AT A small, hip club in downtown New York (well, maybe not that hip; they’ve got Howard Jones on next week) Dr John stalks over to the piano. He plays some New Orleans blues in the rolling style he perfected after a gunshot wound to the hand ended his guitar-slinger days. In his 3am growl he sings Such a Night, his swoony anthem to love alfresco that became an international hit 30 years ago.
His owlish face, wreathed in a bushy beard, grins as he acknowledges the applause from a crowd of young record company folk (average age about half his 63 years), here for the launch of his new album. He leans heavily on a stick adorned with feathers and an alligator foot — the only evidence of the days when Dr John the Night Tripper wowed impressionable hippies everywhere. But for someone who was a junkie for more than 40 years (“ Man, I was a walking toxic waste dump”) the doctor looks in decent shape.
The new album, called N’Awlinz: Dis Dat or D’Udda, is one of those contemplative sets that artists tend to put out in later life. A crowd of guests — B. B. King, Willie Nelson, Randy Newman — help to explore the stew of R&B, blues, jazz and rock that made his home town a musical hotspot.
Later, downstairs, he fires up a bulky cheroot and declares in his Louisiana drawl that whether the album puts his name back in lights or vanishes is not the issue. “Hey listen, if I’m breathin’ I’m in a good place. I’ve got an awful lot of friends who haven’t made it.”
If ever there was a musician’s musician it is he. As a teenage prodigy he worked on sessions with Fats Domino and Little Richard; he found fame as the Night Tripper, laying down the voodoo clad in feathers and snakeskin. His sound has held an allure for generations of skinny young English musicians, from Brian Jones to Jools Holland (whose every note seems to have Dr John’s imprint on it). As a player and producer he has worked with most of the greats, from Dylan to the Stones to John Lennon, although often, it seems, in fairly chaotic conditions.
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“You know, John was an interesting cat. I met him when someone like Elton John was sitting in on keyboards with my band in LA. Next thing I’m hearing the organ go raargh and I look up and Lennon’s passed out on the organ holding three clashing notes and I didn’t even know how he got on the bandstand.
“Course there was another side to him. He would drink and fight and, on that album, Rock ‘n’ Roll, just about everything that could go wrong went wrong.
“But he was also good for arguing. I love arguing and he would argue about anything — politics, music, the most cock-eyed crap — it would go all over the place. Everyone needs an arguing partner. And you know who’s taken over from him? That kid Jason (Pierce) in Spiritualized.”
He and Pierce worked together — along with a lot of younger Brit rockers — on his 1998 album, Anutha Zone.
His favourite Beatle was the irreverent George Harrison: “He was realistical and had a different take on stuff.”
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As for McCartney: “Paul and Linda were once thrown off my stage by accident. My road guys didn’t know who they was. I had to send apologies and it was kinda embarrassing.”
The Rolling Stones used Dr John’s backing musicians on Exile on Main Street. “I got a lot of flak from the band for that. They never credited us right. We had a percussionist, Didimus, who they named as Amyl Nitrate. He took offence.”
Perhaps unwisely, Dr John claims that Mick Jagger pinched the ideas for the notorious C***sucker Blues film from him. “We had a bit of a row about that. I lost my temper. We’re all temperamental artistes, as they say.” A wry grin. “But we’re cool now.”
He worked with Van Morrison, watching as the singer fired would-be guitarists after a couple of notes. “He is major talented but he’s the most off-the-wall guy I ever knew.”
So who was good to play with? “Eric Clapton, he’s a nice guy — though he got p***** at me because I used a riff of his for this song, The Lonesome Guitar Strangler. It was kind of tongue-in-cheek ‘bout strangling hotshot guitarists — but in another way I meant it.”
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He’s pleased about his forthcoming dates back in Britain, although here again he has some hairy memories. On almost his first date here in 1972 he was about to go on stage in Swansea when he watched, appalled, as Les Harvey, guitarist with Stone the Crows, died after being electrocuted by his guitar.
The Doctor is thinking a lot about mortality these days. “I wanted to give up (heroin) since the Fifties — me and my first wife. All we wanted was to stop and we didn’t know how. Poor thing, she died some years back.
“It was such a waste. Everybody we came up with is either dead or in a penitentiary. Something really bad — they got the Aids virus or they got the combination of diabetes, hepatitis C . . . on and on.
“So I’m just grateful being here. It might just be the little things I appreciate — seeing something wild in the woods. The rain coming down. Things like that just gas me now.”