As far as the Malian singer/guitarist Ali Farka Toure, at least, is concerned, the African-ness, the negritude, of Hooker’s music is so apparent as to be barely worth discussing, as is Hooker’s wariness of its discussion. ‘It’s a complex,’ Toure shrugs. ‘When I met him in Paris . . . I invited him to come to Mali to see the source of what he does. I’m not running away; I’m in complete agreement that John Lee Hooker was the first. I’m very proud of what I do, but up ’til now I still have a lot to learn. I only know a little bit, but if we are together we are going to discover. He will show me the truth. I invited him to Mali, to come and see his source, which would be good for him. I don’t want him to die before he comes to Timbuktu. If he comes, he will find his history and his strength. I told him he must come to Africa. He laughed and waved it off, but then I got quite insistent that it’s necessary that he goes, that he has to go . . . and then he really started listening. If he went there he would never regret it. I also told him how well-known he is in my village, which really quite surprised him. I told him, “We all listen to your music”.
‘I thought he was Malian because of what I heard. It was 100 per cent our music. Musically, it’s African, but the words are in American. When you take music such as John Lee Hooker does, you’re going to find what we have at home; the greenery, the savannah where you have water. It’s poetic, truly poetic, very poetic. All that was missing was for him to speak our language to complete the truth. Everything he does, without exception . . . he can give you the A to Z original resource of the roots of this music.’
From such music comes trance. From trance comes ecstasy, and – in the shamanic world – from ecstasy comes healing. In the record which marked his return to the centre of the blues stage, and to an honoured place in the popular culture of the world, Hooker asserted this truth about as clearly as it is possible to assert anything. ‘Blues is the healer’, he sang over Carlos Santana’s hypnotic music, and with that lyric he redefined not only himself and his career, but the hidden history and purpose of the art form to which he had dedicated his life. Blues is the healer indeed, but Hooker himself is The Healer: with capital letters. That extraordinary cover photo – Hooker’s looming figure in silhouette, hands raised and spread – simply sets the visual seal on his assumption of that iconic, shamanic role.
The blues healed me, it can heal you: Hooker acknowledges his own wounds, and his own pain. No-one can heal who has not himself been wounded. The Healer is the one who can come with you into your Dark Room. And even if he cannot lead you out, even if his message is that you yourself are the only one who can bring you forth into the light, he can nevertheless be there with you, telling you that the sun will rise again, comforting and strengthening you with his presence until the coming of that new dawn.
That’s what I been doin’. That’s what the Healer do. I take your pain, and I put it on my shoulders, and I carry it along.
John Lee Hooker, interview with the author, 1994
13
INTO THE MYTHIC
A lot of the younger generation didn’t know about John Lee Hooker, and they got to know about John Lee Hooker.
John Lee Hooker, interview with the author, 1989
An iced-up New York City Wednesday night in December 1989. On 74th & Broadway, every breath you take freezes your lungs from the inside out with Gotham fog, but inside the Beacon Theatre, Van Morrison has just spent the best part of an hour and a half inducing a fair facsimile of total audience meltdown. Backed by ’60s Britsoul vets Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames with Fame himself behind the Hammond organ – plus a pulse-stopping cameo from Mose Allison, the Mississippi-born senior-hipster pianist/vocalist/composer who was and remains Fame’s prime vocal model – the stumpy Celtic spellbinder entrances and galvanises the theatre’s 2,400 denizens with an extended R&B meditation, waves of tension contracting and relaxing with a profoundly feral, viscerally erotic intensity.
Somewhere around the second encore, he begins to pluck at the maple-necked black Fender Telecaster hanging from his rounded shoulders, grabbing fistfuls of bass runs, scrabbling for clusters of razor-sharp trebles. ‘Sometimes I get to thinkin,’’ he muses, ‘about Jo-o-o-o-o-ohhhhhhnn Lee Hooker.’
The band settles into a rock-steady boogie groove as Morrison launches into Hooker’s ‘Dimples’ – but the audience isn’t watching any more. Their eyes are fixed at stage right where, amidst a sudden flurry of roadie activity, John Lee Hooker himself ambles into the spotlight in his preacher’s hat, arms raised and fingers spread in benediction, light glinting off his bad sunglasses and the diamond motifs on his jacket: the star on his left lapel and the dollar sign on his right.
