Mac Rebennack was a New Orleans kid who got his finger blown off, went to prison, then transformed into one of rock's most outsized characters. Inside the wild life, private demons and Mardi Gras sound of Dr. John
New Orleans musician Dr. John photographed at the Louis Armstrong House and Museum in Corona, Queens on August 14, 2014.Robbie Robertson has seen a lot in six decades of rock & roll, but nothing quite like what happened at the Toronto Pop Festival in 1969. He and the Band were on a bill that included the New Orleans studio musician and songwriter Mac Rebennack, newly reinvented as, the Night Tripper.
The shooting was a pivotal moment in Dr. John’s life, forcing him to switch to bass and then piano. But the injury also accelerated a heroin habit that had already begun. “At the moment I was shot, I saw not just my life, but my career, pass before my eyes,” he wrote. “To get through it all, I tried to make myself as null and void as possible — a state I achieved through a heightened habit.” Busted for possession, he wound up serving time in a federal prison.
The persona was even wilder onstage: Someone Dr. John called the Chicken Man would bite off the heads of live poultry while nude dancers paraded around. “I was trying not to make him self-conscious by looking at what he was wearing,” says Bonnie Raitt, who saw one of those early shows and later toured with Dr. John. “I hadn’t been exposed to the voodoo side, so I brought a whole lot of ‘whoa’ when I met him.
To cast a spell on anyone he didn’t want around, Dr. John would make “goofer dust,” a combination of graveyard dirt, gunpowder, and grease from the bells of a graveyard chapel. “He believed in [voodoo rituals] — it was not a shtick,” says Bill Bentley, one of his publicists. “He had all these herbs he would carry around with him. He once said this lady put a spell on him and something bad happened to him.” When Dr.
After his commercial heyday, Dr. John survived by touring, singing jingles for Pop-eyes chicken, and appearing on soundtracks. He released solo piano albums that revisited the barroom style of his youth, and in the 1980s he helped pioneer the concept of rock stars playing pre-rock standards on. Along the way, he developed a casual fatalism about the music business. “I’ve seen the record business from a lot of ways, and don’t nothin’ surprise me anymore,” he said in 1997.
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