Ain't Bad for a Pink

by Sandra Gibson

  Zoe Johnson. (4)

  Zoe will confront my tendency to be depressive, and to be dejected if things are not going well. I have always needed a safety net and she challenges this because she believes it gets in the way of living spontaneously.

  I think Pete needs to find a way to keep his assets without being trapped by them.

  Zoe Johnson. (5)

  In this respect she is a hippie, a gypsy, and I don’t quite go along with this. Zoe does have a safety net: she has mine. I don’t know whether she needs it though. I’ve a feeling that Zoe would survive no matter what.

  Zoe is curious and sexually aware and like the other women in my life she has enjoyed wearing alluring clothes. I have some photographs of her that I took at her Nantwich flat which show she is aware of her attractiveness – a combination of temptress and schoolgirl. She has been happy to initiate sexual behaviour irrespective of circumstances: in spite of the shock of my first sexual encounter, a public glimpse of pubic hair no longer frightens me!

  Yet it took Zoe and I thirty-odd years to get together as a couple, though we had been friends since the age of nine at primary school. This is how it happened. Whilst performing at The Wheatsheaf in Stoke in the early Nineties, I met Zoe again. Throughout the years we had remained good friends even though we were with other partners. It was not a chance encounter; Zoe had heard I was playing there and went to see me.

  A few meetings later Zoe invited me back to her flat for coffee, “no strings attached”. Not a chance. Part way through the evening when Zoe had left the room, I leapt into her bed and in true rock’n’roll fashion didn’t leave it for several days. We lived in Zoe’s Nantwich flat together and got married four years later. Then we lived partly in the flat above the shop and partly on our canal boat. Nowadays we have a new boat on which we live permanently.

  I have learnt that I can be naïve and blind when it comes to the complexities of relationships, especially with women and at times I must seem arrogant but I am basically quite a shy, reserved person who has learnt to be straightforward by being a performer. Although I have sought fun this didn’t mean I was superficial. I have felt grief when relationships have ended; I need companionship and I fear loneliness. Sexual relationships have sustained me; they’ve also scarred me. With Zoe things never go unsaid and I have found some balance. Our marriage works because we were first friends.

  Sustaining Music

  Where Else Will It Be Represented?

  Given that music has been at the core of my life and being, I feel depressed about the status of the country blues and my position as its champion. I knowingly chose a genre with a limited following, with no regrets because it certainly helped me, and you’d think I’d be used to it by now but what do you make of an event advertised as the “Nantwich Jazz Blues & Music Festival”? (6) Have jazz and blues been re-categorised as something other than music?

  It doesn’t surprise me though. Playing authentic country blues for which I have been praised and congratulated hasn’t earned me the right to a suitable venue in this festival or a commensurate fee. Now I know I’m not a mediocre musician so why when festivals promoting jazz and blues come round am I only offered a pub venue? I play blues. Where else will it be represented for fuck’s sake?

  Is this about style over substance? Is this about success being measured in terms of wealth and fame? Why, as a well-known acoustic musician was I not invited to the recent local acoustic festival? Most of those performing had made their achievements through pop music and then transferred it to the acoustic guitar. So I can only conclude that this acoustic pop is preferred to music I’ve interpreted from the acoustic tradition of early blues.

  I’ve also encountered some professional jealousy. Some people thought I made the Georgia trips up and that I’d done the recording at home. If only.

  I made choices I don’t regret and I have to accept the consequences – it isn’t this I’m ranting about. I suppose I’ve been naively surprised by the narrow acceptance of mediocrity and the pervasive power of commercialism.

  Rejected Flautist

  There’s certainly a lot of narrow-mindedness in musical circles. Like all the instruments I own or have owned, the lap steel awakens a musical memory. In 1991 a friend invited me to a bluegrass club in Chester. On arrival I was confronted with a very big notice: ONLY FLAT BACK MANDOLINS AND SLIDE GUITAR. MUST BE PLAYED FLAT ON THE KNEE. I had my wooden National with me and dutifully conformed to the club’s musical rules when I played along and all went well.

