Boogie Man

  John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, appointed by the Arden office as Hooker’s backing group, were no big deal in the summer of ’64. To be precise, they were a hardworking club band then some ten months away from becoming a big deal; a leap in status directly attributable to Mayall’s recruitment the following April of Eric Clapton, on the rebound from the increasingly pop-friendly Yard birds.82 ‘John Mayall backed me up when I was over there,’ remembers Hooker, though he is characteristically vague about whether Clapton was on the team at that particular time. ‘John Mayall backed me up a long time . . . they were my band. Quite a few people backed me. Clapton was with ’em at one time then . . . he didn’t remember, but then he remembered that he was with ’em briefly when I was with ’em. John Mayall livin’ in Malibu now. I bump into him once in a while and we have conversations ’bout the old days, you know.’

  By the time Arden booked him for the Hooker tour, Mayall had a major-label album release under his belt, but it had only sold a minuscule 500 copies. While he had already assembled his first great rhythm section (drummer Hughie Flint and bassist John McVie, subsequently the Flint of McGuiness Flint and the Mac of Fleetwood Mac), his group was still not quite ready for prime time. Roger Dean, Clapton’s immediate predecessor as the Bluesbreakers’ lead guitarist, was a competent but grievously miscast player, more comfortable with country-and-western than blues. This was unfortunate, since the Mayall blues aesthetic was purist in the white-Chicagoan mould, prioritizing ‘authenticity’ at all costs and regarding almost all pop with disdain: his masterplan for the Bluesbreakers would only be realized once Dean was replaced by Clapton. Nevertheless, with audience expectations whetted by Hooker’s appearance on Ready Steady Go!, the first gig of the tour was deemed a roaring success. According to Melody Maker’s jazz and blues guru Max Jones:

  After a long damp wait in the tropical heat of a packed Flamingo, Mississippi blues man John Lee Hooker made his London debut on Monday. From where I was jammed it was impossible to see even the top of his head. But what I heard confirmed that Hooker can create the right kind of lowdown blues atmosphere within twenty seconds of hitting his first note. His opening shout ‘Are you ready?’ needed no answer, but got one. Then into the blues – unquestionably the real potent article with his urgent conversational vocal style over his pulsating guitar counterpoint and the throbbing rhythm of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.

  ‘That was wonderful,’ says Valerie Wilmer, ‘because the Flamingo was the place and you had a black-ish audience, plenty of West Indians. It was just this amazing place because it had these reed walls and it had the feeling of being the hippest place in town; sweat running down the walls and this low ceiling over the bandstand which gave you a sort of compressed feeling. I can see Hooker now, standing there and singing. He had a sharkskin suit, silvery sharkskin . . . it just felt very authentic and funky and it was something you didn’t often come across.’

  Others were rather less enthusiastic than Jones and Wilmer. Writing in the mimeographed fanzine Blues Unlimited, John J. Broven grumpily pleaded the purist case:

  In the broiling atmosphere of this one-time modern jazz centre, we had a full two hours of synthetic rubbish from the Cheynes83 and John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. It was then learned that Mayall would back Hooker, and despite protests to John Lee before the show, it was to be. Hooker appeared, and with Mayall’s organ and harmonica (yes! He plays both at once!) striving for the limelight, he was content to strum his way through meaningless things like ‘Dimples’, ‘Boom Boom’, ‘Hi Heel Sneakers’ and others. In his whole act he only did two slow blues and of these, only ‘I’m In The Mood’ came off to any degree. But most disappointing was that his guitar work was kept to a minimum . . . what went wrong? Why was one of the greatest living bluesmen transformed into an unexceptional R&B artist? Obviously a lot of blame must go to whoever teamed Hooker with Mayall. If he must have a group, OK, but not an organ! Also John appeared to be under the misconception that he was playing to a ‘pop’ audience . . . blues enthusiasts were definitely to the fore at the Flamingo . . . wasn’t this the perfect opportunity to educate the uninitiated? My opinion of Hooker has not fallen . . . He has shown, in odd flashes, what a great bluesman he is. It’s just that this tour, for a blues lover, has been so badly presented, if financially a great success.

