Halloween with the Boogie Man

with audio and transcription

Friends,

Recently, my UK manager Chris Metzler came over from London to go through some old cassettes and ephemera looking for live shows or studio outtakes, etc., for a Green on Red box set.

We were down in the basement digging through boxes when he held up a cassette that was labeled, “John Lee Hooker: Halloween,” and asked, “What’s this?”

And I said, “Oh man. I haven’t thought about that in years. But I know exactly what that is! That’s from the time we celebrated Halloween with John Lee Hooker.”

Backstory: Sometime during the ’90s, my friend Nicolas, who was a writer for the French Guitarist magazine flew in from Paris to interview John Lee Hooker. He had a set appointment to visit John Lee at his home in San Carlos, organized through a publicist.

He was given directives. A kind of “rules and regulations” guide on how to interview John Lee Hooker. With suggestions along the lines of “Yes, it’s remarkable how old he is, but it’s best not to ask him his age.” (By the way, that checks out as my old friend Eric Beckman used to work at Rosebud Music, the agency that booked Hooker. He told me John Lee always wanted them to use a promotional photo from the ’60s. He just liked the way he looked 30 years younger, apparently.)

I hear ya.

Nicolas’s first language is French, obviously. Naturally, he’s got some kind of accent. I wouldn’t call it thick or anything, but yeah. So maybe between that and the rules and regulations, he began to have some trepidation about the interview. So Nicolas asked Stephie and I if we’d be willing to tag along. We didn’t think twice.

Photograph of John Lee Hooker by Paul Natkin

We drove to John Lee Hooker’s house in San Carlos at the bottom of a cul-de-sac. He invited us in and we sat around his kitchen table. Nicolas placed a cassette recorder on the table and pressed record.

First thing you hear is Hooker’s voice: “Three pieces—he looked at me and said, ‘Is that all?’”

That’s how the tape opens.

And John Lee goes on to recount how before we got there, apparently a trick-or-treater came to the door, and when John Lee dropped some candy into the trick-or-treater’s bag, the kid was unimpressed and said, “Is that all?” And the trick-or-treater’s mother said to the kid, “Shut up!”

When the doorbell went off again, Hooker looked down at the tape recorder and said, “You’re going to get that, too.”

And that doorbell continued to ring throughout the evening. It was Halloween after all. There was nobody at John Lee’s house except him. And us. There was a little bowl with some Hershey’s Kisses. And when the doorbell rang, John Lee turned to Stephanie, giggled, and said, “Ah, you got a job now.” 

We were all cracking up. But no one giggles quite like John Lee Hooker, who was clearly amused by the whole situation. But also with kids continuing to show up on the porch and ring the bell, he was somewhat determined to shut it down at a certain point.

He made a point of saying that we needed to turn the light out at 8:30 or 9:00. Or they’ll keep coming. That comes up a few times throughout the visit. “We should probably shut that light out now,” he says a number of times.

And this: “Long as they see the light, they gonna come.”

Anyway, there were so many remarkable things about the visit. The Hot Spot film had just come out.

The soundtrack featured John Lee Hooker, Taj Mahal, and Miles Davis all jamming together. There are references to that. And to the duets record that he was promoting at the time. John Lee talks about Miles Davis. Says, “I'll never forget he told me that. He said, "You's the funkiest man alive when it come to the blues." He said, "You can go deeper than anybody." 

And like a lot of people, John Lee has a Bob Dylan imitation that he does. Which is, as you can imagine, completely hysterical. 

He talks about his influences. And the fact that he never heard people like Robert Johnson, etc. And a lot about his stepfather being a massive influence on him. And some of his more famous songs like the one recorded by “that guy that died in Paris.” (HINT: they buried him there.) Oh! that guy. Dead Jim!

Nicolas, of course being very French, comes right out of the gate, very direct, with, “Your new record is a duets album. How come there’s no Black people?” John Lee addresses that. In a fun, entertaining way. Says that “cattle are all kinds of colors, but they all like to eat grass” or something.

