Lessons in life — with John Lee Hooker

Has your partner ever put you in a trick bag? Have you ever been stripped naked? No? Well, like me, you have much to learn. And now I am more of a man and less of a metaphor than I've ever been

That is John Lee Hooker you see there in silhouette, standing still as hewn rock on his front lawn in the shade, in San Francisco thirty-two years ago.

“Boom-boom boom-boom! Gonna shoot you right down…” Yes, that John Lee Hooker. Voice like a large rock that has been subject to immense geological pressure.

“Right offa your feet — take you home with me / Put you in my hou-ouse — boom boom boom-boom…”

That’s his house, right there in the picture, the one he’s standing outside in the shade. He is the greatest bluesman of those who yet live, and he is waiting for me. He is standing there like a pile of rocks — a simile I have used before, as you probably noticed; similarly, though not identically. But he is very much a creature of metaphor, which is lucky, because so am I. I decide not to use any more similes when thinking about him.

I stop lurking with my cheap camera and cross the street, introduce myself from ten yards out. “Mr Hooker!”

“I was waitin’ for you, young man,” he says, like a tumble of boulders. Damn and blast it to hell and back. I did it again.

I am thirty-two years old at the time, which is an interesting coincidence, given that this scene unfolded thirty-two years ago. Half my life away. I pull up at a respectful distance. He is wearing a brown shiny suit and a red shirt. And a hat. The flaps of skin over his eyes are lying flush. He is undoubtedly John Lee Hooker, though I can’t see how he can see that it’s me standing here, given the flaps. He seems to be able to though.

He turns and we go indoors.

Indoors, he pats a brown shiny sofa below a rotating fan in the ceiling. “C’mon, now,” he says. “Make y’self at home.” I sit and the sofa gives out a tiny fart, a weary gasp if you prefer. This is John Lee Hooker’s house, after all.

He takes off his hat, lays it carefully on the sofa by his side and extends his legs right out. “Hokay,” he says when he’s almost parallel with the floor, his chin buried deep in his chest. “Hokay.”

And in less than thirty-two seconds he is asleep.

Then he wakes up. I hear him do it. I can tell myself for ever now that I know what John Lee Hooker sounds like when he wakes up. And then he provides an answer to a question I have not yet asked.

“I’m a person that’s always lookin’ for changes,” he rumbles. “Different sounds, different ideas, good killer lyrics. But you can always tell it’s John Lee Hooker ’cos it don’t sound like nobody else, and that’s what make it stand out. I don’t play a who-o-ole lotta fancy chords, bendin’ notes and all; it just solemn … solid, I mean to say. And I will say this: it’s real deep down funk. Beautiful tone.”

I am a fast thinker when in the presence of great bluesmen. It’s a useful attribute.

You used the word “solemn” to describe your music just now, I observe studiously. Would you describe yourself as a solemn person?

“A what?”

I thought I heard you describe your music as having a solemn quality to it…

“Down south, you mean?”

Uh, no, solemn. No, no, I must have misheard you. What I’m asking really is this. There’s a quality to your music that I can’t put my finger on, can’t find words to describe…

“Well, it’s very simple. If you can’t understand that, you don’t know nuthin’…”

I am suddenly cold in this warm room. I have never been reproached in the high manner by a great bluesman before. Really cold actually. Foof.

But he is great enough to relent immediately.

“I don’t mean to put y’down,” he pats the sofa by my thigh, kindly, even apologetically. “See, the blues is talking about a man and a woman. ‘My woman gone lef’ me. She got me in a trickbag.’ You know what a trickbag is?”

I confess that I do not.

“You know what love is?”

Nod.

“Well, I’m sure you know what I’m talking about, most of it anyhow… You most probably ain’t lived it but … there’s a song called ‘Stripped Me Naked’. Well, I been strip’ naked — you probably haven’t but I have — and many other persons have been strip’ naked and they right to suffer, right to be alone … and people understand that because people do suffer. They do things they shouldn’t have did. Some of our lives gonna hurt. And it serve me right to suffer, right to be alone.”

This is said very conclusively. I was brought up to understand when I’ve been told, and I have really been told today.

I look at the near-horizontal form to the right of me cantilevered off the sofa, stretched out, breathing deeply through his nose. He is asleep again. But it is undoubtedly John Lee Hooker. And I have been told, I really have.

In memoriam Tannis Reinhertz, who drove me there

Nick Coleman is the author of three books: ‘The Train in the Night: a story of music and loss’; ‘Voices: how a great singer can change your life’; and a novel, ‘Pillow Man’ (published by Vintage in the UK and Counterpoint in the US).