Ain't Bad for a Pink (49 page)

But you never forget the ethics of what unarmed combat is – it’s about winning a competition within reasonable ground rules. I’m not sure how this incident squares up.

If you don’t have a god to inspire and sustain you, you have to find human examples: heroes and heroines if you like. Hero status isn’t always earned. When Eugene Van de Hoog was serving in Cyprus, he left camp illegally and was walking past a bar when a bomb exploded. Something was hurled through the air and Eugene found he was holding a child whose legs had been blown off by the explosion. He took him to hospital but he died. The child had protected Eugene from the effects of the bomb and saved his life. The anomaly was that Eugene got a medal for bravery. But he never claimed it was an act of bravery. It was a convergence of events in which one person died and the other survived. There was no intention in the moment, though Eugene did act to try to save the child in the next moment.

I have a photo depicting a shared moment with a gaunt-looking, whiskered man in a rather formal dark suit with a white shirt and tie: my friend Eugene. Eugene Van de Hoog, originally from Bournemouth, had lived in Guernsey during the German occupation and had found his way to my shop via a honeymoon walking the Arctic Circle – part of the time with his wife – a spell in the Royal Marines, a period of study at Loughborough where he became an arts graduate in filmmaking and eventually life on the Shropshire Union Canal. Here he emerged as a top-hatted entertainer who looked like something out of an old medicine show. He owned two Dobros and his talents included the seven string guitar and Appalachian mountain harp.

A mutual friend brought this legendary eccentric to the shop to see the instruments – we had similar tastes in music and we became friends; I was forty and Eugene was about ten years older. Apart from everything else, he had the distinction of having appeared on the BBC’s
Six-Five Special.
He didn’t become famous but had a small band of devotees. The man had style; everything he did was over the top. When I knew him he was doing the pubs up and down the Shropshire Union. His music was a cross between country and blues and he made folk music fun. He did clever parodies like a version of “Deck Of Cards” in which the subject became a bottle of Guinness. There was another song he wrote called “Banal Canal”. He was resourceful and intelligent; artistic and practical. I admired his storytelling – all based on true experiences – and his practical skills. He had picked up a number of crafts on his travels, including carving whalebone! Like Whitty, he painted a tie for me. He also entertained children with puppet shows out of the side of the boat and made all his own puppets. He had such an enthusiasm for life and gigging.

Eugene Van De Hoog requests that
the assembled company participate
in a little group therapy by oscillating
their vocal chords in unison
and oscillating the aural orifice with
verve. This will assist in the restoration
of the whole.
(20)

I’ve always admired the way my friend Eugene lived his life and approached his death; we had a very brief time together but it was fun as well as being poignant. Eugene was special; when Des shook his hand he said it was like having an electric shock. Shortly after meeting Eugene, I received a phone call from him. He had terminal cancer. Echoes of my father. I rented a boat, moored it next to Eugene and Dianne’s boat at Nantwich and travelled with him, looking after him in practical ways and taking him to gigs.

Eugene had the distinction of having three wakes – two whilst he was living. The first one was upstairs at The Railway pub in Nantwich, where he performed. The second one was arranged by me at The Leisure Club in Crewe a few months later. Being a positive person, Eugene had lived longer than anticipated. I was planning on providing a solo entertainment but the shop being the shop, all rumours came back to me: Eugene had a strong sense of mischief and was planning a parallel entertainment behind my back. He was busy gathering a set of musicians together. A sort of competition formed and I was doing the same: the Skunk Band was on again. To add to the fun I actually dressed up as Eugene in this good-humoured battle of the bands and a good time ensued, with both sets of musicians playing and Eugene jiving with two beautiful girls.

Eugene eventually ended up in a hospice in Winsford. Des and I used to kidnap him and take him for a smoke at the local round the corner. We would sneak drinks into the ward for him. The time came when the nurse told us he didn’t want to see anybody. I couldn’t accept this. “Tell him it’s Snakey Jake,” I said. The reply was so frail it was almost imperceptible. “I don’t want to see anybody.”