We talk about how prolific he was as a writer. He seemed to enjoy hearing that. And to demonstrate, he gently pounded his fist on the table and improvised a song for his goddaughter. (“I’ve got a goddaughter, she’s about 18 years old. She’s Jewish.”) I mean, surprise, surprise… it’s a real song.

Anyway, here it is condensed and edited for clarity. If you want to listen, you can hear it here.

Halloween with the Boogie Man in all its glory.

Also, about the fine art of newslettering? In case you haven’t noticed, I’m still making this up as I go. Why not become a paid subscriber today if you’re not already? If not, you can always donate to Doctors Without Borders. They’ve been providing food, water, and health care around the globe for 50 years. Or an abortion fund or any gun violence prevention group. They can ban abortions but can’t seem to regulate guns. 

You can also do none of the above and just carry on. We are happy to have you.

Onward,

    -CP

---

John Lee Hooker: Three pieces. He looked at me, he said, "That all?" Still got the kids coming up the block too. I've dropped three of them in the bag. He said, "Is that all?" His Mom said, "Shut up." Yeah-

Stephie Finch: There's only a few left here.

JLH: What, are you guys from the city?

CP: I live in San Francisco, and Nicolas is from Paris.

Nicolas Ungemuth: Yeah. I just arrived from France. So sorry I'm a little bit late.

JLH: Lemme see. I was there about, my last tour about six months ago, I think it was. Yeah. Beautiful city.

NU:  Very famously, yeah.

[Doorbell rings]

JLH: Uh oh.

SF: I’ll get it

NU: Lots of kids.

JLH: {Looks at tape recorder} You be picking up that.

CP: That's all right. That's appropriate.

Children: Trick or treat. 

JLH: Yeah. We put the light out pretty soon on them, about 8:30, 9:00. Long as they see the light, they going to come. {To Stephie} Well, you got a job then.

SF: I got a  job? Oh, there's only about five left in here.

JLH: Now, what is this for? She told me and I forgot. Television?

NU: No. The French TV is coming tomorrow.

JLH: Oh yeah. Right. Tomorrow.

NU: French magazine.

[Doorbell rings]

JLH: Oh

Children: Trick or treat. Hi. Ooh, Kisses!

JLH: Pretty soon, we going cut the light out.

SF: Do you have more Kisses over there?

JLH: Oh. I think there's a whole bunch at the door. Yeah. Here's some over here. Come over here-

SF: I'll refill it.

JLH: ... and get this bag here. Take the whole bag.

SF: I'll try and keep it quiet over here.

JLH: So, this is for...

CP: This is for  Guitarist Magazine.

NU: Yeah. We can talk about different things. For example, on your record, on the last one. You had lots of famous guests. Most of them are white people. How do you explain it?

JLH: They just people. To me, I said it a million times and I'll say it again. I don't know how to tell you this, but I'm going to say it. God made one race. It's the human race. He made all colors. You see cattle. You see white cattle, spotted cattle, yellow cattle. They all eat grass. They're just people. So these people they're all the same. I don't look at it. If you can play the blues, I don't care who you are. If you was a dog and play the blues, I don't. So I was about to get into that.

NU: Okay. So you think anybody can play the blues?

JLH: Not anybody. If you know it, if you know how, as long as you've got talent, you can. Anybody can sing, but anybody can't sing the blues because you've got to have a feeling. To do that, you've got to feel it. And there's a lot of young people that got the feeling. The color don't feel, it's that what's in here feel. In here. So it don't matter who you are, because blues don't have any color. You can't even see the blues, you just hear the blues. So all races ain't but one race, it's the human race and it's every individual.

See Blues is a thing that- people think blues is a letdown, but it's not. You think you've got to be hungry, broke, and raggedy. This ain't the blues, no. See rich folks have the blues too. A lot of them. Do you know why? Because they've got their problems for they don't want to lose what they've got and they can't sleep at night for they're trying to get more and to hold on to what they've got. If you look at it right, that's the blues. And the poor man, he deals with it too. But that don't say, because he's poor and he got a lot of money, don't say he got to stop singing the blues. Look at me.

