Waiting on the Moon, page 12
He died peacefully in his sleep at eighty-three years old. John Lee lived his life just as he sang in his first hit, “Boogie Chillen’”: “I heard Papa tell Mama / Let that boy boogie-woogie / ’Cause it’s in him and it got to come out!”
13
RAINBOW ’65
Van Morrison
Interviewing Van Morrison, WBCN, 1968
MY EARLY YEARS in Boston included a stint as a radio DJ. My show was on WBCN from midnight to 5:00 a.m. There was an unusually sensual element to being a late-night disc jockey, broadcasting alone in a small, dimly lit studio, the city sleeping and closed till morning. I never knew who, if anyone, might still be up in the wee hours, perhaps just one mysterious listener somewhere off in the distance, far away, tuning in because perhaps they needed me as much as I needed them.
Except for maybe one or two classical-music programs on the FM dial, my show was the only game in town during those hours. I was building an audience slowly, after the TV went off the air at midnight and the national anthem played, followed by the crackling sound of static “snow.” Cambridge was like a ghost town after midnight, and Boston, during the 1960s, wound down by 1:00 a.m. Every store, subway, bar, and bus line was closed, the streets dark except for the glow from traffic lights and lonely all-night diners.
I began receiving intriguing postcards at the station. The front would be emblazoned with the black-and-white eroticism of Aubrey Beardsley and on the reverse would be delicate feminine handwriting stating, “I love your show… Please play more Van Morrison.”
I was a fan of Van’s music at a time when very few people knew his name. The postcards kept arriving, always Beardsley, complimenting my musical choices—Sonny Boy Williamson, John Lee Hooker, and Muddy Waters—and concluding with the request “Please play more Van Morrison.”
My on-air moniker was Woofa Goofa. Between songs, I slipped into my fast-talking radio persona:
Riding through the motions of the oceans,
Having fun until the midnight sun.
Yamma gamma gooma looma.
This is the Woofa Goofa Mama Toofa.
We gonna get things movin’,
Keep things groovin’,
Kickin’ it high an’ lettin’ it flow.
Turn it up, turn it up, an’ let your lovelight show.
One evening, my band, the Hallucinations, was rehearsing at the Boston Tea Party, then known as the Moondial. This cavernous hall also hosted the Film Collective, which held screenings of avant-garde movies, often the showcase for many of Andy Warhol’s early films. We were the house band, preparing for a gig later that night. I was going over our set list when a young man walked in, looking lost and uncertain. He was sturdily built, not very tall. He approached me, asking in a slightly abrupt foreign accent that I could not place, “Do you work here?”
When I answered no, he quickly asked, “Where’s the manager?”
I didn’t know, but the neediness I sensed from him compelled me to want to help.
“I’m looking for gigs,” he hurriedly explained, and I replied, “What kind of gigs?”
“Yeah, you know, I’m looking for gigs, just looking for gigs.”
I couldn’t quite understand his accent because his words were spoken so rapidly, so I offered to find the manager if he was willing to hang around and wait. He asked if I was in a band, and when I told him yes, we began a conversation about what kind of music we played. The more we talked, the easier it became to understand him. Then he asked if I listened to the “Wulfa Gulfa radio show, with this old Black fella… Man, he plays lots of great stuff, even early Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland.”
His pronunciation of my moniker made me laugh, and he asked, “What’s so funny?”
I told him, “I’m the Woofa Goofa.” He was understandably perplexed, maybe even thinking I was putting him on, until I launched into my radio patter.
With a yamma gamma gooma looma,
Slippin’ and slidin’ with a real moe-giin’-gator,
Doing it to it,
And getting right through it.
Hearing my rap convinced him, but the real unmasking came when he added, “I dig all that stuff you play, even when you slip in one of my records.”
“Your records?”
He could see the confusion on my face, so he said, “I’m Van. Van Morrison.”
