Boogie Man Read online

  It’s August of 1991 and Hooker, a rhythm and blues veteran whose first million-selling record, ‘Boogie Chillen’, had been released over forty years earlier but whose career had been in effective hibernation for more than fifteen years, is surfing a renewed wave of popularity without any real precedent in the history of the turbulent relationship between blues, rock and the mass market. His last major record contract, with the once-mighty ABC label, had been allowed to expire in 1974, by mutual consent, after the last of an increasingly dismal series of rock-oriented albums, which reflected little credit on either company or artist, had died an ignomnious death in the stores. Subsequent recordings, for small independent outfits, had been few and far between; often of indifferent quality, and generating only mediocre sales. In the mid-’80s, management of Hooker’s career had devolved onto the shoulders of Mike Kappus, an ambitious young music-business entrepreneur. A California-based transplant from the Midwest, Kappus had found himself helming an album project to make a real, proper John Lee Hooker record and facilitate ‘a paying of tribute by friends’. To this end, he had assembled a bevy of Hooker’s famous admirers – including stars like Carlos Santana and Bonnie Raitt, plus his own other clients like George Thorogood, the fast-rising young blues star Robert Cray, and the East Los Angeles Chicano roots-rockers Los Lobos – to co-star on a new record which would restate the fundamental values of Hooker’s music, untainted by undignified concessions to transitory pop-rock fashion, and reintroduce the frail titan to the pop mainstream. Shopping the resulting album, The Healer, to the major record companies, he had found no serious takers. It saw eventual release in the winter of 1989 via two decidedly minor independent companies: Chameleon Records in the US and Silvertone in the UK. To the surprise of just about everyone, it was a hit. First in the UK and then in the US, the album climbed the pop charts. One week, Hooker was even outselling Madonna.

  By the New Year, the illiterate septuagenarian from the Mississippi Delta had become the world’s oldest and unlikeliest pop star. During the summer of 1990, Hooker and his band, their fee now jacked into the stratosphere, hit every major blues, folk and jazz festival in the northern hemisphere. By autumn, the tour had grossed a figure not unadjacent to three million dollars.

  In the summer of 1991, a sequel, Mr Lucky, stood ready for release. This time, the co-stars included Keith Richards of The Rolling Stones, Ry Cooder, Albert Collins, Johnny Winter and Van Morrison; and once again, Hooker was on the road, prised from his suburban California hideaway to perform three concerts on the East Coast in locations ranging from grimy New Jersey to genteel New England. In the baking heat of the hotel parking lot, Hooker’s car is ready: a rented white Buick Park Avenue with Georgia plates. His driver is a young emissary from Mike Kappus’s Rosebud Agency. Like all the Rosebuddies, he combines brisk efficiency with laid-back San Francisco cool, and an absolute devotion to Hooker’s comfort. The baggage – including Hooker’s all-important Gibson guitars – is slung into the the trunk, and Hooker creakily installs himself in the back seat with his travelling companion, the diminutive singer Vala Cupp, who serves as warm-up act with Hooker’s group, The Coast To Coast Blues Band. Chameleon have just released her solo album, nominally produced by Hooker and featuring him on the duet version of his venerable ‘Crawlin’ King Snake’ which they perform together at every show. Can the acquaintance think of any UK labels which might be interested in releasing it?

  The duet has become one of the major theatrical set-pieces of Hooker’s show. The song itself, learned on the front porch of his childhood home from his earliest blues mentor Tony Hollins, is among the oldest in Hooker’s repertoire, first recorded by him in 1949 and – re-recorded in tandem with Keith Richards – one of Mr Lucky’s show-pieces. Performed with Cupp, it becomes a sensual epic: she hovers around Hooker’s chair like a butterfly, trading lines with him in a progressively more fevered exchange which culminates in a reassuringly daughterly peck on the cheek. Not surprisingly, there is a certain amount of speculation concerning the exact nature of Hooker’s relationship with Cupp, generally amongst white male rockers of what we might call ‘a certain age’, to whom the great man’s predilection for surrounding himself with attractive young women is something of an inspiration; cause for an optimistic vision of their own rapidly approaching twilight years. Hooker, wrote Dennis Hopper in the notes to the soundtrack (by Hooker and Miles Davis) for his movie The Hot Spot, ‘proves you can still make a steady diet of fried chicken well into your seventies and still try to get all of those pretty young things into a hot tub’. The nudge-nudge-wink-wink response generally received by Hooker’s own denials – ‘they ain’t my girlfriends, we just friends’ – obscures the fact that, most of the time, he’s telling the truth. There are exceptions, though. A friend of the acquaintance is fond of recounting the tale of when attending the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, he and a buddy found that the hotel room that they were sharing was kitty-corner from Hooker’s. The buddy, an obsessive Hooker fan, insisted on knocking at the great man’s door so that he could press the flesh and testify to his devotion. So he did. After a long delay, Hooker came to the door in his shirtsleeves. Visible behind him, in the bed, was this fabulous blonde; you know, really fabulous. After a brief exchange of pleasantries, Hooker announced, ‘Well-uh-uh-uh, it certainly has been a pleasure meetin’ you, young man, but right now I got me some business to ’tend to.’ And then he closed the door.

