By PHIL JARRATT
Not to be morbid, but another Sunday waking to another couple of checkouts from the golden age is almost too much to bear. Surfers and rock stars seem to have been dropping like flies lately. Last weekend it was Geoff “Bully” Arnold, a fine old surf warrior from the Gold Coast, who was loved by many and respected by all who ever surfed against him, and who went unexpectedly and way too soon.
Then there was the anticipated (after a two-year battle with liver cancer) but no less tragic passing of the great San Francisco stoner crooner Dan Hicks. While many of you will perhaps shake your heads and ask, “Dan who?” there are music aficionados of a certain age and bent (literally) for whom Hicks formed part of a hazy pantheon, along with Frank Zappa and Tom Waits, that created the soundtrack of a misspent youth.
Born in Arkansas in 1941, Hicks joined a band called the Charlatans in the mid-1960s and helped turn them into one of the hottest underground bands in California. Then he formed an offshoot band, the Hot Licks, to play a more mellow support set. This was where I picked up on the great man, and truly original cult hits like “How Can I Miss You When You Won’t Go Away?”, “I Scare Myself” and “Canned Music”.
Mixing jazz licks influenced by Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli with Texas swing and even a little country, Dan’s tunes always had one common element – they were damned funny. His proteges Tom Waits, and later Elvis Costello, learnt a lot about style and humour at the feet of the master. I met Dan Hicks on two occasions more than 40 years ago, and yes, thanks for asking, I do have a story.
My friend John Grissim had picked me up at San Francisco Airport and we were driving through Mill Valley in Marin County on our way out to his home in a wine vat at Stinson Beach. “That’s Dan Hicks’ house,” he said, pointing at a tidy but fairly ordinary timber cottage partly hidden by trees. “Are you kidding me?” I yelled. “THE Dan Hicks? Stop the car, I have to get a picture.”
Grissim said: “I didn’t know you were a fan. Would you like to meet him?”
Grissim, who had spent years writing for Rolling Stone magazine, seemed to know everyone in the San Fran music scene, so I shouldn’t have been surprised, but in fact I was speechless, and not at all sure about stalking a music hero in his own home, but it was too late. John was striding across the street and I meekly followed. He rapped on the front door several times without eliciting a response. I suggested we just drive on, but that made him rap again even harder.
There was a noise from inside. It sounded something like, “I’m (expletive deleted) comin’, for (expletive deleted) sake!” The door opened and there stood Dan Hicks, scowling, ruffled of hair and wearing what appeared to be pyjama pants and an unbuttoned cowboy shirt. He looked us both up and down, yawned (it was mid-afternoon) and said, “Wassup, Gris?”
I wanted to run and hide in the car but Grissim told him that I was a huge fan all the way from Australia and that I’d always wanted to meet him, and well, here we were, and here he was. Dan Hicks stepped forward and closed the front door behind him, just in case I was thinking of storming inside looking for gold records or concert posters. He almost smiled and extended his hand for a surprisingly limp, wet shake. “I’m mighty pleased to meet you,” he said, but his funny/sad face said otherwise.
I gave Grissim hell all the way through the woods to the beach. How could he embarrass me like that! He responded: “Hey, happens to him all the time. Dan doesn’t care.”
It seemed like there was quite a bit that Dan didn’t care too much about at that stage of his life, but he was chipper and friendly when I bumped into him at the bar at a fabulous party in a cavernous North Beach mansion a few nights later. The psychedelic/grunge band The Tubes were playing loudly in the corner of one smoky lounge and all sorts of shady commerce was taking place along the dark corridor that led to the tiny bar, where I identified Grace Slick and Jack Nicholson before I almost tripped over Dan, resplendent in a Roy Rogers cowboy suit.
There was a flicker of recognition, so I started blurting out apologies for our rude intrusion. “Don’t worry about it,” he shrugged. He was holding two beers and he thrust one of them into my hand. I don’t know who was left waiting for a beer, but Dan Hicks and I stood in a corner of the bar and talked about music and surf for, oh, as long as it takes to down a Coors. Not long, but long enough for me to never forget Dan Hicks, who will be missed, now that he’s gone away.