It was like coming across some ancient mariner long lost at sea. In that moment, Van literally came out of the mist. His song “Mystic Eyes,” recorded with his group, Them, defined the vibe and sound my band had been aiming for. When I first heard it, I couldn’t believe the energy that poured from the recording. Now here he was, standing in front of me, looking for a gig, even though his first solo release, “Brown Eyed Girl,” was being played continually on the radio. After the rehearsal, Van and I walked back to Cambridge, talking all the while. That is where our friendship began. I would come to learn that Van, like Dylan, always had a sense of his own destiny.
Van’s decision to move to Cambridge was forever shrouded in mystery. At first he said it was to check out the music scene there, which was vibrant, with many folk, rock, and jazz clubs.
He hardly ever talked about his days with the group Them, which he formed in his hometown, Belfast, in Northern Ireland. Also at that time, he didn’t have any kind words to say about the legendary record producer and songwriter Bert Berns, responsible for bringing Van to the United States. When Bert was in London and heard Van perform with Them, he recognized Van’s prodigious talents and persuaded him to sign a long-term solo recording and management contract, which gave Berns complete control of Van’s career.
As Van told it, once he was living in New York, he wanted to move in a musical direction that was counter to Bert’s vision, causing great tension and resulting in a widening creative gulf between them. Van felt he needed to break away or be suffocated artistically. Bert, though, was supposedly involved with the Italian Mafia. “One night these guys from the Irish Mob just came and rescued me and my family from that scene. They took us up to Boston. I was on the run.” Through the years, Van told varying accounts about the move, with varying degrees of color, but whatever the reason, he wound up on Green Street in Cambridge, not far from, in Dylan’s words, “the green pastures of the Harvard University.”
We entered his apartment, located on the ground floor of a small row house. He lived with his wife, Janet, her son, and her and Van’s new baby. Janet was a delicate beauty, madonnalike, seated on a chair, breast-feeding. Although the cramped apartment was bare, with a mattress on the floor and what looked like an Ovation guitar in the corner, it had a tired rather than squalid feel. Van introduced me, telling Janet that I was the Woofa Goofa from the radio show, and she excitedly said, “I’ve been sending postcards asking you to play more Van!” I was at ease in their company, the hours drifting past as we bonded over our shared love of music.
Although I didn’t have money to help Van financially, I used the connections I had to introduce influential people on the Boston scene to Van’s music. He seemed to be in a perpetual state of crisis, frequently dropping by my apartment to use the telephone for long-distance business calls. He was trying to get released from his recording contract, and the emotional toll it was taking on him was evident.
He had a definite vision of his musical direction and was determined to make it happen. In the time leading up to the recording of his momentous Astral Weeks album, a therapeutic escape for us both was to sit in front of my record player listening to Muddy Waters, Little Walter, and John Lee Hooker. It became somewhat of a religious ritual for us. Favorites of ours included Jackie Wilson’s first recorded version of “Danny Boy,” King Pleasure’s “Moody’s Mood for Love,” and Little Richard’s “I Don’t Know What You’ve Got But It’s Got Me.” A few that were always on Van’s request list were my obscure Billy Stewart recordings along with Gene Chandler’s live recording from the Regal Theater of Curtis Mayfield’s “Rainbow ’65.” Van would play that record over and over until he had every bit of Gene’s vocal inflection memorized. Our listening sessions helped Van forget the legal troubles he was facing.
Sometimes, if he was in a depressed mood, he would perk up considerably when we walked around Harvard Square, got a coffee, or just sat on a bench watching the world pass by.
I introduced Van to many friends, including my literary mentor, Ed Hood. Together, we became a drinking trio. Van responded to Ed’s intellectual genius, discussing literature and poets such as Shelley, Blake, and Yeats and the dark fires they inspired.