[Doorbell rings]

Children: I don’t care. Trick or treat.

CP: Can we talk a little bit about songwriting and your approach to writing, because to this day, a lot of people, a lot of musicians, what they're doing is, they're writing songs so they can have a repertoire to play on stage. And sometimes when they get that repertoire together, then they stop writing. But there were certain periods of your career where you were so prolific, it was just, it could make anybody's head spin. And to this day, it seems like it's just your life blood and that you can go in with Miles Davis and Taj Mahal and on that session and just put into words something that I think the average guy, even a good writer, would have to just labor over. It seems to come so natural to you. Are you aware what kind of gift that is?

JLH: Yes, I am very aware. I would say it's a gift from God. I don't know who God is, but it's a gift that I was born with and a gift that my stepfather, when I was about 11 or 12 years old, it come from his music. What I'm doing today, my music that I'm playing, that's what he taught me. And I'm very blessed. Like you said, just a few people can try to play like John Lee Hooker, but they can't.

It's something about, I wonder myself, what do I have that everybody try to do it? They come close, but they cannot do it like me. I don't try. It just comes out. I don't go by the lyrics or rhyming. But whatever I sing, it makes sense. But I don't go about trying to rhyme the song, make it real neat and perfect. You try to make the blues perfect, it ain't the blues. It's something that you're trying to make perfect on paper. And it come from here and here, just as you feel it.

So that's what a lot of musicians don't understand about the blues. I could make it perfect, if I wanted it to be perfect. I could play direct perfect if I wanted to, but I don't want to do that. That wouldn't be-

CP: Well, I don't think you should change a thing.

JLH: Oh, I wouldn't.

CP: But you have been incredibly prolific, and in fact there were periods where, there were times when you made records for this company, you made records for that company.

JLH: Oh, yeah.

CP: It seems to me that it didn't really bother you because you always knew that you just had this well that you could reach the bucket down and dip into any time.

JLH: Oh, yeah. Anytime I want.

CP: So you're always going to come out ahead.

JLH: Oh, yeah. I could always reach in the bucket or whatever and see what I could pull out. At that time when I was doing it for these record companies, all these different names, and I know where you're coming from. I had this guy name Elmer Barbee. I was real young then. I must've been, well I wasn't even recording. I had these songs. I'd ring Elmer Barbee, 19, 20 years old and I'd just come up from Detroit. Or come up from Mississippi into Detroit, end up in Memphis and Cincinnati. Went into Detroit, I was about 19. And I was looking around. I just got up on him, his name was Elmer Barbee. And he was managing me. And I was so fantastic during that era, they said I didn't really know how famous I was. And I still don't know today. When I did got a record contract and got real popular, real hot. I was the hottest blues singer out and here comes every record company wanted something on me. And he said, "Come on, kid. I've got a good deal for you."

And I'd say, "Yeah? What is it?"

He'd say, "I can make you a lot of money."

So I had this contract. I wasn't allowed to use my real name. And he said, "Oh, kid. I'll give you a name."

And I said, "Well, okay."

So he just pulled a name out the hat and give it to me. He'd come get me out the bed at night. "We've got a name, so let's go to the studio."

I was like, "Why so late?"

"Can't nobody notice."

CP: So you're releasing records under different names?

JLH: Yeah.

CP: But the thing was, is that you were never tapped out, to this day. They can't tap you out. The well will not run dry.

JLH: No, it won't.

CP: And to me, that's fascinating.

JLH: No, it never run dry.

CP: When I look at other artists like say Chuck Berry, and he wrote such great songs in the '50s.

JLH: Oh yeah, 

CP:  Songs on a level with, I don't care if it's Gershwin or Hank Williams or Bob Dylan, no one could touch the songs that he wrote. But it seems that when he got to the point that he had his stage show together and his stage repertoire, he just stopped writing.

JLH: Yeah, he wasn't down. I'll be riding along in my car, in my room, laying down, in the bathtub. I can just write a song just like that [snaps fingers]. You can say a word. Say something. And I can take the word that you said, make a song out of it. 