  The reality of Cupp’s situation, though, is simply that he enjoys her company. When they check into hotels, her room adjoins his: she keeps track of his possessions and talks to room service for him. Plus her presence – neat figure, ready smile, cascading brown hair – fuels his legend.

  Once ensconced, Hooker removes his hat and shades, and wriggles into the most comfortable position. His hair, apart from a bald spot on his crown and the widow’s peak which runs in his family, is still thick and healthy: it is dyed a rich reddish black and left nappy and uncombed beneath the trademark Homburg. Silver stubble gleams against his mahogany cheeks and jaw. His left eyelid droops slightly, leaving one eye wide and guileless, the other hooded and watchful. Without the dentures which he wears for video shoots and major photo sessions, his remaining upper and lower teeth are an almost exact mirror-image, requiring him to sling his jaw to one side in order to chew his food. As the Buick noses out to the freeway, the one-time Detroit auto-factory worker disapprovingly notes the number of Japanese cars on the road. The Chevrolet, now that was a fine car. Made of US steel, real steel. You get into an accident in one of them, you can get out and walk a-way. Mm-hm. Not like now. You get in an accident in one of them Japanese cars, you get hurt.

  For most of the journey to the first show, Hooker is asleep. He can sleep just about anywhere, just doze right off like an old tomcat in front of a warm fire. The night’s concert is to be held at a 7,000-seater auditorium set in the grounds of a lush, wooded park; he is to share the bill with fellow Rosebud stars Los Lobos and Robert Cray. When on tour, Hooker rarely headlines a show if he can avoid it. He prefers the middle spot on the bill: this facilitates the quick getaways he favours whenever there’s a long drive between his show and his bed. As Hooker’s Buick pulls in, Los Lobos are in the home stretch of their set. By the time Hooker has found the most comfortable sofa in his dressing room, popped a can of lite beer and issued instructions for the precise constitution of his plateful of cold cuts from the buffet, Los Lobos’ vocalists David Hidalgo and Cesar Rosas are in the dressing room to pay their respects. ‘Hello, John,’ they say, their voices soft and their eyes shining. Hooker extends a regal flipper. ‘Huh-huh-how you doin’, young man,’ he replies.

  The Coast To Coast Blues Band have already arrived in the rather less luxurious circumstances of a collective van, and have already established themselves next door in a welter of guitar and saxophone cases. There is a minor crisis within their ranks: one of the band’s mainstays, organist and master of ceremonies Deacon Jones, has opted to stay home in S
an Francisco to play a series of shows with his own band for rather more money than a Coast To Coast sideman’s wage. His replacement is pianist Lizz Fischer, a sinewy pixie with a Rapunzelesque blonde braid, formidable jazz chops and one of Coast To Coast’s only two clean driving licences. Her other qualification is that she looks absolutely stunning in stiletto heels and a little black dress; Hooker, murmurs one of the male Coast To Coasters, would be happy to have an entire band of attractive female musicians.