  Towards the end of the evening a couple of students arrived; one asked if he could play his flute. His request was denied. I met up with them at the bar and it appeared that the flautist was just back from Ireland where he had been playing with James Galway. I said he could play with me if he wanted. Even allowing for the fact that musicians often tell lies I was impressed when he didn’t even ask me what key we would be using. I did “Stormy Weather” as a blues song with the student accompanying me. Afterwards I was asked not to attend the club again. My musical heresy had me ejected from the bluegrass fraternity but I didn’t care. You have to rebel against musical fascism, especially when such inflexibility would deny an audience the pleasure of hearing two good musicians playing together. There was no nastiness, though.

  I knew that this would be the consequence. There is a narrowness in bluegrass music that isn’t present in jazz and blues. I can appreciate it’s very clever but it never seems very deep – it seems mechanical. I don’t like that pedantic monotonous beat through the whole tune; bluegrass music doesn’t swing and this is its deficiency. Like heavy metal, it’s a question of who can fit the most notes in.

  I just don’t like big notices with the word MUST in them.

  Is It Because I is White?

  I’m aware that a white boy playing the blues is anomalous. I’m a highly educated white westerner born into the privileges of the post-war welfare state. We have allotments but we don’t go in for much sharecropping in Crewe. I haven’t had a life of rural poverty and oppression, with no education and very few prospects. I haven’t been hungry; I haven’t jumped on freight trains; I haven’t been treated as a second-class citizen. Though things get a bit rough in Crewe on a Friday night I haven’t feared the lynch mob or the nocturnal drive-by shooting. The musicians who were my role models lived in a totally different world and that is why it amazes me that the path of a Crewe lad with a racing bike crossed the path of a man from a Third World shack in Tennessee who went on tour carrying a cardboard suitcase.

  I have two main points to make. Being white is bound to have an effect but I play the blues as well as I can, with as much authenticity as I can. It’s all about communicating our common humanity. Feeling has no colour. Secondly I think I have done a good job as a bridge between the country blues and a white audience. Perhaps I have made it more accessible – without watering it down – than a black performer could.

  But my reservations about being white have prevented me from composing any music with lyrics, though people have remarked on the vivid quality of descriptions in my Georgia journal. Any lyrics I attempted seemed to lack authenticity; it didn’t feel right; that’s why compositions such as “Blues In A”, “Just Jazz”, “Magnolia And Honeysuckle”, “Minor Chill” and “Deaf Jake’s Blag” are essentially instrumental doodles. Perhaps I needed the detachment of expressing my emotions through the words of others rather than my own.

  I’ve been asked where I would place myself in relation to the history of music. I’m a folk musician: part of the country blues oral tradition – a tradition that changed and evolved with each new interpretation of the songs that were held in common.

  I’ve never considered myself to be a great guitar player: I’m a singer, an entertainer, a communicator. Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan are not good musicians but the eloquence of their words cancels this out. I love their stories even though I don’t necessarily like their voices or musicianship. Dylan’s lyrics are poetry; Guthrie makes a comple
x political story accessible to an ordinary person.

  It was a long time before I accepted my own skills as a musician; I didn’t feel worthy of even carrying the guitar cases of my musical heroes. And I still don’t. This gives me the impetus to practise and practise and practise. My career has been forty-five years of musical hard graft and ten minutes of musical luck. You can continue to learn by changing your style but you never get past a certain point. I wouldn’t want to change the style; I need help to take it further. I do pick up the odd chord or note from other people – they might be a student or someone not very good at all but you have to be open and humble to spot the opportunity to learn.

  Sonata In E And Other Compliments

  External appraisal of your musicianship can give some measure of your musical standing in spite of personal doubts.

