john lee hooker
Messin’ With the Hook: Our 1986 John Lee Hooker Feature
This article originally appeared in the April 1986 issue of SPIN. A battered motel room in Watts, the Glen-Dora Motor Lodge. When you come in, John Lee Hooker is standing at the stove in the cramped kitchenette. He’s cooking him up some red beans and rice, some biscuits and gravy, some neck-bones. Battered neckbones. Or no, better—it’s a woman at the stove. A middle-aged black woman, thick at the hips, wearing puffy bedroom slippers. And John Lee Hooker’s settled in at the yellow linoleum dinette table with the rusty chrome legs. He has an old undershirt on, and as you come in, he looks up and says (nigh-perfect ZZ Top–imitation growl), “How how how how…” No. John Lee Hooker is in bed. On the eighth floor of Santa Monica’s Bay View Plaza Holiday Inn. Half under the covers a...
