BUDDY GUY may be playing in front of a national bank tonight in Dublin's College Green, but there must have been a thousand times when he felt more like hitting a bank in order to ease the pain of being ripped off, big time, by the record industry.
Indeed, Buddy could easily be seen as one of the unspoken heroes of the deeply disappointing, stripped of its socio political context history of rock currently being shown on BBC 2: Dancing In The Street. That is, if one accepts Guardian journalist Byron Coley's observation that the series, also probably will amount to little more than a historical lie because it by passes the fact that rock `n' roll is a loser's game, and its interesting aesthetic leaps (as opposed to the popularisation of those leaps) have always been made by stone losers". Not that Buddy Guy is a loser, but for a long time he could have been thus described, on a professional level.
After all, let's not forget that there was more than a 30 year distance between Buddy's first hit, The First Time I Met The Blues, and his "big break" when Eric Clapton asked him to perform with him in the Royal Albert Hall in 1991. Guy also introduced the use of wah wah pedal into blues long before the arrival of Jimi Hendrix, who also tapped into Buddy's behind the head, teeth `n' strings stage mannerisms. Indeed, Clapton himself has said of Guy: "he is by far, and without doubt, the best guitarist alive. If you see him in person, the way he plays is beyond anyone. Total freedom of spirit."
The latter concept is central to an understanding of Buddy Guy, who previously told me he very much roots his music in the incomparably inspiring "Baptist and Spiritual music, which is very close to the blues". But before we get the guy to define even more precisely what is at the soul of his music, what's Buddy's response to the suggestion that he often must have felt like breaking into a record company bank?
"Well, I did feel angry at time, but I don't live in the past!" he responds, laughing. "All the great blues players I know went through something similar, so I guess that is the price you have to pay for being black and a blues musician. Everybody got screwed around, but sometimes that make a better man outta ya. But I am getting good deals now and have been for five, six years. Sure, I see those compilation albums all over Europe that don't earn me a cent. That's still going on. But, yeah, when people use a song like Red House in that new movie, Heaven's Prisoner, my manager see to it I get the right money, though I'm not sure if I'm getting top dollar. And he's always chasing up money owed to me from the past. But whatever I get, or don't get, I'm just happy to still be alive and able to play the blues."
That said, it sure is a hell of a long way from being born on a farm in Louisiana, in 1936, to international success more than a half century later. How did Buddy keep his spirit high during that long haul? Was there ever a moment when he wanted to smash his guitar and cry out loud, `I can't do this any more?'
"It's like a marriage vow!" he says. "You marry and say, `for better, or worse' and that's how it is with music. But coming from that background to begin with. I always knew it wasn't gonna be easy. So you gotta suffer the bad days. But no matter how bad things got, I never wanted to smash my guitar. I love the guitar too much. And I love playing and singing. I hope that come across in my voice.
Of course it does, to anybody who isn't dead to the soul, which brings us back to the core element in Buddy Guy's blues: its spiritual dimension, that I may be down but I still can rise above all this through music gospel base. More than that, Buddy is also the personification of that 20th century phenomenon: the poor boy empowered by music, and enabled to soar above seemingly irredeemable feelings of inferiority, as he explains. Though as with most people from a poor background, these feelings occasionally come back to haunt him.
"Above everything else, my music is celebration. And anyone who loves the blues should come to America and go to a Baptist Church and you'll see they shout, scream, laugh and it brings a lot of joy to people," he says. "Yet in the middle of all that you got a song about angry who has 12 children and can't get work, can't pay the rent. And in my show I really do try to get that whole Baptist feeling going. I'll tell you, man, it makes me feel so good to be doing that, because for so long I didn't believe I was good enough to be a musician, or be anything. In fact it was schoolboy's whiskey that gave me the courage to sing in public. That was in a club and I did things like Work With Me Annie; but I had to turn my face to the wall to play! I still blasted all them working men away and they'd be saying, `who the hell is that? Tell the kid to turn around'.
"But I cried instead, put the guitar down and left the stage. That was my debut! And I'm still gonna walk on stage and feel that the first song I'm going to sing, someone is gonna reject me. I swear to you, I'm gonna feel bad. I tries not to feel like that, but that's just part of me. Then I get mad at myself, say, `Buddy, you can make them like it. You know you can do it'. But part of me still feels like I did that first night at the 708 club."
But what is at the root of this feeling? Buddy's background in poverty, being the son of a sharecropper, being black?
"I'll tell you what my problem was. I didn't get no education and I was so afraid to say anything in case I say something wrong, or stupid. And I'm talking about how I responded to everyone, man or woman. What took me out of my shell was that I got to know Muddy, Howlin' Wolf, Little Walter, Sonny Boy. And every time I went to play and saw any of those million blues singers in Chicago I saw them with a drink. So, I thought, `Buddy, you gotta learn how to take that shot of whiskey just to get you into conversation'. And that way I learned how to beat being shy. But luckily all I needed was a shot or two."
Not that any of this is evident from Buddy Guy's latest album, Live! The Raw Deal, which just may become his third Grammy winning album in a row. However, when asked if it truthfully captures his after the first song sense of joy at playing live, Buddy Guy answers in a manner so truthful it would probably terrify many of his peers in the music business.
"I gotta tell you, man, I don't listen to Buddy Guy!" he says, laughing. "I listen to every body but Buddy Guy! U2, Eric Clapton, James Brown and, before I get ready to play the blues, those of greats like Howlin' Wolf, B.B. put me back on the right track. And right now I'm packing for my holidays, listening to jazz, a little spiritual stuff. The Five Blind Boys of Alabama played at my club two nights ago and I wouldn't have missed that for the world. I'd love to get some of those original spiritual singers to come to Ireland, because not enough people know this is where a lot of the blues and rock'n'roll come from.
"Will you do me a favour, man? Tell everyone that everything we playin' come from that. I even told my children the other night, when the Blind Boys was singing, that's where it all started. This is what I was listening to 40 years ago, when they didn't have no drums, keyboards, in Louisiana. Back then the guys voices was all that was needed'. And even talking to you about these guys now, I gotta say no matter what happened along the way, I never lost my love of that music. And I don't think I ever will. On my last day on earth, you'll see a smile on my face because I know I played the right tunes. And, hopefully, on that day. I'll be singing a spiritual song.
