Ain't Bad for a Pink (48 page)

I made an important discovery about the provenance of jazz: I saw the line from Tampa Red – the pioneers of jazz were there in the blues men. I started talking to Pete Johnson about this – common ground had opened up through my interest in jazz and historical musical development generally which we both shared. I can easily transcribe music through listening to it and Pete asked me to do the introduction to “Shine”. I listened to the whole number and made another important discovery: it had a jazz chord sequence; it was not straight twelve bar blues. I realized that I, in my own music, had been playing rock ‘n’ roll in a jazz style. Eight chords in it rather than three. The chord sequence moves out of key; jazz goes out of the key centre. Jazz players negotiate key changes. I love that. The twelve bar blues is a very simple structure over which to improvise.

On the strength of this musical understanding of the jazz sequences in “Shine” and another number Pete Whittingham had played in which I praised his brilliance, the friendship between Pete and I was finally forged. Studying Pete Whit’s improvisational musicianship led me, via Charlie Christian, further along the jazz path and Pete Johnson was able to provide another pioneer: Scrapper Blackwell. My appreciation of jazz guitar continued and continues to grow.

Andy Boote.
(18)

So – I’m still keeping faith with the music I first heard when I was thirteen. It has sustained me and I hope I have done what I can to sustain it.

The thing that hasn’t sustained me is religious belief.

But not believing I’ll be rewarded or punished after death doesn’t mean I’ve lived without values nor have I allowed my hedonism to dominate. I think most of the Ten Commandments are sound but I don’t want to associate this with religion. I’m a humanist and I’ve been sustained by friendship and by my music and by challenging bullying in all its forms. I’ve helped people in a musical sense and in an economic sense; although I can be physically threatening I’ve tried only to use violence in self-defence or in defending others, or I’ve deflected it into objects to make my point. It’s true I’ve done some wheeling and dealing that was a bit on the edge and some sexual philandering, and then there’s some illegal substances to be taken into account but on the whole I sleep at night. I hold the conviction that human life has worth and that you should react in a simple way to the needs of others. At a party once a woman came and asked me to dance. “Put your hand right on my arse,” she said. Afterwards she said, “My mother died; that’s the best I’ve felt since.”

As far as I’m concerned we’re just animals that evolved into the human race – and into a mess. We have the capacity to get ourselves out of the mess; we don’t need God: we just have to stop being so greedy. The science I’ve read seems more logical than any religion – no matter which religion. In more frivolous moments my rational mind has wondered about daft things like how would there be room for everybody in heaven and could I play a guitar instead of a harp. On an emotional level I also think I’ve had enough once round; I don’t want there to be any more! And if I’m wrong and I do meet God, I’m going to headbutt him for getting so much wrong!

It’s easy to see why religions evolved though. The human mind can’t accept that at death the consciousness stops and that’s it. It can’t accept the unfairness that involves some people having long happy lives and others having short tortured lives. It offends our sense of fair play! Religion illustrates man’s inability to face his own stopping. It gives a better ending to the story, as long as you’re good. The old spirituals gave comfort to people with wretched lives, promising a better life after death. Religion: “the opiate of the people” according to Marx, made the unacceptable acceptable.

I believe heaven and hell is what you leave behind, not what you aspire to. It’s something to do with how you feel at your demise. With your last breath your conscience is what you die with. If you have led a horrible life you know and perhaps regret that in the moment of dying. Other people inherit your little footprint: heaven, hell, a bit of both, some shared laughter, some recognition, some musical togetherness. If you’ve spent your life trying to do your best there will be fewer regrets. Besides, it’s easier to be nice to people but the evidence for religion encouraging this is not convincing.

None of my experiences of religion have done anything to convince me. Each religion believes it has the correct world view, the only way to live your life. To me all religions are clubs and I don’t like clubs. If there is anything at the end of the day, who’s to say which club is right? In my view a man from Papua New Guinea, who has a collection of skulls – people he’s eaten out of respect and because of his beliefs – has as much right to heaven as anyone else, if God is magnanimous. Differing beliefs have led to horrific practices such as witch-hunting, torture, and wars – all with ‘god on our side’. Religion has too many conflicts about a similar story and people are prepared to die – and kill – for their own version.

