not the catalogue. During the thirty-six years I have owned this business I have come across many interesting instruments some of which I own. Any decisions about lifestyle changes had to consider the fate of my
collection and my emotional attitude to it.

  The composition of my personal collection has changed periodically because I don’t hang on to things for the sake of it and recently the problems with my hands had raised another issue. If a guitar isn’t being played I sell it. Every one of the guitars in my collection has its own beauty, its own character and its own story. They have often been photographed and I have a guitar for every conceivable occasion.

  I would like to introduce them whilst they’re still around.

  Elvis And The Gibson Blues King

  Each guitar speaks differently and if I had to choose only one it would be this guitar. My 1936 Gibson Blues King 169 is unassuming, nicely proportioned and shows a bit of wear. It’s a perfect blues guitar and can do nothing wrong as far as I’m concerned.

  I paid £180 – the going rate – to a bloke from Caernarvon who brought in a load of unusual stuff. This is the guitar I’ve had for the longest time: thirty-five years is far longer than most marriages and I know it intimately. For it to sound its best I have to play it for a couple of hours. Foreplay. I’ve thought about the physics of this and come to the conclusion that it’s something to do with the molecules of the vibrating surface.

  I’m so attached to this guitar that I’ve even worried about it wearing out. I worried to the extent of trading in a £600 Orange Marshall for another, more recent Gibson Blues King. But this 174 wasn’t as good as the 169 so I got rid of it to Pete Hughes for £1,500 when I realised the 169 would outlast me!

  I have a photograph showing two Blues Kings: the 169 one I still own and the Century of Progress guitar which was actually made to commemorate a trade fair in Chicago in 1936. The latter was purchased by Elvis Costello via a shop in London called Andy’s which used to sell guitars on commission.