  As the band gather sidestage, quiet comments are passed concerning the forest of guitars awaiting the attentions of The Robert Cray Band. Hooker carries two (one in standard tuning, one in the open ‘Spanish’ tuning in which he plays his show’s boogie finale) and the rest of the band’s guitarists – stocky, snubnosed Mike Osborn on lead; gaunt, hirsute Rich Kirch on rhythm; spiky, nuevo-wavo Jim Guyett on bass – make do with one each. They have, after all, flown in from California, travelling light: the drums, amplifiers and piano are rented. They hit the stage with a slow blues: ‘Cold Cold Feeling’, originated by T-Bone Walker, who more or less invented modern blues guitar and who, back in the Detroit of the late ’40s, gave Hooker his first electric instrument. It’s sparked by a rich, resonant vocal by Cupp – whose voice sounds like it should emanate from someone at least three times her size – and Osborn’s plangent, sinuous lead guitar. Then the band settle into a rocking boogaloo as Cupp, head held high, strides into the wings and Guyett, depping as MC for the absent Jones, takes the microphone to announce John Lee Hooker.

  The man from Mississippi ambles into the spotlight, adjusting his shades and waving to the audience, as the man from Rosebud moves a folding wooden chair into position and adjusts a microphone stand. The band’s only black member, the large, melancholy-looking saxophonist Kenny Baker, whose nom de blues is ‘Dr Funkenstein’, hands Hooker his guitar, painstakingly tuned by Osborn a few minutes earlier, and the maestro regally seats himself before thumbing off a fusillade of jangling notes that hang in the air like an unruly swarm of splintered neon-blue razor-blades.

  Essentially, it’s the same set he always plays, last overhauled to include songs from The Healer. Hooker doesn’t so much dislike rehearsals as disdainfully refuse to recognise even the simple fact of their existence. In 1979, Mike Osborn played his first show with Hooker entirely unrehearsed, and the only subsequent ones have been called by Osborn himself: to rehearse the band in Hooker’s absence. The maestro simply can’t be bothered: anyone who lacks the instincts to play his music spontaneously shouldn’t be playing it at all. Once upon a time – as thrillingly documented on any number of his records – John Lee Hooker used to rock any house with just his relentless boogie guitar, his inexorably stomping feet and his tireless, incantatory singing. Dance ’til you drop? Those records could make you feel tired just listening to them. However, that was then. John Lee can’t put out like that any more: the solo boogie is a young man’s art, an energy-draining ritual which requires the painstaking cultivation and maintenance of Olympic stamina and endurance. Energy is the most precious commodity Hooker possesses: he tires very easily, and his every move is finely calibrated for maximum economy. So now The Coast To Coast Blues Band – two guitars, bass, drums, keyboard and tenor sax – supply the muscle and the momentum. They unfurl the carpet beneath his chair, they build the pedestal for his monument. They are a literal workhorse of a band: big and powerful and tireless, but also disciplined and reliable and self-effacing. They are sensitive to their boss’s every nuance; in collective person-years they have invested almost half a century in interpreting Hooker’s wants and delivering what he needs when he needs it without so much as a second’s hesitation.

  Nevertheless, there are songs he rarely entrusts to them. The title tune from The Healer is one such: for Hooker, it is his credo, and it is inextricably linked to its co-composer and featured soloist, Carlos Santana. Even though it is one of the most popular pieces in his repertoire, Hooker hardly ever perform it unless Santana himself is there alongside him. As for the songs from the imminently available Mr Lucky, which could use some promotional exposure . . . forget it. They ain’t in the set. Not tonight, anyway.

  Though the band’s repertoire is large enough to permit song shifts from show to show, the structure invariably remains the same. Slouched in his chair and protected by his shades, Hooker works through his tales of lust and anger, sorrow and loneliness, regret and despair. They call certain kinds of blues ‘low down’, and sometimes what is meant by that is a social judgement on certain sorts of people and certain sorts of lifestyle. In Hooker’s case, ‘low down’ is a barometer reading of the emotional depths. This is as bad as it gets. Oh, the details may vary. He ain’t got no money. He ain’t got no place to go. He wants her. She don’t want him. She wants him. He don’t want her. But into each scenario, the grain of his voice breathes verisimilitude – I been there – and compassion – it hurts, I know it – and the sheer fact of his presence seemingly guarantees that, just as he survived it all, so will we. The inevitable climax is the joyful catharsis of his trademark boogie. It is for this moment that he goes to such extreme lengths to conserve his energy: that electrifying instant when he casts his guitar aside, tears off his shades, leaps to his feet and prowls the stage, all frailty or fatigue forgotten, exhorting both band and audience to greater effort. From the bluesman, arm-wrestling his pain and the world’s on a Delta front porch or in a rat-infested ghetto apartment, he is transformed into the preacher, who cajoles and bullies us towards salvation.

