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Funny drivers ed games, driver ed games on flashracingoline.
[6/22/01]
Kids, let me tell you about the time I shook John Lee Hooker's hand.
I used to tend bar during college at a place called O'Toole's, this green paint & paneling type joint across the street from Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto. It was your basic North American Irish-themed pub, with shepherd's pie on the menu beside the burgers and chicken fingers, and Smithwick's sold in plastic pitchers, and big screen TVs showing the game if you didn't have a ticket to get in across the street.
As a result of our clientele, though, it wasn't like any given night of the week was terribly busy. Most places, people come at pretty much the same time every week. Here, it was tied to the events at the Gardens. Wrestling events, concerts, dog shows, ethnic conventions, and (oh yeah, of course) hockey games all would mean the place was packed from about 6:00 on, only thinning out slightly during the actual game or show or whatever.
Even factoring in the fact that punters are by nature cheap bastards, the exceptions of course proving the rule, a decent server could still go home with $200 or $300 in tips, which in late '80s dollars was pretty good.
The flip side of all this was that the off nights were pretty dead. There wasn't all that much of a live theatre scene at that point, and we were a little too far away from the gay neighborhoods to pick up any regular business from there, so those nights required little more than a lone sentry to keep the downtown drunks in their cups.
So when John Lee Hooker came to town, and it was on an off night, I had no problem getting the night off.
The first time I really think I got into guitar blues was when my dad played me BB King's Live From Cook County Jail, and listening to BB bend his guitar around little showy glossy tales of woe and stuff, making everyone laugh their asses of at songs about pains he'd long since gotten over and keeps around inside of himself at this point solely to flash his truly deep lights through them and make them glow like the little soul-gems they were.
I went and hunted down blues records all over the place for years after that. Willie Dixon, Little Walter, Blind Willie McTell, Robert Johnson (oh, Robert Johnson...), Even the "newer" guys like Buddy Guy and Stevie Ray Vaughan and Hendrix and Paul Butterfield and plenty others (any women? Bonnie Raitt, maybe).
And at some point, inevitably, I found a record of John Lee Hooker, Live at Newport. Already well into middle age at the time of that record (we're talking late '60s here, my Dad has the record now), you could see him crouched over his guitar, picking out single-note lines and wearily talking about how goddamned heavy the world was, and how it was crushing him, one bad doing at a time. He sounded like a dog that'd bite your leg off if he wasn't so damn tired. I played that record, and a half-dozen others, over and over again. He sang like a tree about to fall in the forest, too tired to yell for help. He played guitar like every note marked his final heartbeat. Why do some suburban-raised white kids go for this stuff? (Something about life experience and someone else suffering so you don't have to, I'd guess.)
Whatever. I went whole hog for it. Even though I couldn't find anyone willing to go with me, there wasn't going to be any way I was going to miss it. I mean, the guy was in his 70s - how much longer could he go?
The Diamond Club (now the Phoenix Concert Theater, la dee da) held about 800 people, and it was packed and sweaty despite it being cool outside. (I can't remember the season, for some reason). Jeff Healey opened the night, and I remember thinking, gawd, he's drunk, as he stood up at one point and stepped on his guitar cord and kicked it out of his guitar, and then dropped to the floor and crawled around, sheepishly schlepping his blind half-pissed self around on his hands and knees trying to feel for the end of the cord, and the band vamped for what felt like forever and every sweaty will in the place was pointed laser like at his faltering hands, willing him to reach just another inch over, just one more inch, no not that way, the other way, then - yes!
And he blazed through the rest of the set like he had something to make up for. Healey's great, but that too is a digression.
After he finished, there was a long break, and by the time the lights went down for the second time, it was almost midnight, and I know I wasn't the only one thinking, geez, this must be late for the old man, even considering that he does it all the time and everything.
Then the band came out, and it was a pretty big band, seven or eight pieces, and they played a couple of songs without John Lee, fine, tight, workmanlike, everyone got a solo, nothing slow, they were into getting everyone back up & pumped and ready for the man himself.
Then he got walked out into the middle of the stage, and the place went nuts, but my god he was tired-looking. He slumped into his chair, someone put the guitar in his lap, and while the band wailed and went nuts all around him, he picked out a couple of notes, and basically took a couple of songs to get his bearings on the stage. It was a little creepy.They didn't let him play by himself, which was the one thing I was really hoping for. They did do "Crawlin' Kingsnake" and "Boom Boom" and "Boogie Chillen" and even "One Bourbon One Scotch One Beer," all of which you've probably heard done by George Thorogood or someone at some point. Everything was great. Clearly the band was having the time of their lives playing with their hero, and when he opened his mouth to sing, that million-year-old devil's-warning voice was still there, still stopped everyone in mid-boogie, kept everyone from forgetting why we were there in the first place.
After the show, I figured I should at least try and meet him. I know it was intrusive, but I knew I'd never get the chance again, and he was someone I really, really wanted to meet.
I made friends with this guy who flew all the way from Holland to see this show, and he was flying back the next day. I don't remember much else about him, but the two of us waited for a couple of hours in the alleyway beside the Diamond club, waiting for him to materialize, and when he finally did, all I could think was --
Like, completely - the same tired slightly pissed off look, the squinty glare, the round body weathered hard by years of concentrated repetitive hard work, and when I shook his hand, for that was all I really wanted to do, his fingers were little round sausages, completely unsuited for the task they were now asked to do, certainly not the fingers of a legendary guitar hero. His grip was strong, though, and he was clearly uninterested in doing anything other than going to sleep at this point. He signed an autograph for the Dutch guy (in his passport, which I thought was way cool for all kinds of reasons), and it wasn't long after that that his star broke and he won his Grammy and became famous all over again for the first time, and I'm glad he got to spend the last 15 years of his life getting the respect he so righteously deserved.
And even though I'm not the blooze freak I used to be in college, I will never, ever get tired of listening to him. I hope.
- Tony Hightower