[DOORBELL RINGS]

Children: Trick of treat!

JLH: Cut the light out pretty soon!

CP: Well, my favorite song on The Healer is "I Had a Dream."

JLH: Ooh, yeah.

CP: That was just so beautiful, and I was so glad that they didn't put anything else on it, except for the bass and the kick and the snare drum and just you playing that waltz on guitar. It is so lovely.

JLH: Oh boy. That's so beautiful.

CP: And your guitar playing on that is just, I can hear your fingers touching the strings.

JLH: Yeah, it was. I wrote that one at night laying in my bed. So I had a dream. It come to me as an idea from Martin Luther King. He said, "I had a dream," so I'm going to write a song about it. I had it entirely different than the way he said it. My dream... something like that... everybody dreaming the past. You have dreams at night. And then anytime you're going to go to sleep, you're having all this beautiful time in your sleep, in your dreams. You're out there having a beautiful time.

When you wake up, it's gone.

The spirit is back in you. But you're out there, you're dreaming that you're in the past, that you're giving that your old town used to be, you're back together again. That's in your dream, and you wake up and she's not there. And all that come to me, and that's the way I write songs.

Tonight I was here in the kitchen, fixing some lunch, me and my goddaughter. I've got a goddaughter, she's about 18 years old. I’m just humming. And she said something about, "I met this strange guy, John. He wanted to kiss me and wanted to come home with me."

I said, "Oh, no. You can't. You don't know him." I said, "Don't do that."

She said, "I know." She says, "He said he could kiss my lipstick off."

I said, "You don't wear lipstick."

She says, "I know."

And I took that and made a song out of it, said, "I'm coming home. Don't wear your lipstick, because we're going to kiss the night away." {singing} Don't wear no lipstick tonight. I'm coming home. Don't wear no lipstick. I'm going to kiss the night away. Me and you, gonna hug and kiss the night away. Don't wear no lipstick, because it won't do no good. We're going to kiss the night way. Don't wear no lipstick, because it's no good. They're like, don't wear no lipstick, because you'll kiss it all away. When you get to kissing, it ain't going to be there, so don't put it on.

NU: About your stepfather, Willie Moore, you said that all your music come from him.

JLH: Well, my talent come from him, I wouldn't say all my lyrics. I write, but with the music that I make and the sound come from him. Yeah.

NU: Yeah. And lots of your early songs only have one chord, which is very different from the blues of Charley Patton and Blind Lemon Jefferson, and your stepfather came from Louisiana, where they had the different blues from people like Robert Pete Williams playing that style too.

JLH: Yeah, well, my stepfather he had his own thing and I learned from him. Sometimes he had the one chord thing too, and most of my stuff is like that based upon that. I could do some of any kind of music if I really wanted to. I can do other things if I really wanted, but I don't want to. Like I told you, I just want to stay just like I want to stay because there's so many young rock groups that are doing my stuff. Well, they're trying to do it.

They really copy after me and they analyze me more than they do any other blues singer. And so I'm very pleased with them doing that. I'm very happy that they love my music so much that they all want to do some of it. Like Robert Plant and all these other bands, the Stones. Some of them end up doing it, and I very proud they be doing it. Song called "Dimples," a lot of them did that. You heard the song called "Dimples?"

NU: Yeah, of course.

JLH: Well, a lot of them do that. Robert Plant does the hell out of that.

NU: You met Blind Lemon Jefferson when you were 19 years old.

JLH: No, I didn't. No, I wished I could've. I never met him. Really, I never met any of those guys. My stepfather met them all. He talked about them and I never did meet them because at the time, I wasn't old enough to get out to the honky-tonk places where he would go. It was unfortunate, I never did meet any of them. Robert Johnson, none of them.

NU: Were those people big influences on blues players at the time? People like Robert Johnson or Blind Lemon Jefferson, yeah?

