Boogie Man (84 page)

For insurance purposes, a German promoter requested that John Lee undergo a medical examination before hitting the road. The examination revealed that, even though John Lee himself was feeling
fairly sprightly, he was carrying potentially fatal internal timebombs in the form of several aneurisms: tiny arterial dilations not in themselves debilitating, but liable to rupture at any time,
without warning. The tour was instantly cancelled. Surgery was recommended, but even with the finest medical care available for cash money in the USA, it would still nevertheless have been an
intensely gruelling and, considering his age, potentially risky operation. Hooker decided against going under the knife, and carried on with his life.

In his last few months, there had been a major change in John Lee’s longest and most significant professional relationship. Some of those closest to Hooker desired a more hands-on
involvement in his career, but having more than one person representing an artist is a recipe for chaos. After seeking other solutions, Kappus eventually decided that the best way to retain a
positive relationship with John Lee and avoid further conflict would be to retire from the management role he had assumed twelve years earlier, but continue as agent for the twenty-fifth year. Into
the breach stepped manager Rick Bates, a former Rosebud staffer who had maintained his friendship with Hooker. Bates and Hooker had actually discussed working together in the past, when Kappus had
briefly opted out of the job. Kappus felt that Bates would have the sensitivity and dedication that managing Hooker required and before submitting his resignation, he checked in with Bates to see
if he was still interested.

Hooker attempted to persuade Kappus to withdraw his resignation, but Kappus felt that, painful though it was, the time had come for a change. Kappus suggested Bates as his replacement. Hooker
pondered the change for a few days before approving Bates as Kappus’s successor. However, this regime wasn’t destined to last too long: the demands
of guiding the
career of a living artist being a very different proposition from the administration of a complex estate. As John Lee Hooker’s executor, Zakiya Hooker was unable to come to an agreement with
Bates and opted to take the reins herself, managing her father’s legacy alongside her husband, Ollan Christopher, with Kappus standing by to advise on an unofficial, informal basis.

Paradoxically, John Lee had been enjoying an Indian summer of renewed vigour and vitality. Medical treatment had finally seen off a thyroid condition which had sapped his energy during the early
’90s. In the last week before his death, he’d performed twice, bringing audiences to their feet with his trademark endless boogie, dedicating what turned out to be his last Saturday
night on the planet to rocking the house for 1500 people at the Luther Burbank Center for the Arts in Santa Rosa, California. ‘I don’t know nothin’ that’ll stop me from
playin’ the blues. I’ll never retire. I’ll be doing this until God Jehovah call me to the next world, and I’m hopin’ I can play there. Once you a blues singer in your
blood, you can retire from the public, but in your heart and in your blood you never retire ’til you
gone
.’

‘“The Boogie” was, of course, the last song he played,’ recalls Mike Kappus, ‘and he brought up the opening acts to join in, with about ten people on stage
altogether. He stayed after the show for about an hour talking with everyone, having a great time ’til the end.’

John Lee’s memorial service was held at the Mormon Temple at Oakland’s Inter-State Center Auditorium, on 27 June 2001, coincidentally this writer’s fiftieth birthday: make of
that what you will. Past conflicts were set aside: Kappus was invited to sit with the family; relatives had flown in from distant Clarksdale; and John Lee’s sons, John Lee Hooker Jr and Rev.
Robert Hooker, delivered eulogies, alongside Eddie Kirkland, Charlie Musselwhite, Bonnie Raitt and Hooker’s eldest daughter Frances, for so long unacknowledged. Shana Morrison read a message
from her father, Van. Deacon Jones played ‘We’ll Meet Again’. Ollan Christopher and the Natural Four sang. Zakiya Hooker
served as Mistress of Ceremonies.
Buddy Guy attended, but did not speak or perform.

‘I know I’ve lost a good friend,’ said B.B. King, ‘and the world has lost a great talent.’

‘There are no superlatives,’ wrote Carlos Santana in a tribute which appeared in
Mojo
magazine, ‘to describe the profound impact John Lee left in our hearts. For
musicians and common people – all of us feel enormous gratitude, respect, admiration and love for his spirit. When I was a child he was the first circus I wanted to run away with. He, Jimmy
Reed and Lightnin’ Hopkins were the foundation for all of my music. Working with him on
The Healer, Chill Out
and also playing live on the blues festivals is something that I will
deeply treasure.

