celebrities ‘lose touch with the ghetto’ when they make enough money to move out is a common accusation, but a short-sighted one. Unless, like Bob Marley or Ice-T, they simply ‘move the ghetto uptown’ with them, or unless they make so much money that they can afford to move their entire communities with them – or unless they do literally turn their backs on everyone they used to know – the black celeb remains keenly aware of how the less fortunate live. They have relatives and friends still out there where, with each passing day, the jobs grow scarcer and the crack houses more plentiful. John Lee still shops in Oakland, because H. Jon provides friendly personal service, and at least has the merit of being local and therefore easily accessible. The mall is eerily reminiscent of similar establishments in Warsaw under Communism; there, even those who were, by bourgeois Western standards, not over-burdened with liquid capital could afford most of what was on display, except that they wouldn’t want the stuff even – as they say – at any price. This is where poor people shop, and by prevailing community standards, H. Jon’s is Armani, Versace and Savile Row.
Jon’s range includes just about everything the well-dressed blues singer could desire. If you crave eyeball-threatening big-collared polyester shirts in acidic lime green or vintage Bridget Riley-style op-art, you got it. If you need a double-knit cream-coloured leisure suit with mildly flared pants, seek ye no further. If there’s an acute shortage of patent-leather tasselled loafers in your life, consider your problem solved. For younger patrons, there’s a selection of ‘X’ baseball caps and T-shirts, red-green-and-gold leather pendants in the shape of the African continent, and thinly gold-plated chains which might just fool a hardcore gangbanger at fifty paces if he happened to be on the pipe at the time. For John Lee Hooker, there are rich, soft bolts of the pinstriped broadcloths and slate-blue mohairs he favours, and H. Jon himself ready and waiting to cut suits to John’s measure, or to alter an off-the-peg item until it’s guaranteed to fit to perfection. Plus there are unlimited supplies of star-spangled socks, Hooker’s most distinctive sartorial fetish. Apart from anything else, H. Jon has the merit of familiarity and reliability. Such dependability represents one of the most important aspects of Hooker’s life: comfort, continuity, stability and, above all, trustworthiness. Familiar objects, familiar people, familiar foods, familiar clothes: they all serve to anchor and orient him. They’re the signposts by which he navigates.
By way of contrast, he displays little more permanent attachment to his homes than he does to his cars. He never seems to have less than two houses at a time; one principal dwelling-place which serves as a permanent open house to family, friends and acquaintances alike, and one bolt-hole elsewhere to which he retreats when he’s had enough of the pressure and clamour inevitably generated by his legions of invited, semi-invited and downright uninvited guests. Right now, the pleasant bungalow in whitebread suburban Redwood City is his main place of residence, supplanting a six-bedroom ranch-style spread in Vallejo, the other side of the bay, which had become a virtual bunkhouse for band members and assorted friends and hangers-on. The Redwood City location was originally chosen for its close, easy proximity to San Francisco airport, a mere twenty-minute drive away, and to the city of San Francisco itself, just a few additional miles further down the freeway. Hooker’s home is in a comfortable little close, at the far end of a long hilly avenue. There’s nothing distinctive about the outside of the house, other than the cars – the cream Lincoln, a black Cadillac Brougham (vanity plate: LES BOGY), and Archie’s roadworn Cadillac De Ville – but inside it’s a different story. There’s lush cream carpet in which you can practically lose your shoes, comfortable matching sofas and easy chairs, a great big fat cat called – inevitably – Fluffy, and cream-papered walls covered in plaques and awards, citations and honours, framed original prints of portraits of the distinguished occupant.
‘Look on my wall,’ commands Hooker. ‘What do you see? You see the awards and the gold records, trophies . . . all them years brought me that. That hard road. You heard the song say “I ain’t goin’ down that big road by myself”? I went down by myself. That brought me all of this, but I don’t let that, you know, go to my head. It just something that I achieve, that I want people to look at when they come into my home.’