It is an almost supernatural moment: as if Morrison had, by dint of sheer sorcerous imagination and will, conjured Hooker into existence, materializing him from ectoplasm,139 summoning his spirit from blues valhalla. At that instant, Hooker seemed as if he had walked straight off the cover of The Healer, out of the mists of legend into fleshly reality. In fact, he’d done almost the exact reverse: he had become legend, for ever left behind the ranks of the half-forgotten bluesmen of the electric-downhome ’50s and the blues-boom ’60s to assume titanic, iconic stature, like King Arthur emerging from beneath Glastonbury Tor into the harsh light of the dying twentieth century. Not only to fully inhabit his own myth, but to shoulder the entire mythic weight of the blues.
Someone hands Hooker his trusty Gibson 335, and he and Morrison go head-to-head at stage centre, song structures and bar lines melting in their collectively-generated heat. As ever, Hooker operates in his own time, to the pulse of his own inner clock, refusing to let go of a line or a phrase until he has wrung from it every conceivable emotional nuance. And Morrison – one of Hooker’s very few peers in the pantheon of improvising vocalists, alongside Burning Spear and Diamanda Galas – shadows his every step: Belfast echoes Clarksdale as the Fender echoes the Gibson. Hooker and Morrison have their heads together, guitars rumbling and sparking, and they are practically speaking – singing – in tongues, messages from an inner blue space, and then suddenly it’s over, and he removes his guitar, waves at the audience, and stumps back into the shadows. Even the yuppies are going majorly hogwild: a pink and blue paisley tie – Bill Blass, pure silk – drifts down from the balcony on high and settles lazily into the lap of an acquaintance of Hooker’s seated in the stalls.
That’s transcendence. And this is show business.
A few hours before and a few blocks downtown, a studio audience sits in tiered seats listening to a warmup man hosing them down in preparation for the taping of yet another edition – the 1232nd, as it happens – of Late Night With David Letterman.
Even more so now than he was then, David Letterman is an utterly familiar part of America’s cultural furniture; the man who delivered postmodern irony and detachment – yeah, sure, whatever – to the hix-from-the-stix via the mundane magic of television. To a British observer, though, he was simply a toothy preppie from Indiana with an unnerving resemblance to the young Teddy Kennedy, whose basic schtick was the shared assumption that he’s much too smart to be running a late-nite chat show and that we-the-viewers are much too smart to be watching one, so let’s have some fun, gang. The show’s house band, led by keyboard guy Paul Shaffer, has historically been staffed by A-team En-Why studio heavies: on this particular night the band includes drummer Anton Fig, guitarist Sid McGinniss and bassist Will Lee, the latter a Major Party Animal in cowboy hat and buckskins who racks up his high score on the Wild-And-Crazy-O-Meter by tapdancing on Letterman’s desk during the warm-up number.
And it’s horrible. This band are horrible in the particular manner in which only highly gifted, expert and experienced musicians can be horrible. Imagine a Holiday Inn lounge band in the late ’60s who get terminally pissed off with their gig one night, drop some acid and decide that tonight of all nights they will play their own music the way they rilly feel it. So they arrive at the job and open with an instrumental version of Steppenwolf’s
‘Magic Carpet Rid’. It’s horrible. And these guys are going to back John Lee Hooker? Oh, puh-leeeeze!
The show winds its inconsequential way through an urbane gagfest. Actor and comic Harry Shearer – best-known as the alter ego of Spinal Tap ’s Derek Smalls – holds the congregation enthralled with his account of an argument with an inept TWA ticket deskperson, but the first true highlight of the proceedings arrives off-air during a commercial break, as Letterman tapes a quick promo sting for the night’s broadcast. ‘For comfort you can afford,’ he deadpans, ‘watch Late Night!’ Without missing a beat, someone in a top audience tier shouts, ‘Take Two!’ There’s nothing quite like a New York audience.