I invited Van to see the Hallucinations at the Boston Tea Party, not only so he could watch us perform but also so I could introduce him to the club’s new management. I was the lead singer and sometimes shared vocals with other band members. On this night, Doug, our rhythm guitarist, sang Van’s “Gloria,” which at the time was a garage-band anthem across the country. Doug blasted the opening chords at full volume, singing, while I played tambourine and maracas. I noticed Van standing to one side of the stage and thought it would be a real surprise for everyone if I called him up.
Doug finished a verse and chorus, with the audience singing along, before launching into a guitar solo. I signaled Van to join us onstage as Doug, eyes closed, played furiously. Van walked up to the microphone, grabbed it, and started pacing across the stage and scatting the “Gloria” lyrics: “Let me t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-ell ya about my b-b-b-b-b-b-b-baby, she-e-e-e-e-e c-c-c-comes a-a-a-a-around here.” The audience was totally perplexed by the strange singer taking over, performing such a popular favorite so unusually. They began booing. Doug yelled to me, “What the fuck is he doing? He’s fucking ruining my song!”
“Doug, he wrote the song!” I yelled back, but Doug’s amp was so loud that he didn’t hear.
As Van got to the final chorus, “Give me a G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G-G,” I had to grab his mike and shout to the crowd, “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Van Morrison, the man who wrote this song!” The announcement had no impact whatsoever on the audience, still booing loudly.
Van grabbed the mike back and continued, “L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L-L, O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O, R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R, I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-I, A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A,” but all the audience wanted to hear was the crowd-pleasing hit “Gloria,” not Van’s wildly improvised scat. Doug was about to bop Van right off the stage with the neck of his guitar, so I signaled to our drummer to end the song. I called out for an instrumental and walked Van toward the dressing room, where I introduced him to the club’s manager, who later booked Van to perform there.
The Tea Party was originally built as a synagogue in 1872. It had a wooden interior and high ceilings, creating rich acoustics. The drawback was that the venue had only one long staircase for the entrance and exit, which made it a dangerous firetrap.
During the middle of Van’s first Tea Party performance, smoke started billowing from the large ceiling fan high above the stage. The staff immediately climbed up to the rafters to investigate and found that a fire had indeed broken out. Van, eyes shut, was deep into his song, oblivious to the commotion of ladders and fire extinguishers being hoisted up to the ceiling right above him.
I first heard Van perform songs from Astral Weeks at the small, true-to-its-name club the Catacombs. You entered near a ground-floor pizza parlor, then went down a set of rickety stairs and past a pool hall. Three floors below that was the club. It was like entering a pharaoh’s tomb, with gold-painted walls covered in Egyptian motifs. At a venue that held two hundred people, perhaps no more than thirty were on hand to witness the unveiling of songs from Astral Weeks, a musical turning point for Van.
Astral Weeks was mostly an underground success for him, but it was followed by the huge hit albums Moondance and His Band and the Street Choir. By then he had moved with Janet to Woodstock, New York, and I was playing with the Geils band. For the Street Choir tour, Geils was the opening act, and the first show was scheduled for Boston’s Symphony Hall, an unprecedented location for a rock concert.
During intermission, after our set, I was sitting in the audience when Janet came running up the aisle, looking anxious. In a panic she said, “Peter, please, quick—I need your help. He said he won’t go on and won’t leave the dressing room.” Van’s band was already onstage, playing an instrumental. I rushed into his seemingly empty dressing room, shouting “Van!,” and heard from behind the bathroom door a deadpan reply of “Yeah.”
“What are you doing?” I asked.
Casually, he replied, “I don’t want to go on.”
I shouted back, “What do you mean? You gotta come out of there.”
“No, I’m not going on.”
“We’re at Symphony Hall, and it’s a sold-out house. The band’s already onstage, and the crowd is waiting for you.”
“Just leave me alone.”
“No, Van. You’re coming out now.”
“Yeah, I’m not feeling good.”
“Do you need a doctor? Is that what’s going on?”
“No. Just leave me alone.”