  No less eminent a figure than Pete Townshend lined up alongside Broven in the Disappointed Men league. ‘I saw John Lee Hooker in London only once in the ’60s. It was disappointing. He played with musicians who treated him as if he was another Chuck Berry or Bo Diddley and not – as is the real case – the true “boss” of ’60s electric R&B. His band of British enthusiastic R&B pickup musicians84 seemed to feel nothing of his incredible subtlety and elegance. He seemed to serve himself poorly too: we were there to see a great soloist. He was there to make some cash and pull some birds, and he probably succeeded on both counts. He wore a red check suit, and although I felt I was in the presence of a legend, I went straight home and put on some [of Hooker’s] solo records to remind myself of the sheer genius of the man.’

  And Townshend was, no less now than then, firmly convinced of Hooker’s genius. ‘John Lee Hooker stands firmly on one side of a line which, once established, allowed all post-’50s pop to be redefined. Without him there would be no “power chord”. It is time to give the credit for that little invention to the man who really created it, John Lee Hooker. Take it from me. I know.’

  ‘We were the first band to play with John Lee,’ Mayall recalled in 1991. ‘That whole thing was something of an experiment. I remember we played the Flamingo, and of course they were more used to things like Georgie Fame all-nighters, so it was a big surprise when people from all over the country turned up and there was a big queue down Wardour Street. Then we toured around the rest of the country . . . and that really paved the way for having British bands play with a lot of other blues artists.’

  Like many of his fellow Brit blues-boomers, Mayall had completed a rigorous home-study course in the blues, aided immeasurably by access to his father’s extensive library of jazz and boogie-woogie 78s, but touring with Hooker – ‘the first real blues guitarist we backed up’ – was his chance to obtain that elusive Blues University degree. ‘It was a very humbling experience,’ he told Gregory Isola, ‘because we all thought we were shit-hot players and knew what it was all about. Then you get Hooker on-stage and what you know flies out the window. You feel like rank amateurs. But we picked up a lot. I learned about dynamics from playing with John Lee – the power of not forcing things. You have to be relaxed. John Lee would just sit down in a chair and a deathly hush would come over the whole audience. Such presence . . .’

  Mayall backed Hooker again in 1966. Peter Green, freshly recruited as Eric Clapton’s replacement, has his own memories of that particular occasion. ‘I met him when I first joined John Mayall. It was in the very early days, and we had to back him at the Ram Jam Club in Brixton. I was very unsatisfied. I couldn’t figure anything out. I tried to back him but I was too loud and I couldn’t seem to get the whole thing down so I could play ever so quietly and let him go along. I was barely touching the guitar, afraid to do anything because he don’t need nobody. Afraid to do anything before he gets used to you and accepts that you’re there. I don’t think what I did was very good. He was all right, I guess. He’s pretty steadfast, for want of a better word, and does his thing. Whatever you’re doing, he don’t need you particularly. Very delicate, very difficult. It was far too “experienced” an experience. I couldn’t guarantee it would be any different now. What can you play? He doesn’t need anyone, does he? Most of his records are him on his own, aren’t they?’

  Broven was right about one thing: despite Mayall’s indubitable enthusiasm and eagerness to please, the Hooker/Blues breakers combination had failed to gel. Part of the problem was Roger Dean: reliable and musicianly though he was, he not only wasn’t much of a bluesman, he wasn’t much of an improviser either. ‘Keeping up with the w
ay John Lee played wasn’t much of a problem for me, as I was well used to listening to that kind of player,’ Mayall says, ‘but for people who were more used to reading music, for instance, it was more of a problem. I think that Roger Dean was confused for a while. We had to tell him, “Just keep on your toes, and listen to his voice.” We found [Hooker] great to work with; I’d read that he was blunt and not very communicative, but that wasn’t the case at all.’