I was brought up in a family with strong religious beliefs – though never pressurised to sign up – so I was able to observe closely the effects on people’s lives of believing in an afterlife. I was neither tempted by my father’s self-blaming puritanical faith nor my mother’s cheerful belief that we would all meet again in heaven. Anticipating this celestial reunion made my mother happy and confident in spite of her difficulties and able to die with a joyful conviction. On the other hand, my father felt God had dealt him a bum card and didn’t believe he deserved to go to heaven. His experiences must have tested his belief in a compassionate god. He was extremely poor and fatherless in his childhood; he felt disappointed with himself: a conscientious objector who went in the army and although his war experiences were hardly mentioned at home, I know he had the harrowing job of liberating concentration camps. When my mother became an invalid and he himself faced an early death from cancer, his faith and sense of justice were further tried. The awfulness of his experiences communicated itself to me and I still carry it around. His death has affected me in a different way than that of my mother. She was positive and accepting and although I was sad I didn’t feel that her life had been lacking in joy and hope. I wasn’t sad for her; I was sad for me. But I absorbed my father’s suffering and it’s part of me. I still suffer in a very raw, unresolved way because of the tragedies of my father’s life.

For some people the contemplation of their own death is debilitating. People get scared and make every effort to prolong their lifespan through careful diet and exercise and medical checks; others take the escapist route into drink or drugs or the pursuit of experiences. From early on I’ve had plenty of opportunity to look at death, including my own. I’m not afraid of coming to a full stop – dying – though apprehensive about the way it happens. Having spent my life being able to rely on my mind and body doing what I wanted them to do I would certainly fear being dependent. I’d only cope with that for a short time then I’d die. I’d just decide and die: while I’d got the strength I’d take a bottle of whisky with aspirin. I’d have a pact with Des, whichever one of us went first. What better way to go than getting drunk with your best mate?

In spite of my atheism people have found something spiritual in me and have tried to involve me in spiritual matters. A guitarist friend, whose wife is a spiritualist and who is into Transcendental Meditation, wanted me to meet his guru – an Indian man. I never did. He said something quite strange to me:

“I’d like to know how you’ve done it.”

“Done what?”

“Achieved karma without meditating.”

The way I’ve explained this – and I presume he meant I had some inner calm and acceptance – is that music sustains me in the same way that religion sustains others. When my mother died it was my music that helped me – not pious words. Music took her place.

Anyway, I went to a spiritualist church three or four years after my mother died because my friends invited me – not because I had any real interest. The medium said, “There’s an A and three Bs” and considering that my mother’s name was Albina Betsy Boswell Billington it seemed like a link but I didn’t respond. I don’t believe in it though bizarre things have happened to me from time to time. Whilst I was staying with Mike Slaughter I decided to take my girlfriend for a walk. Mike told me to watch out for The Judge: a formidable individual sporting a black eyepatch and very aggressive towards anyone on his land. At one time he would have been called a “hanging judge”. Anyway, we did meet him. He had an eyepatch and carried a gun. Forewarned, I spoke with him in a very civil way and there was no problem about our walk to the abbey.

Once we reached the abbey we were approached by a woman with a very posh voice and a man with a black eyepatch. This was not the same man we had already met. There must be an explanation but I don’t know what it is.

But if my fear of death isn’t great I do have other fears. I have a complicated fear of heights. I’ve parachuted from a plane – the waiting was awful but once I’d taken the plunge it was fine and I’d do it again – yet was debilitated by panic on a circular balcony in a basilica in Prague. If I’m on a motorbike or riding a horse I can go closer to the edge than if I were walking. Having to concentrate on riding a horse or a machine diverts my attention from the fear. Horses aren’t stupid – they won’t go too close, whereas if there’s only me on foot, there’s only me stopping me. In those circumstances I’d trust a horse more than myself.