JLH: Well, I assume they was, yeah. I'm sure, but right now they are more big influences. Everybody's digging back, getting them old blues singers now with the youth and didn't even think about it. Everybody's trying to do Robert Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson, I mean the young guys, you get this stuff. Which is great, bringing those guys up, make people remember who they are. They were so great back then and nobody never knew. The younger generation never did hear Blind Lemon Jefferson and stuff like that, and Charley Patton. It's nice that lots of them know about them. A lot of them know about Robert Johnson now because he's real popular now. Which, a long time ago they didn't know. He wasn't doing his thing. Nobody wasn't doing their music too much, and now everybody wants to be a blues singer, pick up a guitar and kind of want to do something by Robert Johnson.

CP: Well it was, back then from what I understand, the records were just regional. It's not like today.

JLH: You ain't kidding, it's become smaller.

CP: And magazines and Associated Press and fax machines. So when you made records, they were probably just regional.

JLH: Yeah, regional.

CP: And they didn't get much further than the area. Chicago had a sound and Sam Phillips was cutting stuff in Memphis and licensing it to Chicago labels and there were things going on.

JLH: It stayed there, but now...

CP: So regionally, music all had a different... Music was all about geography and if Charley Patton played the minstrel shows, his music may have been a little different and the people he hung around. Did you learn a lot of music off records?

JLH: Yeah.

CP: Because this is something that a lot of folklorists purists maybe don't want to hear. They think that everybody went out into the Delta and found this music and pulled it out of the air.

JLH: No. No.

CP: And what was really happening is not a lot different than the English guys, and you were just learning off records.

JLH: You learn it off of records. That's true, you learn it off of records.

CP: So what were some of your records that you really, were your prized records when you were...

JLH: Well, you mean way back?

NU: Yeah.

JLH: Somebody you've never heard of, I don't think you have. You might have, I don't know. This guy, he never was well known. It was a pianist called Leroy Carr. He was one of my favorites, some fantastic piano. Another one, well, you heard of Charley Patton.

CP: Sure.

JLH: Him. Blind Lemon, I never did get off on him, I liked him but them two, Charley Patton and Leroy Carr and there's another one. I wouldn’t say that he was, in those days, he was kind of modern, Sonny Boy Williamson.

CP: Oh, yeah.

JLH: So I wouldn't put him back that far, but he was one of my favorites.

NU: How did you come to the boogie rhythm?

JLH: I just picked it up. Everybody was doing it. I originated that. It come from "Boogie Chillen," really.

CP: Well, no one argues that that's pretty much your lick. You were talking earlier about how you could do other kinds of blues, other kinds of things, but you don't really feel the need to. But there's a few people that have. It's like you hear the opening lick from "Johnny B. Goode" or you hear that boogie lick or you hear that... There's very few people out there, as artists, that have a thing they can call their own.

JLH: They got their own thing.

CP: It only has to be this big.

JLH: You ain’t kidding. You're right. There's very few out there with something they can call their own. Most of them got it from someplace else, it's just a sound they used. You try to sound like him, but it seems like if you hear one, seems like you've done heard all of them. A lot of them sound alike, but nobody sounds like John Lee Hooker do. I got my own little thing and that's why it stands out. You said it.

NU: And that thing is everywhere, it's infiltrated popular music.

JLH: Yeah. Now, you'd think there was a lot of guitar players, a lot faster guitar, real fast. But when you usually hear one, they all sound almost alike. Don't get me wrong, they're good. They're fantastic, they're fantastic guitar players, they're something else. They're really good, but they all sound alike, they got that same thing.

NU: Yeah. How do you see the future of the blues because now young people won't listen very much to the blues? Because as he said, lots of people play like other people, but you don't have new John Lee Hookers or great people who have one style.

JLH: That's right. When we are gone, which we are going to go, everybody going to go. When we are gone, you said where is the blues going? Is that what you're saying?

NU: Yeah.  