  One Hooker fan in particular found the recruitment of the Blues-breakers especially disappointing. Guitarist Tony McPhee was a charter member of an informal clique of blues fans based in Streatham,85 south London; not only were his group, the Groundhogs, named after Hooker’s ‘Groundhog Blues’, but their singer/harpist John Cruikshank actually called himself ‘John Lee’. As soon as the band’s manager, Roy Fisher, had spotted the tour announcement in Melody Maker, he’d grabbed the phone, called the Arden agency, and offered them ‘John Lee’s Groundhogs’ as Hooker’s accompanists, only to be told that Mayall’s group already had the job. Fisher, McPhee and the Groundhogs duly showed up at the Flamingo for Hooker’s opening night, and came away feeling somewhat aggrieved. ‘They brought Hooker over and put him with John Mayall’s band,’ McPhee griped to Bob Brunning. ‘I went to see him and I thought, “this just ain’t Hooker, not with keyboards behind. It just ain’t working.”’

  However, John Lee’s Groundhogs – drummer Dave Boorman and bassist Pete Cruikshank completed the quartet – eventually got their chance to work with Hooker. For reasons now obscured by the mists of time, Mayall & Co. were unable to complete the full duration of the tour, and a stand-in ensemble were urgently required. The Arden agency, according to Roy Fisher, ‘were looking for the cheapest band that would do it, and the Groundhogs were cheap at that particular time’. Fisher had a meeting with Hooker at Arden’s offices, a deal was cut, and Hooker and the ’Hogs arranged to meet up in Manchester on the afternoon preceding their first gig together. The band arrived at that night’s venue, the Twisted Wheel club, in their beat-up van; Hooker in a car chauffeured by Arden employee Patrick Meehan. For all concerned, it turned out to be a serendipitous encounter: the South London boys and the Delta veteran clicked, big time. ‘He met the band, liked them, got to talking,’ Fisher recalls. ‘The rehearsal was thirty minutes on the afternoon of the first gig, a soundcheck-cum-rehearsal. Even John said that McPhee knew some of his old blues songs better than John remembered them, so therefore it wasn’t a problem and it just went from there. Because he liked the guys and respected the way they played, he decided the very next day that he didn’t want to tour with the chauffeur any more: he wanted to tour with the band.’

  It should come as no surprise that Hooker preferred to squeeze into a rundown van already crammed with musicians and amps, rather than travel in the solitary chauffeur-driven grandeur to which his star status entitled him. He was in a foreign country (albeit one from which he was – in the words of Winston Churchill – ‘divided by a common language’), and he didn’t know a soul. He was travelling alone, with no hometown buddy like Eddie Burns, Eddie Kirkland or Tom Whitehead to provide musical, emotional and practical support, and thus he needed companionship. The Groundhogs were not only a nice bunch of kids who idolised and adored him, but a hard-working team led by a guitarist who knew his music – certain areas of it, anyway – back to front. ‘The Groundhogs were able to follow his changes because they were that much familiar with his records,’ continues Roy Fisher. ‘He was surprised, and actually commented that they knew his music better than he did. He had forgotten a lot of the early stuff, but those were the things that people wanted to hear, so he had to relearn them, but it was like the group were teaching him how they went.’

  Even Blues Unlimited was prepared to grant its approval to the Hooker/’Hogs team. After the ‘aural torture’ of a set by Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames, wrote Graham Ackers of a show at the Savoy Ballroom in Cleveleys, near the northern seaside resort of Blackpool:

  Hooker came on to a very enthusiastic reception . . . he rolled straight into ‘Shake It Baby’ with great power – perhaps a little too much – as a string broke after two verses! Anyway, true to the maxim of all good showmen, he finished the number to great applause. The next number he played with a Groundhog’s Fender – a somewhat unusual sight. The Groundhog repaired his Gibson86 and finished the number with it. Many followed including ‘Night Time Is The Right Time’, ‘Boom Boom’, ‘Hi Heel Sneakers’, ‘Dimples’ (twice) and a blue version of ‘Tupelo’. This last was heavily requested and he was backed only by bass guitar, which heightened the effect. Every number was received with enthusiasm to such a degree that five encores were performed in all. A special mention for the Groundhogs who throughout played admirably. All in direct contrast to the ‘let’s see who can play loudest’ approach of John Mayall and crew. In fact everything was just right – atmosphere, backing, amplification and temperature (compared to Tropical Flamingo conditions) and everybody, including Hooker and the ’Hogs, had a ball.