  Like the preacher, he speaks in tongues. This closing boogie does little more than allude to his signature tune ‘Boogie Chillen’; it certainly doesn’t include any of that song’s celebrated monologues. All it is is a riff and a string of solos over which Hooker drops his nigh-wordless exhortations and incantations: ‘Hey-hey’, ‘I-I-I’ and the like. Transcribed, it would be not so much meaningless as language-less: the words, such as they are, are nothing, but the sound of his voice is everything. It is utterly primal; it reaches us on a level far deeper than any which can be accessed by words, or meaning, or language. It is a direct link from soul to soul. ‘You know what?’ asks Hooker’s son Robert, once his on-the-road keyboard player, now himself a preacher. ‘If you ever listen to him in that song “Boogie With The Hook” at his closing act, do it to you kinda sound like he’s preachin’ in there?’

  This is what Hooker calls ‘preachin’ the blues’, though his storefront pulpit is the neighbourhood bar – or, more recently, the recording studio and the concert hall. Over that single hammering riff that he learned from his stepfather some six or so decades before, he orchestrates the celebration of this fact: that all present have triumphed over current adversities simply by finding this one moment – here, now – of solidarity and joy. If anything can truly be said to be the philosophical core of the blues, it is this: when you suffer, you can at least boogie, and when you boogiein’, you ain’t sufferin’. But, first, you got to face the fact that you’re sufferin’. Once you’ve acknowledged your pain, you can get to dealing with it.

  The problem that a lot of people – not so much white people, but many younger blacks – have with the blues is that their perception of it never reaches that second stage. All they ever hear is that pain: that raw, naked pain. And they complain about ‘wailing self-pity’; they are more comfortable with the soul man’s sophistication or the rapper’s rage. The blues makes them feel bad, and they can’t get past that. They never reach the realisation common not only to every blues singer but to every participant in blues culture, which is that the blues is not about feeling bad, but about feeling good despite every factor in the world which conspires to make you feel bad.

  And this is why the blues is the Devil’s music: because the church tells it one way and the blues tells it the other. If you boogie, says the church, you will suffer, because joy which does not comes from God is not relief from sin but a sin in itself. Hooker turns that dictum on its head: he shows us first that he understands j
ust how much pain there is in the world, and also that – even if only temporarily – it can be vanquished; exorcized in an ecstatic explosion of clapping and singing and chanting.

  And this is his art: the art of the Healer. This is what a blues singer actually does. Behind all of the idiosyncrasies of taste and style, behind all the stagecraft and devices which any long-term performer develops, behind the songs and the riffs and the shtick and the musicianship, is the bluesman’s true role: that of our confidant. The bluesman hasn’t heard our personal, individual story – not unless he’s a close personal friend, that is – but he should make us feel that he knows it anyway, that he has heard us and understands us. By telling his story – or a variation of his story, or several variations of his story, or even an outright embroidery of his story – John Lee Hooker enables us to face our own. In this sense, the bluesman is our confessor, our shrink; it is his job to forgive us and comfort us, shoulder our burdens as he invites us to help him shoulder his own. Against the forces of wickedness, the preacher is our leader; the general who marshals our forces; the conductor who orchestrates our instruments. But when the preacher’s mantle passes to the bluesman, it is so that he can enlist us against an epic battle against despair. When the bluesman hollers ‘Good mornin’, Mr Blues’ or tells us of blues walkin’ just like a man, he’s talking about what Winston Churchill called ‘the black dog’: the personification of despair. If he were a doctor, he would inject us with a small, controllable dose of that despair, an in oculation to protect us from ultimately succumbing to it. And it doesn’t matter who you are. I haven’t lived like John Lee Hooker. Neither have you. Nor has anyone who didn’t come up in the racist apartheid South between the wars. But his pain – recollected in tranquility as it may be, but evoked with the immediacy of a fresh bruise – sounds as if it feels like mine. When Hooker sings, in ‘Dark Room’, ‘and the tears roll down my face’ I remember how my own tears feel, rolling down my own face. I remember what it is to feel so flat-out, rock-bottom bad that you simply, involuntarily, apropos of nothing in particular, begin to weep. And I know that, eventually, the weeping stops. And then the boogie begins.