JLH: It ain't going nowhere, but it won't be like we're here to carry on, but they'll carry on in their own way. And we'll never be forgotten, 200 years from now every generation will know something about John Lee Hooker. But it ain't going nowhere, it's going to be here. There won't be no Lightnin' Hopkins, Muddy Waters, Elmore James, Little Walter, old people like that, and B.B. King, Albert King. After we're all gone, blues is going to be here but it'll be blues but not like our blues. Maybe somebody'll come along, who knows, out of the bushes that's real funky and right now you can't and I can't say who, I can't, and you can't either. So who is this guy going to be when John Lee Hooker ain't doing this anymore? I don't know right now. But you don't know. But somebody may pop up, but right now, we don't know who it's going to be.

Who's it going to be? You don't know. But the blues ain't going nowhere, the blues going to always be here. The blues was here when the world was born. The blues was here when Eve and Adam was placed in the garden together, man and a woman. A man and a woman makes the blues, really. When the man gets lonely for the woman, he gets sad and lonely, he started humming something like the ... And the woman's the same way. So that's what makes the world go round. A woman will always be here, and a man will always be here, so the blues will always be here. 

The blues was here when the world was born, it's going to stay here.

CP: You're probably pretty familiar with Bob Dylan.

JLH: Oh yeah.

CP: One of the first gigs that he had was opening for you in the Village.

JLH: Yeah, oh, I've known him for years.

CP: When you talk about soul singers, I think Dylan's up there with anybody, really.

JLH: Oh yeah.

CP: I think he had a very —

JLH: Right up there.

CP: Yeah, a giant. I think he had a very R&B style, even, you can hear in the beginning that his phrasing was a little different, and that he was blending a lot of stuff together, and stirring it up. Do you remember anything about that?  Do you remember him being —

JLH: Me and Bob Dylan went way back. We had a lot of fun together, we did a lot of things together. And every time we'd get together we'd talk about the old days, New York and the Village. 20, 25 years ago, I run into his old girlfriend, and you ever heard of Susan, you might've heard the name Susan. And we was talking about, she went, "Oh, you and Bob Dylan used to party all night." And that's true. And I’m the first person that put him on the bandstand. At Folk City. Gertie's Folk City.

CP: Yeah.

JLH: And he would sit there, he'd bring his bottle of wine with him. He really liked his white wine. And I would bring a scotch then. When I'd go to the gig, I'd leave a bottle in the room at the hotel. So when we'd come back, I'd have my bottle, he'd have his bottle. He'd leave his bottle of wine in there. And we'd go down to the gig, Gerde’s Folk City, a little bar on the corner, I'd be playing by myself. Place'd be packed. Every night Bob and Susan would be there. So one night I got Bob on the bandstand. And him and Susan, she'd play the auto, the big old… Got a lot of strings on it, what you call them things?

CP: Autoharp?

JLH: Yeah, autoharp. And he'd play, and they sounded so good. Bob, whatever he had. And my manager, Albert Grossman, he gone now. He heard him, and he grabbed Bob right up, Albert Grossman, and recorded with Columbia, I think it was. And Bob never looked back.

CP: No.

JLH: So he's living in LA now, and every time we'd see each other, we'd talk about those days. (singing) "Remember that time I knocked on the door. It was a girly to go with? She'd get drunk, you'd got to just... we used to get drunk together, what ever happened to her?" "I don't know, Bob."I said, "Whatever happened to you and Suzie? You always used to fight in my place all the time." They used to fight, get drunk, bottles in the place, waiting for them to get back from the bar, because we couldn't get none out the bar to take with us. After hours, we have our midnight thing. Wouldn't go to bed.

We’d sit there, drink, party, play guitar, he blowing the harp, and the desk man was there, "Y'all got to shut up now and be quiet up there. You know better than that. Tell Bob to turn that harp down”.

 Them days, they were the good days then. He living in LA now, you know?

CP: I guess when he's not —

JLH: Oh yeah.

NU: He still plays a lot.

JLH: Oh yeah.

CP: Plays a lot.

JLH: I see him now and then, he was at that show, a Roy Orbison show, and he was there. And we played, and he was there. So I'd see him a few times, a lot of times I was down there. And I'd show him my place, he'd come out sometimes. He was supposed to be on one of my records, but he never did, and I never did get Bob Dylan. {singing} That's the way he sound, yeah.