Losing patience, I opened the bathroom door to find Van, fully clothed, sitting dejectedly on the toilet, looking not dissimilar to Rodin’s The Thinker. I cursed him out, reminding him of all the people waiting for the show and the humiliation of not getting out there onstage. I hoisted him off the toilet and continued my rant as I dragged him out, pushing him straight onto the stage. As he walked out, the crowd broke into thunderous applause. He performed a singularly unforgettable show, his voice and presence as powerful as they were riveting.
Van and I always stayed in touch, even when he moved to Fairfax, California. He followed the winds, wherever he felt the musical vibe was headed, be it Cambridge, Woodstock, or Marin County. When Geils played San Francisco’s Winterland, Van wanted me to visit him out in Fairfax, a drive he described as being a quick and easy hop from where I was staying.
After sound check I figured I’d have plenty of time to be back for our show. I had a crew member drive me on what became a seemingly endless journey through hills and valleys until at last we came to his alpine chalet–style home nestled in the woods. The difference between it and the old Cambridge apartment was incredible, a measure of the renown Van had achieved in the intervening years. Janet welcomed me warmly, but I was disappointed to hear her say Van wouldn’t leave the basement and was in one of his dark moods. She pointed to a Billboard reporter who had been sitting on the porch for the past two hours, patiently waiting for Van’s promised interview.
I walked in and yelled down to Van, “You’d better come out. That drive took forever, and I have a show to do tonight.”
No response from the basement.
“Van! You said you wanted to play me something. Now get up here.”
More silence. But I was not about to have made this long journey for nothing.
“Van, if you’re not up here in the next five minutes, I’ll come down and drag you up.”
I heard reluctant shuffling as he walked upstairs, and then we chatted like old times, as if we had seen each other only yesterday. Van played me the reel-to-reel track of what would become “Wild Night.” Hearing this masterpiece, even in its unformed state, and seeing him again made the trek to Fairfax completely worthwhile.
Whenever Van played in Boston, he stayed at one particular Cambridge hotel, and without fail, we would get together for a visit. Van always graciously asked how my music was going—whether I was recording or playing—never behaving like the icon he had become. But on one occasion we argued, and like most arguments, it began inconsequentially but resulted in our not seeing each other for quite a while. Still, I was a fan of his music and live shows, in which his spontaneous unpredictability always created moments of true artistic brilliance, and I never missed a chance to see him perform. In the late 1980s, Van returned to play in Boston, and I caught the show.
Toward the end of the final song, “Caravan,” Van suddenly began singing, “Radio radio radio radio radio. I’m calling, I’m calling, FLIP 313, FLIP 313. I’m calling that 313, turn it up turn it up turn it up.” For the final verse, he interjected improvised phrases such as “You know, turning on my radio, turning on my radio” before dropping the mike and walking offstage.
Back in the 1960s, my phone number, when spelled out, was FLIP 313. Many visiting musicians knew that number, and it was passed through the ranks. If you needed a sofa to sleep on, a place to hang out, or a show to promote, you could dial it. Hearing him call it out as he did, I went backstage, hoping to mend fences and renew our long friendship. It was as if no conflict or disagreement had ever occurred.
Van was playing two sold-out shows at the Boston Music Hall, a far cry from the Catacombs, where he first began. The show was Van at his finest. During the ballads, you could hear a pin drop in the five-thousand-seat theater. He mesmerized the audience. The standing ovations just kept coming in waves.
After the show, feeling satisfied with the evening’s performance, Van suggested we step out on the town. I acted as tour guide, and we hit one club after another until we ended up back in Cambridge at the original small wooden House of Blues along with blues great Junior Wells, who was opening the shows for Van’s tour. Van always had first-rate artists open his shows—artists like Mose Allison, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Solomon Burke, and Wells. I was a huge fan of Junior, who had played harp with Muddy Waters in the 1950s. Junior was good-looking and quite short, hence the nickname. He had a unique harmonica style with an expressive voice to match, but if he got anywhere near gin… look out!