  When I was thirty, John Aaron – a highly regarded classical musician – rated me enough to approach me to do some concerts, the idea being that different aspects of guitar music would be displayed in classical and blues. I recall the incongruity in the programme: on the one hand, “Sonata In E” and on the other hand, “Down ‘n’ Out Blues” and so on. The first concert in Chester was well attended by guitar freaks and it went well. By the second concert in Newcastle-under-Lyme I have more confidence: I’m running in the race. John had also changed the running order so that he ended the gig whereas I had ended the first gig and that had worked. The second running order did not work: John could not hack the last spot. In retrospect changing the order was a crucial mistake.

  Mixing the musical genres was innovative and courageous but although I enjoyed the experience and liked playing in decent venues I feel it didn’t quite work. The small, select audience was a bit biased in my favour. Perhaps the musical combination was too radical for most tastes. We continued to visit each other’s houses and play music together though.

  My father-in-law Donald Purcell gave lessons on his grand piano in the shop when it was closed in the evenings. Our fascinating musical conversations began because this classical pianist loved my music. He could appreciate the subtle musical differences made possible by picking rather than strumming a guitar: we both spoke the same musical language. Donald said Beethoven changed music more radically than anyone else. I recorded him playing Beethoven’s “Passionata”. He was about seventy-six and although he apologized for the odd mistake, the dexterity still there in age gave me the optimism to carry on playing. I took Donald to the Victoria Hall, Stoke, to hear Elgar. What he kept from me, as a surprise, was the fact that Yehudi Menuhin would be conducting.

  I know very little about classical music but these experiences with my father-in-law encouraged my latent interest in it. I had attended a Beethoven concert in Manchester in the Sixties. What with the choir and the orchestra, it was louder than a rock concert. The next minute you could hear a pin drop. “Will the audience refrain from coughing and sneezing, thus creating a pianissimo?” it said on the programme. If you listen to Beethoven with a fresh ear it’s a very simple melody line expanded by complex harmonies and different registers: instruments like piccolos having a high register whilst the cello has a low register. It takes the mind to other places, like the time Tony Hatch made Des listen for the quarter tones.

  Sometimes people ask me if I am a “musician’s musician” and the answer is a conditional yes: I can also turn on a party when I want to.

  Non-musicians have also rated me enough to try to further my career. Graham Roberts is a dynamic person who has lived all over the world. He wrote to the BBC about me and gave us a signed David Shepherd print for Zoe’s work for Tanzed. I was very touched by his appraisal of me.

  Lurking in South Cheshire is a well-kept secret, for at 80 Edleston Road is a shop called Custom Amplification which, apart from selling amplifiers, has its walls lined with electric and acoustic guitars including Gibson, Dobro, National – wood and steel bodied, 12 string, etc. Presiding over this Aladdin’s cave is a 51 years old bearded guru called Pete “Snakey Jake” Johnson – a South Cheshire gentleman, full of character. He is also the best British country blues guitarist I have heard – he plays bottleneck/resonator as well as straight steel acoustic. Whilst there are many accomplished blues players in Britain, Pete has that rare quality that Abdullah Ibrahim always looks for: “you can hear the ‘cry’ in his voice”.

  I think that Pete would make a great guest on either Paul Jones’ Thursday show or Bob Harris’ Saturday show, both playing and reminiscing about the old American bluesmen that he has met – these include Sleepy John Estes, Jimmy Witherspoon, Mississippi Fred McDowell, Roosevelt Sykes. Sister Rosetta Tharpe and John Lee Hooker (some of the old bluesmen used to stop over in Crewe).(7)

  I also appreciated John Darlington’s tribute.

  Pete Johnson has been the fulcrum for music in the area. I remember him saying, “I’m not looking for a piece of immortality; I’m not looking to educate people. All I want is for you guys to take my music to other places and make it your own”. He had more influence on any musician around here than any pop star. Pete Johnson washed over you gently and with the force of the sea. Without being forceful, he left an impression. For everything he hasn’t done there’s stuff he has done. People are playing Pete Johnson’s music all over the world – people who haven’t even heard the originals . (8)

  Given our diverse musical backgrounds it’s hard to believe that Andy Boote and I found common ground.

