35. Live at the Apollo by James Brown (1963)

James Brown

Goodness what a vigorous chap. I’ve seen some dynamic stage performers in my time, I remember a choirmaster at Bedford who used to get extremely worked up when conducting the tenors, but Mr Brown really was something else entirely. And his hair never wavered. He was possessed of an extremely steadfast head of hair that man. Very hardy.

And he was a notoriously hard taskmaster. The stories of him mistreating his band members if they made a mistake are legendary.

And well they should be. I personally witnessed him berate a drummer at length for an error he made during a performance and he once set about a bass player with a hatstand because there was a stain on his shirt. The fact that the stain was a small drop of blood caused by a blow to the head he’d earlier received from Mr Brown as punishment for poorly shined shoes was apparently not considered a mitigating circumstance by his employer.

He used to impose fines if his band’s appearance wasn’t up to scratch.

He did. He also refused to tolerate poor performances. I remember he once grabbed a trumpet player by the nose for making a mistake during a dance step. He held his nose quite hard for a considerable period of time, and when I say "considerable period" I mean several hours. Mr Brown wandered around backstage conducting his normal post-show routine with the gentlemen’s proboscis firmly clenched between forefinger and thumb. I recall at one point he had to go to the lavatory but he still felt the poor musician required further nose-holding so he called me over and said “Hey Limey. Hold this guy’s nose for me while I go to the John” or words to that effect. I think he used another term instead of “guy” but for the benefit of your more sensitive readers, I’ll omit the exact term.

So what did you do?

Well nobody refused James Brown, that simply wasn’t done. So for a period of several minutes while the star attended to his ablutions, I clutched the nose of a trumpet player with a firm grip. He was quite understanding, it was all part of being in the James Brown band, but it was certainly awkward and not something I can say I enjoyed doing.

It does seem outside the parameters of your job description.

Yes, it does. I was employed for cleaning duties and I don’t recall “firmly grasping the nose of a trumpet player” on any contract that bears my signature.

Why didn’t you just let go until Brown came out of the toilet?

Do you know that didn’t occur to either of us? Such was the power and authority of Mr Brown that we both stood there with him in considerable pain and myself in no small amount of discomfort and at no point did either of us think to suggest that perhaps we could give the whole thing a rest. James Brown required a nose clenched so a nose was clenched. That's really all there was to it.