‘John’s voice doesn’t sound like anybody. It definitely fits in the category of Supreme Universal Music. When you hear that moan, everybody understands what he’s talking
about. You don’t have to understand English – a Buddhist monk, or people in Jerusalem or Russia, can understand what he means. On behalf of Chester Thompson, everyone in my band and
myself we say to you John – Boogie in The Light.’

‘He was the last of the solo guitar players, a throwback even in his own time,’ testified Keith Richards. ‘Even Muddy Waters was sophisticated next to him. He was a guy more in
line with Charley Patton, Blind Blake and Robert Johnson – a one-man band, totally his own man. As much as it was a joy to perform with him, you would really have to become him in order to
play along. His style really came from Africa. It was unique, the most compelling stuff.’

Bonnie Raitt, for her part, penned an affectionate and affecting tribute for
Rolling Stone
, dwelling at some length on her long-running platonic love affair with Hooker, who would
‘come up to whatever man I was living with and say, “You got to understand that I’ll always be Bonnie’s backdoor man. There got to be always room for me.” So
the men in my life always knew that John Lee held a special place, even though we never were intimate.

‘He had a cry in his voice,’ Raitt continues, ‘that would just break your heart. Sometimes when he was playing, it was as if he’d never left Mississippi, and there had
never been any civil rights or any money for him or anything. He could authentically tap into all the pain he’d ever felt.’

Freeze frame. Rewind. Play that line again.
He could authentically tap into all the pain he’d ever felt
. Precisely because he was able to tap so profoundly into his own pain, he
gained the power to carry our sorrows alongside his own. The instant you hear him, you know that he understands stuff about your life which you may not even understand yourself.

‘. . . God, if there is such a thing as God, because we all believe in a Supreme Being: he wants you to do right, love people all over the world, and that’s what I’m doing.
I’m serving people all over. I’m
serving
people, I’m reachin’ out, gettin’ people, helpin’ people . . . that’s treatin’ ’em as God want.
And all the people that I don’t see, my
song
reaches them all over the world. I never see ’em, I never
will
see ’em. But my
voice
is all over the world: John
Lee Hooker on a record. I’ll be here for
ever
, but my body won’t.’

In one of our earliest conversations, John Lee Hooker told me, ‘When I die, they’ll bury the blues with me. But the blues will never die.’ It was a favourite line of his, and
he probably said it to many people, but I never forgot it. I never will forget it. Or him. Neither will anyone else who ever met him, or anyone whom his music helped through those long nights in
the dark room.

‘You know I wrote that song – me and Van Morrison did it – called “Never Get Out of these Blues Alive”? I’ll never – I’ll
never
– get
out of these blues alive. I’ll be dealing with the blues ’til the day I done gone.
Never
get out of these blues alive.
Yeah
.’

Oh
yeah. Mm-
hm
.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you, fellas

It’s in him, and it got to come out
. This book wouldn’t have come out at all if it wasn’t for the efforts of a virtual regiment of people, all of whom
are owed a Big Drink. Some of them may even get one.

First and foremost, total love and respect to the man himself, John Lee Hooker, for inviting me into his life; and, through the many hours of interviews which provided the narrative spine of
this book, rigorously turning over the topsoil of that life, including a few areas which I’m sure he would have preferred not to discuss. In the same breath, I thank the Hooker extended
family, most prominently Archie Hooker, Zakiya Hooker, Robert Hooker and Paul Mathis; plus John Lee’s many friends and associates, notably Martin Thompson; and the then personnel of the Coast
To Coast Blues Band: Kenny ‘Dr Funkenstein’ Baker, Brother Bowen Brown, Vala Cupp, Lizz Fischer, Jim Guyett, Deacon Jones, Rich Kirch and Mike Osborn. None of these folks had actually
chosen to invite some English guy to come hang out with them for weeks on end, but they nevertheless made me feel utterly welcome. And Archie’s cooking is wonderful. Where’s that
cornbread receipe then, Arch?

Next up, I want to thank Mike Kappus, John Lee’s manager, for selecting me to be the author of this book, and for sticking with me through what turned out to be a decidedly bumpy ride. By
the same token, big props go out to the past and present staff of the Rosebud Agency, most notably Steve Lee and Tom ‘Agent Cooper’ Chauncey,
for facilitating
arrangements and generally doing the biz. Richard Wootton, John Lee’s UK PR guy, recommended me to Mike Kappus in the first place. And none of this would have happened without the inspired
intervention of Pete Townshend, who in his own inimitable manner talked – on second thoughts, let’s make that ‘arm-twisted’ – me into taking up Mike’s offer when
I wavered in the face of what seemed an impossibly daunting task.

