Dear Friends,
I’m just back from two whirlwind trips to Europe, first to the Utrecht Blues Festival in Holland with Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials, then to Scotland and London with the Lonnie Brooks Band. Ed was loads of fun as usual, playing wicked slide while crawling across the stage on his knees. Lonnie, hot from cutting a new live album (it’ll be out in February, so look out!) was in absolutely terrific form, playing and singing as well as I’ve ever heard him, and firing up the crowds everywhere. The London show was especially exciting, with the whole audience singing along and the band playing for two hours straight! Chicago energy hits the UK! While there, Lonnie taped a concert for BBC Radio and also did an hour interview on Radio London.
By now I assume you’ve all treated yourselves to the Kinsey Report albums. So, rather than plugging records, about an event that scarred me up emotionally and cost a that…
In late October of 1978, just after the release of the first three volumes of the LIVING CHICAGO BLUES series and Son Seals’ LIVE AND BURNING, I headed to Europe with Son and his band (A.C. Reed on sax, Lacy Gibson on guitar, Snapper Mitchum on bass and Tony Gooden on drums). The band had played about half a dozen dates in Sweden before we caught the train to Oslo, Norway, for the next leg of the tour. We were sitting in the back two compartments of the last train car, calmly riding through the night, when the train came around a curve a little too fast. Our car suddenly derailed, keeled over, the lights went out, and we skidded down a forty-foot embankment upside down into a cold fjord. The very back of the car filled with water about knee-deep, and everyone was screaming or unconscious. I had been sitting in the last compartment reading while the band played cards or slept just ahead of me. When the car turned over, I was flung into the corridor and down to the end of the car. Lucky for me as all the suitcases in the overhead racks landed on my seat.
Tony wasn’t so lucky–he bolted for the compartment door and it closed on his arm, slashing it to the bone, through nerves and an artery. Blood was everywhere. Working from the light of Son’s cigarette lighter, Snapper (a Vietnam veteran) used Lacy’s belt to tourniquet Tony’s arm. Then Snapper worked his way through the strewn luggage back to me and we tried to force open the back train door, which was jammed upside down and needed to be lifted overhead. We couldn’t budge it, and Snap went back to try to keep Tony alive while Son and the others helped some of the other passengers. Then I had the “getting strong” experience you read about (“grandmother lifts burning car off grandchild”.) I could hear Tony screaming, and I got a funny kind of lightheaded feeling. Then, I grabbed ahold of the train door, lifted it up, and rested it on my shoulder. Snapper, Son, A.C. and Lacy were somehow able to carry Tony out (into the shoulder-deep water of the fjord), drag him up the embankment to the tracks, and find a medical student who could help him. But I was still standing inside the train in knee-deep water with a steel door on my shoulder, scared as hell, the car was still full of injured people, Tony was critically hurt, and the night was far from over. (I know this sounds like a corny TV show, but it’s all true).
Bruce Iglauer