NU: The song with the closest to your own, to your style is your version of Crawling King Snake with Keith Richards.

JLH: Oh yeah.

NU: How was the meeting?

JLH: How was the meeting? I been knowing Keith for years.

NU: Yeah?

JLH: And he know my agent, so they good friends. And he wanted to do Crawling King Snake with me, I said, "Hell yeah." I said, "Keith Richards?" I said, "Sure, I'd be a fool not to." You heard it?

NU: Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah.

JLH: He loved that song. And a lot of the blues singers did, there's a guy, he died in Paris, he did that too. What's his name?

CP: Guy who died in Paris?

JLH: They buried him there.

CP: Oh, Jim Morrison.

JLH: Yeah, Jim Morrison.

CP: That's right, of course, yeah. L.A. Woman album, yeah.

JLH: Yeah. He did that too. A lot of them did that “Crawling King Snake,” it's a very good song, a song I love. It's really neat. But Richards said, "I want to do that song with you," and I said, "Well, okay." So we did it in about, a week or two weeks later he come back into town, he come here to the house, he stay until about one o'clock in the morning. I had a little get-together for him, he come in, brought... Keith did come in the house and just, we’re fixing dinner, having dinner, playing the guitar. I invited some friends over. Most of the chicks were freaking out, because they'd never met one of the Stones. And then, they come in with the short skirts, he come in and Keith didn't look at them twice. They wanted Keith to know, when we get the pictures, there's about seven or eight of them. I called Wanda to see if she'd bring her little friend, and she'd bring her friend. "Oh, Keith could be down tonight." And people I didn't even invite come into the house. Couldn't hardly walk straight, skirts so tight. He said, "Did you invite all these people?" I said, "No." And we had just a lot of fun. We had some down-home food, greens, cornbread, chicken, and stuff like that. And he said, "Man, I ain't had a meal like this in a long time." He said, "You must've known I like this stuff," I said, "No," I said, "But you's a fool if you didn't." So he's a really nice person. He's such a gentleman. He's such a down to earth person.

You can cut that light off if you want.

SF: What's that?

JLH: You can cut the porch light.

SF: Okay. Someone wanted to come back for your autograph.

JLH: Oh, they did?

SF: Yeah.

JLH: Well, we'll wait a while then.

SF: Do you want me to leave the light on?

JLH: Yeah, wait a while for them to come back.

SF: You were talking, so I didn't…

JLH: Well, I don't know. Okay.

CP: I think one of the best things that's been going on, I think on that track, I think Keith got you to play with your heel, and they mic'd that up.

JLH: Yeah.

CP: When we talk about things, now you got two that we know are yours and only yours.

JLH: I didn't even notice that he did. I didn't notice, when I'm playing the record I didn't even notice I'm doing that—

CP: You don't even notice that your leg's going... They just snuck the microphone there.

JLH: It's automatic, I automatically do that when I'm playing. I automatically do that when I'm playing on the stage, whatever. It's just an automatic thing I've been doing all my life when I'm playing like that. So they just mic'd it, I guess I didn't even notice it.

CP: It's amazing how you took that, you did that one-chord thing, and that heel thing, and most of it is-

JLH: Yeah, I do —

CP: The lifeblood that just comes out of you, you could make it so much bigger.

JLH: Yeah. That's a great thing.

CP: Do you like playing live?

JLH: Yeah. I'd rather play live more than I do in the studio. Because then I got all these other people there. You did what you want, the way you want to do it, you ain't got to be direct. In the studio you got to try to be direct with what you're doing and live you do what you want. People with you, you bouncing around, you know? I like it. But you know what I really like better? Small clubs, little dirty, funky clubs. Much more than I do the fancy places.

CP: You've been spotted at Jack's, you know.

JLH: I go there all the time.

CP: Over on Geary and Fillmore?

JLH: That's my favorite place.

CP: Yeah, you were spotted there, I think, a couple weeks ago.

JLH: Oh yeah, I been going there, that's my favorite place. Like on a Thursday night. They got a rockin’ band in there.