Major shout-outs are also due to my agent, Antony Harwood of Gillon Aitken Associates, and my publisher, Tony Lacey at Viking Penguin UK, who turned out to be true twin towers of strength when
the going got seriously rough. It’s a privilege to have guys like these on your side.

Guides, philosophers and friends who helped map out the terrain and who raided their vaults included these stalwarts of the BritBlues Posse: Roy Carr, Mike Rowe, Tony Russell, Neil Slaven, Mike
Vernon and Cliff White: couldn’t’a done it without y’all. Nuff respeck.

During the process of creating
Boogie Man
, I was fortunate to be granted interviews and/or correspondence by many individuals, not all of whom are directly quoted in the text but all of
whom helped immeasurably. In alphabetical order, let’s have some of that o-o-o-o-o-old soul clappin’ for Clifford Antone, Bernard Besman, Elaine Brown, Eddie Burns, Chicago Beau, Famous
Coachman, Roy Fisher, Billy Gibbons, Peter Green, Buddy Guy, John Hammond, Archie Hooker, Maude Hooker, Robert Hooker, Zakiya Hooker, Mike Kappus, B.B. King, Rich Kirch, Eddie Kirkland, Taj Mahal,
Paul Mathis, Charlie Musselwhite, Mike Osborn, Rick Parsons, the late Jimmy Rogers, Roy Rogers (no relation), ‘Sally’, Sid Seidenberg, the late Robert Shelton, Ali Farka Toure, Pete
Townshend, Wade Walton, Tom Whitehead and Valerie Wilmer. My blues brother Joel Rosen rode shotgun for the interviews with Clifford Antone and Jimmy Rogers; Nick Gold of World Circuit set up the
interview with Ali Farka Toure and also served as interpreter, and the late Kathy Acker co-conducted the interview with Taj Mahal.

This material has been supplemented by interviews conducted by others: Tony Knox, producer of London Weekend Television’s
South Bank Show
documentary about
Hooker’s life and times, generously supplied full transcripts of his team’s own interviews with many of the above and others, including Bernethia Bullock, Van Morrison and Jim
O’Neal. Equally generously, Mark Cooper provided unedited video of his interviews, derived from a special edition of BBC2’s much-missed
Late Show
, with Ry Cooder, the late Albert
Collins, Peter Coyote, Robert Cray, John Hammond, Johnnie Johnson, Charlie Musselwhite and Bonnie Raitt. And Paul Trynka, currently of
Mojo
and formerly of
The Guitar Magazine,
gave
me access to transcripts of his Hooker-related interviews with Ry Cooder, S.P. Leary, John Mayall, Keith Richards, Carlos Santana and Johnny Winter. Mark Bliesener supplied the testimony of Todd
Park Mohr.

When additional quotations have been derived from previously published material, the original sources are cited in the footnotes. In some instances, I have blended material from a variety of
sources in order to achieve the most complete and coherent narrative possible: for example, the interviews with Mike Kappus featured in Chapters 13 and 14 fuse extracts from my own interview with
Mike; the
South Bank Show
interview, and from our correspondence.

Others also went out of their way to help on the road. In the Bay Area, there were the various constituents of the Hooker Community cited above. In Austin, Texas, the good guys included Clifford
Antone, Ed Ward and all involved with South By Southwest. In Detroit my rabbis were Famous Coachman, Thom Jurek and all at
Metro
, Ben Edmonds, Robert Jr Whitall and Susan Whitall. In
Mississippi, Joel Rosen dropped everything for a week to drive me round the Delta and plug me in to the zeitgeist, not to mention opening up the archives at Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi, and
introducing me to Dick Waterman. In Clarksdale, Mississippi, I was indebted to Mrs Jessie Hooker, Euliss Broom, Clarence Dixon, Early Wright at WROX, Jim
O’Neal, Dr Patty
Johnson, Robert Birdsong, Wade Walton and Sid Graves at the Delta Blues Museum; and in Vance, Mississippi: James Thomas, Florence Jenkins (daughter of Marih) Walker, and Mr & Mrs Rick Parsons
at the Fewell Plantation.

Small portions of this book previously appeared, in radically different form, in
Q, Mojo, The Daily Telegraph
and
New Musical Express
; I have also sampled bits of my own text from
Blues on CD: The Essential Guide
(Kyle Cathie). And many of the ideas discussed in Chapter 12, notably the relationships between postmodernism and the folk process, and various aspects of
shamanism, were honed during hours of conversation with Kathy Acker.