Behind the row of seats signposted as being reserved for guests of John Lee Hooker, a bespectacled nerd catches the attention of one of the occupiers. ‘Is that the guy who sings on Pete Townshend’s album?’ he inquires eagerly. Yep . ‘Is he going to sing “Iron Man”?’ Nope. ‘Ahhhh, shit!’ No doubt about it, John Lee certainly has a whole new following these days.
Eventually, Letterman announces ‘one of the world’s greatest blues singers’, and Hooker himself, guitar at the ready, impassive in hat and shades, ambles out with the funky-hobbit figure of Roy Rogers at his side. The band launches into ‘Think Twice Before You Go’, a track from The Healer which had featured Los Lobos backing him up in the studio, but the opening bars are almost obliterated by an eardrum-shredding SKKRRREEEETCHH of unwanted feedback. The self-styled ‘World’s Most Dangerous Band’ lumber through the song in a welter of missed beats and dropped cues, and the warm-up man milks applause even before the song’s trick ending has been delivered.
Finally, Hooker extricates himself from his guitar and slumps into the guest chair for a quick burst of badinage. Such is his degree of composure that for one surreal moment it seems as if he is the host and Letterman the guest. They discuss the then-recent San Francisco earthquake and Hooker allows that it weren’t no big deal: when the quake hit he thought his pet cat had just jumped onto his bed. Must be a big cat, says Letterman; yep, says John Lee. Then Letterman asks Hooker to explain the motifs he wears on his lapels. Why the star? ‘Because I’m the star,’ Hooker tells him. And why the dollar sign?
‘Because,’ John Lee replies, ‘I plays for money.’
Then Letterman calls another commercial break. Stagehands swarm like ants re-dressing the set for the next guest, a heavily designed woman plugging a cookbook. Throughout this frantic buzz of activity, Hooker remains curled up in his chair until someone is sent over to tell him that his segment of the show is complete. It has all been a rush and a mess, two things Hooker simply cannot abide: he may be seriously laid back, but in the end he always gets to where he’s going. ‘When you push people, you make people nervous,’ he states firmly, ‘and you won’t get as good stuff as you would if you just let it flow. You can’t be pushing me and gettin’ down my throat, ’cause I’m gonna get all nervous then and may get pissed off.’ On this occasion, backstage, it had fallen to Mike Kappus to soothe his client, who by his own account was indeed ‘gettin’ all nervous and jittery. I had the jitters, and Mike was saying, “C’mon, c’mon” and I was sayin’, “Hey, hey . . .”’
But none of that was apparent on the set, even when, after the audience has left, quality control prevailed and the song was reshot in the empty theatre. Since David Letterman rarely gives interviews, it proved impossible to ask whether John Lee Hooker meant anything more to him than just another guest to fill a five-minute slot on a wintry Wednesday night. For his part, Hooker was standing on the threshhold of a moment which would utterly and irrevocably transform not only his own career but the art form to which he had dedicated his life. He was, however, determined not to become overly impressed with the own new-found success and eminence accompanying the burgeoning phenomenon of The Healer; to remain cautious; to resist any temptation to grow what he calls the Big Head.
‘I think John Lee can explain it to you better than I do: he call it “the big head”,’ says Buddy Guy. ‘Every time I see him, he look at me and say, “How many your men in the band got the big head?” I say, “What’s that?” He say, “J-j-j-j-j-you don’t know what the big head is?” I say, “No.” He say, “That’s when they get bigger than you overnight.” I say, “Naw, you know whenever I’m round you it’s time for Buddy to listen.”’
‘I am no stranger at all to hit records,’ Hooker would remind interviewers whom he suspected might possibly too young to be as aware as he would like of ‘Boogie Chillen’, the original ‘I’m In The Mood’ or even ‘Boom Boom’. ‘I’m very proud of this album, but I ain’t carried away like I ain’t never had nothin’ before. I’m just real laid-back, y’know. I’m always laid-back whatever happen. I’ve found that the best way to be.’
But by the following summer, The Healer had gone gold in the US and silver in the UK, notching up half a million European sales. ‘I’m In The Mood’, his duet with Bonnie Raitt, had earned him his first Grammy. And a man who had long ago learned not to count his chickens before they were hatched would end up with all the golden eggs he could ever have wanted.