Children: Trick of treat.

JLH:  Hi kids!

CP: So you like to play, when you're not on the road, you feel like you got to get out?

JLH: Oh yeah. Yeah, I like small clubs. I don't care about fancy clubs, I like to just get down. But Jack's is kind of fancy, but it's kind of ... It ain't fancy at all, but the kids come there. It's mostly a younger crowd, 21, 25, 26, from the school, different areas. Jack's is known, word got around that that's a good dance band. I call there and they have me a table waiting there, save me a seat waiting there. I just sit there and watch them. When I want to sing, I usually can get the mic. Get up there and sing the blues. Boy, they shocked when they seen me there, they don't think I'ma be in a place like that. But now people know I come in there, I let them know I come in there now. There's people working that don't, they know about me, but they never saw me. They'd be shocked when they see me in Jack's.

One lady came up to me, this is the truth. She goes, "Are you John Lee Hooker?" I said, she looked at me, just looking at me. She kind of embarrassed me. She pinched me.  She's, "Oh, I just wanted to see whether you real. "And I looked at her, I said, "I'm a human being, like you." Yeah, I'm sitting there, just pinched me. She said, "I'm sorry, I just wanted to see could you feel that?" I said, "Yes." I said, "What do you mean?" I said, "I'm alive." People, one day they asked me, could I really heal? 

CP: That's right.

JLH: "Can you really heal folks?" I said, "Yes." I said, "With my songs." I said, "But I'm not medicine, but I can heal you with my songs, that's true. If you're feeling down and out, and listen to John Lee Hooker, I can heal you." She said, "Yeah, so you heal me." I said, "Yeah, I do?" She said, "Uh-huh." I said, "But I don't heal you with medicine, I heal you with my songs. You look to my songs, they remind you of things. She said, "That's right." Said, "You got one old song that you do —so true" I said, "What is that?" "It Serve Me Right to Suffer." I said, "Yeah?" I said, "What verse is it?" She said, "The whole song."  You suffer because you think about some things you shouldn't have did.

So, I like small clubs.

CP: Let's talk about this Hot Spot soundtrack. I really like it, I'm particularly fond of it.

JLH: I love it.

CP: And I was wondering if you were excited about putting your music to images that move and watching them go by. When you were recording that, were you aware of what was ... Had you seen parts of the movie?

JLH: Yeah. Yeah, they sent me the movie, I watched it about two or three weeks on TV, just-

CP: So you just watched it and kind of got a feel for it?

JLH: Yeah. I knew what…

CP: Was it a thrill to put it all together?

JLH: Yeah, I knew what they wanted me to do. They wanted me just to moan and groan. And then just play some hard, funky chords, funky blues. I knew what they wanted, and I enjoyed doing it. Miles is gone now but I’ll never forget what he told me. He said, "Look," I'll never forget what he told me, he said, "You's the funkiest man alive." I said, "What do you mean?" He said, "You're in mud up to your neck," he said, "And can't nobody sing blues no deeper and harder than that." I said, "Well, thank you." And he said, "You don't know how good you do sound." He said, "Man, you just tears people up." I'll never forget he told me that. He said, "You's the funkiest man alive when it come to the blues." He said, "You can go deeper than anybody." I said, "I don't know, I just do it, man." And I never saw the movie after they did it. I never did go see the movie. I don't know whether you did or not, but everybody went, they said the soundtrack was better than the movie was, I don't know.

CP: Yeah, I think so.

JLH: I don't know.

CP: I just heard the soundtrack on the radio and that made me want to go see the movie.

JLH: Right.

CP: I mean, I thought that it was really incredible that you were all able to play together, and it sounded like you were a band.

JLH: Yeah, sounded like we were a band.

CP: Was just like, I mean, Miles was playing, it's not choppy, it's just nice.

JLH: No, nice and smooth.

CP: But he was phrasing it around you, and he was, had the trumpet muted, and was like, answering your voice.

JLH: Oh man, yeah. Oh boy, whoo!

CP: Sounded like you'd been playing together for 100 years.