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 San 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,