There are gold discs and silver discs from a half-dozen different territories, commemorating the substantial sales of The Healer and Mr Lucky: 50,000 here, and 100,000 there. Over in the corner, behind the dining table, is a rack of award statuettes: W.C. Handy awards, Bay Area Music awards, and – of course – John’s 1990 Grammy, the one he and Bonnie Raitt shared for their ‘I’m In The Mood For Love’ duet from The Healer. Here’s a huge framed photo of John Lee and Bonnie on their night of triumph, clutching their Grammies. There’s a reproduction of John’s ad for Remy Martin cognac. John, of course, no longer drinks cognac, and even back in his drinking days he was a Courvoisier man. Nearby there’s a gold disc and matching gold cassette awarded for sales of George Thorogood’s Bad to the Bone album, which included a version of John Lee’s ‘Boogie Chillen’. And everywhere are photos of John Lee with his peer group. With B.B. King, with Albert King, with Albert Collins, with Carlos Santana and Bill Graham, with Robert Cray and Stevie Ray Vaughan; and, more recently, Hooker and Mike Kappus with Bill Clinton. On the mantelpiece is a framed clipping of a lead story from Rolling Stone’s ‘Random Notes’ section, reporting John Lee’s Atlantic City guest appearance with the Rolling Stones during their 1989 ‘Steel Wheels’ tour. The page features two principal photographs, each depicting one of the head Stones cavorting with their most suitably matched star guest. In one shot, John Lee is shown grooving with Keith Richards, standing up for a change as he leads the ensemble, which on this occasion also includes Eric Clapton, through a hectic ‘Boogie Chillen’. In the other, Mick Jagger appears buddying up to the microphone with Guns N’ Roses’ ‘troubled’ lead singer, Axl Rose.
Then there’s some serious hi-fi and a matching TV, video, cable and satellite system; not one of those ostentatious projection jobs, but nevertheless boasting more than respectable screen acreage. It gets more use than the hi-fi, which occasionally pumps out some of Hooker’s vintage recordings, or tapes of recent recordings by various members of his inner circle, but mainly it remains silent while the TV blasts movies or sport. Lately, John Lee’s grown fond of screening a recently-assembled stash of his own videos, and visitors are likely to be regaled with the promo clips for his own recent singles from The Healer or Mr Lucky, or that in-concert ‘Boogie Chillen’ workout with Clapton and the Stones, or – delving back into the archives – Hooker’s celebrated spot from the 1960 Newport Jazz Festival with the Muddy Waters Band rocking right behind him. Rarer still is a flickering, washed-out late-’60s clip from some local Detroit TV show featuring Hooker, in dashiki and black leather pillbox hat, perched on a stool performing ‘Never Get Out Of These Blues Alive’ with his teenage son Robert comping, hunched studiously over the key board of the Wurlitzer organ his dad bought him.
Off to one side is a narrow corridor, also lined with plaques, posters and awards, from which the bedrooms and bathroom branch off. The first one you pass is a small one, all bed, closets and framed photos, which is occupied by Archie; at the end are two facing doors. The left-hand room is occasionally occupied by John’s god-daughter Crystal; the other is the master bedroom which is the ultimate refuge for John himself. It has its own luxury-size TV and video, permanently tuned to a satellite sports channel, its own toilet and water cooler; capacious closets for all his suits, and for his small but impressive collection of Gibson and Epiphone guitars. Hooker owns a couple of tobacco-sunburst Gibson ES-335s, one the workhorse instrument he has used since the early ’70s and the other a newer model presented to him by Carlos Santana; the cherry-red mid-’60s Epiphone Sheraton with which he poses on the cover of Mr Lucky; and a spanking-new cherry-red Gibson B.B. King ‘Lucille’ signature model which he used when sitting in with the Rolling Stones in Los Angeles. And, of course, there’s Old Blondie. Old Blondie is the only one of his guitars about which Hooker is sentimental: she’s the big-bodied, single-cutaway Epiphone Broadway which Hooker acquired in the late ’50s and carried with him everywhere for the next decade and a half. Blondie doesn’t travel anymore; the 335s are the working guitars. The old one, in standard tuning, is the one Hooker uses for the bulk of each performance; the Santana guitar, tuned up to open A, is reserved for the closing boogies. But unless there’s work to be done, or unless a visitor requests a guided tour