  ‘We went on from there,’ recalls Fisher, ‘touring around in a battered old Transit van, which had definitely seen better days, with the band, me, John and all the equipment, but he preferred that to being chauffeured around. He wanted to be with the band, so that’s how we toured. This was fine other than the fact that it was a fairly warm time of year, and John suffered with a cold, so there he’d be up in the front seat with his coat, scarf and hat, a blanket over his knees, the heater on, and still complaining about the cold. We’d all be there in T-shirts saying, ‘Oh my God’ with sweat pouring off us, and every now and again, when we thought he was dozing off and having a little nap, we’d sneak the window down a little bit and he’d wake up and say, “Who cracked the glass?” We’d say, “Oh, sorry, John”, and wind it back up. But it was good that he was travelling with us. The other thing about touring like this would be that also, of course, he decided that he would stay in the same places as the band. Now, bearing in mind that the amount the band were getting for the tour was a pittance – the exact amount I don’t remember – we were staying at the most grotty boarding-houses, not hotels. Of course John was staying there as well, so we’d arrive there and usually I’d check out the place before hand, so by the time John saw the place, it was one o’clock, two o’ clock in the morning [before] we’d go back there. It would be freezing cold, of course. His room would have this little gas heater which we had to put on for him, and he would huddle over it. Then in the morning we’d go down to breakfast and this Northern landlady would bustle around saying, ‘How’d you want your eggs?’ or ‘How’d you like your room?’ John would go on to complain . . . in a very polite way, but nevertheless complaining, that the room was cold, there was no phone in the room and so on and so forth, because he expected, from the hotels that he’d stayed at on the blues [festival] tour that he’d been on, that he’d have the same situation; not realising that we were paying the cheapest rate. Lippman and Rau did it well, but unfortunately, the group couldn’t afford these places on the pay they were getting, and he wanted to tour with the band. I suggested at the time that maybe we should check him into a better hotel and the band should stay where they were, but he didn’t want to do that.’

  Nevertheless, Hooker hated the food. ‘In a lot of places, breakfast would be the typical English fry-up: fried egg done not the way you’d want to eat eggs anyway, and bacon that didn’t look like American bacon. It was absolutely always a problem. You’d go into a restaurant, and all he’d ever want to eat would be a burger, and they didn’t have those here then. They had sandwiches or whatever.’

  Even in the comparatively sophisticated capital, not everything was to Hooker’s liking. ‘In London I got up in the morning, and in America you get TV all day. I turned my TV on and there was nothin’! I said, “This TV is broken! I can’t get nothin’!” and I called down stairs. They said, “Oh, you don’t get nothin’ ’til about twelve o’clock, and then you get the BBC, Mr Hooker.” I said, “Is tha
t all?” Then you be sittin’ there watchin’ TV, and at a certain time of night it go off early too! And I wouldn’t be sleepy! Click! Right off and you couldn’t get nothin’! And warm beer that make you drunk quick. The pub close up, open up . . . warm beer, the water was warm, the Coke was warm. Warm beer but strong. You drink two pitchers of it and you loaded.’

  So there was Hooker, plopped down right smack in the midst of Swinging London. Make that ‘relatively swinging London’: many of the goodies and facilities routinely demanded by Americans – even African-Americans excluded from vast tracts of mainstream American life – were considered luxuries in a Britain still in the process of exorcising the spectre of postwar austerities; a Britain deeply ambivalent both about the loss of its old empire and its fear of becoming part of somebody else’s. Hamburgers were difficult to find, and good hamburgers impossible. Restricted pub hours, weird food, part-time television with only two channels, a labyrinthine class system and a set of bewilderingly inconsistent social and cultural codes rendered Britain as ‘foreign’ a country to visiting bluesmen as anywhere else in Europe.