And I’d rather go downwards, hanging on a rope into a black cave – it doesn’t matter how far down – than upwards.

I don’t know if death or fear of death is like this – losing control, being out of control. Whilst some control is there you feel scared of losing it; once there is no possibility of control and you’re falling, then you also let go of the possibility of control – the thing you were scared to lose. Then you don’t have fear. Perhaps my mother, secure of her destination, had no difficulty letting go, whereas my father clung on to life for longer than was believed possible because he was more pessimistic about his fate.

When you’re asleep your rational mind is not in control and your subconscious mind – the one that deals with unresolved hopes and fears – starts playing up. In my early years my sleep was troubled by vivid dreams and sleepwalking. I used to wake up, upside down or under the bed. Once, when we were staying with my aunt in Lancaster they called the police because I was missing. I was found under the bed.

I often suffer in my dreams; themes recur. One dream I had was after a hospital trip with my parents where I had been x-rayed on my hips. I remember being in the brightly lit x-ray department. In the subsequent dream there was an amputated leg standing by the side of a bed occupied by me. I could actually see down into this leg, as if it were a tree trunk or one of those scientific models. Strangely, the amputated leg is a recurring
motif
in my life. My brother Ralph had a motorbike accident and this was a possibility for a while; years later my son Nathan also had an accident where there was a chance that amputation might be needed. I suppose a Freudian would say that the amputated leg was about fears of powerlessness and as I get older I have to face this.

My earliest nightmares bombarded me with huge, intensely colourful shapes and loud unmusical noises, all crowding in on me. As I got older the sound decreased and these coloured abstractions were translated into concrete ‘realistic’ situations impossible to negotiate, equally terrifying and always unresolved. There I would be: trapped in a canal lock or at the top of a mountain without any means of descent. You could say these dreams were prophetic: my life has contained heightened experiences – often dangerous or complicated or ludicrous or impossible to resolve – and loud, though not usually unpleasant sounds of one kind and another.

I want the epitaph on my gravestone to say: “That’s resolved”.

My survival instinct is well developed and I can be aggressive but I haven’t been troubled by hating people. If there was a problem I would deal with it straight away. Incensed by the behaviour of a man who claimed to be my friend but then slept with my girlfriend, I drove my Suzuki 850 through the man’s plate glass front door and, still on the motorbike, pinned him up against his kitchen units. Then I rode off again. It wasn’t just about sexual loyalty, which wasn’t necessarily
de rigueur
in my circles at that time. It was more to do with his friendship with me. I had bigger expectations of him. The anger I felt didn’t hurt him physically; it was absorbed by the glass door. I remember kicking another door down. A bloke owed me money so he moved house. It wasn’t so much the debt but the lying and deceit, the lack of straightforwardness that upset me.

There was one time when I absolutely lost it. Absolutely lost it. It was an occasion when I was challenged by two men on two fronts: a territorial matter and a question of protecting my girlfriend. My training had given me the confidence rarely to have to fight – that and my loud voice. When I was in my thirties I was still pretty handy and going out with a girl who was eighteen years old. We’d been to The Cheshire Cheese and there had been a bit of aggravation between a local musician and a couple of Hell’s Angel types. The musician was scared so I said I’d escort him out to his vehicle.

When we went to leave – my girlfriend was driving – the two big blokes were in the next car, opening the passenger door to prevent her getting into the driving seat. It was humiliating for her and maddening for me. The Incredible Hulk is such a good expression of what happens to me when the adrenalin starts working. If the two blokes had read the signs in me they would have avoided a bad experience. But they didn’t.
(19)

The next thing I realized was that the police were trying to pull me off someone. Someone whose face I was grinding into the car park with my elbow. “There’s another bastard,” I said. The other bastard was unconscious. I had no recollection of hitting him. But I was covered in blood: none of it mine.