And that was it. Eugene died on 29th January, 1992.

The funeral was touching: heaving with people. A testament to his impact because he had only been in the area for the year of his dying. We went drunkenly to scatter his ashes at Norbury. After this, my memory fails me. Fortunately for me, Lorraine Baker from the Boat Band somehow got me back to Nantwich and onto my boat.

Before his death, Eugene had asked me, as a promise, to look after his wife Dianne and this I did to the best of my ability. She had an 1890s boat called
Gerald
that was quite well-known in boating circles. I helped her with it and taught her the jobs conventionally done by men. She eventually bought a Dutch barge and moved to Europe.

Funerals create heightened emotion: not only sadness but also anger and laughter. Although I won’t actually be around for it, when asked about songs for my funeral, “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” by Louis Armstrong comes to mind! I’d want Matthew to do something about the terrible sound system at the crematorium as well. There’s always plenty of scope for gallows humour at funerals. A chemist in Nantwich who used to play the saxophone left a tape to be played at the crematorium. It was “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”! Mick Shenton told me about it because he helped the widow with the funeral arrangements.

Plum died of a heart attack. His funeral reflected things about him. He used to deal in cars; I called his firm “Kerbside Motors” and when his hearse came I said, “That’s strange – there’s no For Sale sign on it!” The other thing was that they’d actually closed Crewe crematorium because someone had stolen the lead off the roof. It was all of a piece with Plum somehow and I know he would have laughed. At Moggsie’s funeral I was a bearer. The family plot was opened up and found to be full of paupers. So they buried him next to the dog cemetery. He wouldn’t have minded.

Some of the most difficult performances I’ve had to give have been at funerals. I was asked to arrange and learn “Abraham, Martin And John” – a song written by Dick Holler after the assassination of Martin Luther King and recorded by various people, including Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye – as a tribute at Eugene’s funeral. Des and I fell out and I was left on my own with it. I slowed it right down and gave it funerary dignity with guitar punctuation on the line “the good die young” using slide. I personalised it by inserting “my special friend” in one of the lines. Gut-wrenching bass notes. The effect was cumulative then I faded it at the end.

I don’t have any solemn feelings about the body of a dead person – a bin bag and cart the body off as far as I’m concerned. Funeral services help the living, not the dead.

To me Eugene was a hero because of the positive way he lived. He had the courage to embrace life. There are those whom I admire for other reasons. There’s a scene from the BBC 2 1973 series
The Ascent of Man
in which Doctor Jacob Bronowski stands in a pond and holds mud from it in his right hand. It’s a very emotional moment. He is at Auschwitz and ash from people exterminated there will be mingled with the earth and water.

We have to cure ourselves of the itch for absolute knowledge and power. We have to close the distance between the push-button order and the human act. We have to touch people.

Doctor Jacob Bronowski.
(21)

Members of his own family had died at Auschwitz.

I was impressed by Doctor Jacob Bronowski’s erudition and humanity. A friend of my wife wrote to him and received a handwritten letter back. I was moved by this personal gesture.

When I visited Auschwitz-Birkenhau I thought about all the people classified by the Nazis as freight who had worked and died there, and about all the people who had been dehumanised and transported from Africa to work and die in the New World, and saw no difference. Racist bullying on a vast and organized scale. And I thought of Doctor Bronowski and wondered how he personally dealt with what had happened to the Jews. Having seen the claustrophobic 1940s newsreels of the camps, what strikes you when you visit Auschwitz is its vastness. With its much documented purpose-built railway line, Auschwitz is itself a big place. Built originally as a barracks; it has tangibility that Birkenhau, the extermination camp, lacks. Birkenhau is the size of a small town. The Germans tried to obliterate it so all that is left is an empty space filled with your worst imaginings.

In 1984 Sir Michael Tippett’s oratorio
The Mask Of Time,
like Bronowski’s work an overview of the history of humankind, was inspired by
The Ascent Of Man.

Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi both sacrificed their personal freedom for the liberation of others and their different approaches have interested me. Mandela and the ANC had resisted apartheid peacefully until the Sharpeville Massacre, after which they resorted to sabotage.

During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to the struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities…if needs be it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

Nelson Mandela.
(22)

How could Gandhi have achieved so much by being passive? It must be the total commitment that made him a formidable force. Passive doesn’t mean inactive. But as someone who has been so active I find this intriguing and almost impossible to imagine.

Keep your thoughts positive, because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive, because your words become your behaviours. Keep your behaviours positive, because your behaviours become your habits. Keep your habits positive, because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive, because your values become your destiny.

Mahatma Gandhi.

One of the women I have admired is the American entertainer Josephine Baker, who fought for emancipation on several fronts. She was a spectacular presence: famous for erotic dancing, stage nudity and her diamond-collared pet cheetah that used to escape and terrorise the musicians. She was the first African American to star in a major film; she insisted on integrated audiences; she helped the French Resistance, receiving the
Croix de Guerre.
She worked for the Civil Rights Movement and was held in such high esteem that she was offered leadership of the Movement after the death of Martin Luther King. Josephine Baker used her talent and her sexuality courageously and her life was a testimony to her ideals. She adopted a “Rainbow Family” from all over the world to live in her chateau in France.

On a smaller scale than any of these outstanding acts of freedom-fighting, I’ve come to realize that even fairly mild acts of individuality can have a strong reaction. Some people are very scared of any threats to the status quo. There are times in your life when you have to do something. I remember Mike Slaughter, a fellow blues enthusiast, onetime lawyer and full-time philanthropist walking down Oxford Street distributing hundreds of pounds.

He was arrested. “Ain’t bad for a pink!” I thought.

(1)
Des Parton, interviewed by Sandra Gibson, May 2006.

(2)
Zoe Johnson, interviewed by Sandra Gibson, 26th April 2007.

(3)
Linda Johnson, interviewed by Sandra Gibson 4th November 2008.

(4)
Zoe Johnson, interviewed by Sandra Gibson, 26th April 2007.

(5)
Ibid.

(6)
Brochure for The 14th Nantwich Jazz Blues & Music Festival 2010.

(7)
Extract from letter sent to the BBC by Graham Roberts, 24th July 2000.

(8)
John Darlington, interviewed by Sandra Gibson 3rd January 2007.

(9)
Andy Boote, interviewed by Sandra Gibson 4th September 2006.

(10)
Ade White, from a conversation with Sandra Gibson at The Oddfellows, Nantwich. 27th February, 2010.

(11)
Sam Molony, 13 years, interviewed by Sandra Gibson at Brine Leas School, Nantwich, in October 2006.

(12)
Dec Higgins, 16 years, interviewed by Sandra Gibson at Brine Leas School, Nantwich, January 2007.

(13)
Josh Bailey, 16 years, interviewed by Sandra Gibson at Brine Leas School, Nantwich, January 2007.

(14)
Phil Doody from a conversation in Custom Amplification, 19th March 2009.

(15)
Andy Smith: e-mail sent to Sandra Gibson, 19th February 2010.

(16)
Sam Molony, 13 years, interviewed by Sandra Gibson at Brine Leas School, Nantwich, in October 2006.

(17)
Wayne Davies (Slim ) interviewed by Sandra Gibson 30th January 2007.

(18)
Andy Boote interviewed by Sandra Gibson 4th September 2006.

(19)
It’s all in the body language and there’s a look in the eye. Perhaps the two guys were too drunk to notice or too arrogant to take heed. You have to be either stupid or extremely confident in your own powers to put yourself in physical danger. This reminds me of an occasion when I watched in fascination while my roadie was playing about with one of those karate weapons called a nunchucks. Now this irritated another bloke – an ex-mercenary who had been kneecapped – so he grabbed hold of the device and snapped the chain. He must have been confident in his hardness to do something so provocative because he wasn’t going to be able to run away!