I were born a star. Everybody ain’t born a star. God didn’t make everybody a star. He made some people stars. He made me a legend and a hero and a star. I worked for it, but I had the tools to work with. Some people want to work, some people work, and they ain’t got it. But [God] give it to us, and now you got to work to get it up there. ‘You got it, I give it you, but you got to work for it.’ I had to get out there and work. Kick doors down, push doors open, get people to help. I got cheated, but I didn’t stop. I kept on. I said, ‘Down the road somewhere is a door waitin’ for me, and I’m gonna walk through it.’ I kept on ’til I got to that door and it come open. I walked in, and I been in there ever since. I ain’t been kicked out.
John Lee Hooker, interview with the author, 1994
Made up my mind to make a new start
Goin’ to California with an achin’ in my heart.
Jimmy Page & Robert Plant for
Led Zeppelin, ‘Goin’ To California’, 1971
A legend and a hero and a star. The rules of mythology, as codified by the likes of Joseph Campbell and Robert Bly, are quite clear. Anyone wishing to become a hero and attain legendary status must first embark upon a quest, undertake a journey into hardship, adversity and danger. Sometimes this quest is undertaken knowingly and voluntarily, in order to achieve a specific end. More often it is undertaken simply because there is no other option, and only in retrospect does it become apparent that one is engaged on a quest at all.
Sometimes the hero knows that he is a hero. Sometimes he knows that he is not a hero, but wishes to become one. And sometimes he does what he does only to survive and does not realise that he has become a hero, as part of the process of surviving, until much later, much further on down the road.
By definition, the hero’s task must seem all but hopeless. The odds must be firmly against him, with utter annihilation rarely more than a hair’s-breadth away. Demons, both inner and outer, must be confronted. Obstacles must be surmounted. Battles must be fought. Some will be lost and others won, but lessons must be learned from both. Sometimes the hero has allies and sometimes he is totally alone, but his closest companions are failure and despair, dogging his heels at every step right up until the final conflict.
His ultimate triumph can never be a foregone conclusion: what need is there for heroism if the protagonist is invulnerable and his success is inevitable? At the outset of the quest, the hero – or the protagonist who will become a hero – must appear dwarfed by the immensity of the task ahead. Each small battle won, or lost but learned from, enables the hero to grow in wisdom, strength and determination until he becomes not only equal to his task but superior to it.
And finally, if the hero does not commence his quest in a spirit of humility, then he will certainly be humbled. The lesson of humility will be learned, hard and painfully, along the way.
In the epic lan
dscape of American myth, the quintessential heroic American journey leads literally towards the sun, on the trail heading west. The gold rush, the dustbowl exodus of Steinbeck’s Okies, Chuck Berry’s ‘Promised Land’, the hippie pilgrimage to San Francisco, the movie-wannabe’s Star(dom) Trek to Hollywood. Westward ho: California is where dreams come true,140 and it therefore exerts its irresistible magnetic pull on a surfeit of dreamers.
‘I come out here in 1970,’ says Hooker. ‘I drove all the way. I was so mad, I got in my car, throwed all my stuff in the car. Hit Route 66 with my clothes in my car, and a pocketful of bennies. A little money, not much. About twelve thousand dollars. That’s no money for California. I had a name – not like I have now – and no connections. I went to San Francisco. I didn’t know nobody out here; I stayed with an old friend of mine called Tess Coleman. She’s gone now, good friend of mine. I might’ve lived there a year, I don’t know. I left there same year, about the end of that year, went to Oakland. I had an apartment there on 13th Street in Oakland, and Bill Graham started booking me. Different people started booking me in different places. I just started climbing.’
Strangely enough, when Hooker moved out to the Bay Area, at least one old friend – his brother-in-law Paul Mathis, in the military since 1955 – had arrived at the same destination via a very different route. ‘Yeah, well, when he came to California I was already here. I came out here in July 1970. I left England and transferred to Travis, which is in Fairfield, California. My sis wrote me, “You know, John is comin’ out there or he’s there already.” She gave him my phone number at the base and we got in contact. He was livin’ at a small hotel, nothin’ expensive.’
Boogie Man Page 51