  I’m unimpressed by the cold virtuoso performance. There’s an academic approach: almost over-the-top virtuosity. Speed is OK but you need heart. I like speed but it must be melodic. In this, I agree with Pete’s view of musical performance: heart is all. Pete was once asked to play Hendrix’s Purple Haze. He got some of the notes wrong, but he got the essence of Hendrix.

  So, the friendship between me and Pete Johnson is based on a mutual passion for certain kinds of music, a respect for one another’s specific musical knowledge and a shared belief that a musician must play from the heart. Friendship with Pete Johnson increased my admiration for him. God this man has got passion!

  Andy Boote. (9)

  I like that country blues and that South Side Muddy Waters stuff. I don’t think blues should be polite. It might be about feeling good about feeling bad and it might be about swagger and in your face. I do rate Pete Johnson very highly. I’d always turn out to hear him play that BK Turner number: he does a great, great thing.

  Ade White. (10)

  A couple of years ago I had a phone call from Ray Bernard who lives in Alsager and collects, buys, sells and mends instruments. His original interest was in banjos and that is what brought him into contact with me because I used to collect them. Ray is the country’s leading authority on the ukulele, playing both pop and classical. A lifetime’s hobby. He was a friend of George Harrison – the connection being their common passion for the ukulele. Ray Bernard was ringing to ask me for some advice about a ukulele with which he was having a problem. I was a bit surprised.

  So, although I am a white musician I have established some credentials for my claim to be taken seriously as a bluesman and made a sustained effort to uphold the importance of the country blues.

  Who And Where And What?

  When I look at the local live music scene I feel quite depressed both for the future of country blues and for music generally. I suppose I’m a grumpy old man but I’m disappointed by the current generation of young musicians, partly because they don’t seem to have any fight in them. You wouldn’t catch them balancing their amp on their bike or playing a homemade guitar! I started my first band at the age of thirteen on the proceeds of part time jobs, playing mainly for school functions and in village halls before graduating to youth clubs and then pubs. Early rock ‘n’ roll music – three chords and you’re the main guitarist – spelt sophistication to an enthusiastic youthful audience; all you needed then was someone with a bass guitar and then someone who could afford a drum kit. Then, if you could get beyond the falling out, you
were on your way.

  My band is starting up. We’re waiting for our drummer to get a drum kit. My best friend asked me to be in it – he came up with the name, Omblivious. The name must have come into his head. There was another band he was in called Inslave but it fell apart because everyone kept moving places – falling out. The bass guitarist decided he wanted to be the guitarist; the guitarist wanted to be the drummer. And they weren’t very good. I wasn’t part of that.

  Sam Molony. (11)

  I entered the pub scene already fairly confident, competent and with an established fanbase. At the same time I was innovating: reinterpreting the music, mastering slide guitar, finger picking blues and experimenting with jazz-inspired music. I owned a van, three amps and various instruments before I was twenty and I would soon buy my own house. And throughout all this I had fought my father’s opposition.

  I think it does you good to have to fight for something. The passion to circumvent all obstacles has to be there. I haven’t observed a similar drive in the current lot. I’m unimpressed by the “Me” generation funded by indulgent parental credit – they’re soft, feeble and too old. They should be thirteen not twenty. Twenty is too old! They just haven’t got the balls and I’m not saying any of this scornfully – more in a resigned way. Young people coming up don’t have the attitude to succeed. It doesn’t bode well if your parents pay for your equipment and then you refuse even to carry it out to the car, does it?

  As an established musician and source of all amps I used to enjoy the company of people younger than myself. An experienced musician has useful knowledge for an aspiring musician. As the Skunk Band changed and evolved it was the young musicians who helped keep it vibrant. But the up and coming musicians no longer up and come and this saddens me. Perhaps this generation is more concerned with the paraphernalia of DJing or with the seductive power of electronic music. People buy their instruments on eBay these days; I can’t understand this – I would want to handle the instrument; I would want to talk about it in a music shop with someone who knew about it.