After nearly an hour of mayhem, I decided the audience and the band needed a break, so I called for Tony Joe White’s ‘Rainy Night in Georgia’. The Hornets had also recorded the song on Everybody’s Guilty, the version following Tony Joe’s 1960s cut fairly closely. But I had forgotten that Hanna had also recorded a reggae version of the same song on the Ross Hannaford Trio’s record some years before. I played the D chord and Gary splashed in and set the whole thing in motion. But then Hanna started to ‘chank’ on the 2 and 4 of the bar shifting the whole thing sideways, Wayne and Gary immediately picked up on the new reggae feel. Hanna played a little single line of notes and Wayne doubled it on the bass making me surplus to requirements. I nodded to Hanna and he leant into a microphone and sang the first line of the song with that beautiful smoke-cured baritone. ‘Hover’n by my suit case, tryin’ to find a warm place, to spend the night …’
Hanna continued to play little runs between the bassline while I took up the chank, chank, chank as best I could, the whole song now sounding ethereal. The dance floor was crowded with people grooving to the reggae beat as ‘Rainy Night in Georgia’ then morphed seamlessly into Desmond Dekker’s ‘Israelites’, which in turn smoothed into Johnny Nash’s ‘Hold Me Tight’. Suddenly I was at the Greyhound Hotel in Richmond and playing second guitar in Hanna’s 1979 reggae band Lucky Dog!
I managed to pull the whole thing back in an R&B direction by launching into Howlin’ Wolf’s ‘44 Blues’. The band was flying at this point, so they easily negotiated the left-hand turn at Kingston and roared off to Chicago. Hanna’s twin amp attack came in handy for this song. When he jumped on the wah wah—with one amp playing clean and the other dirty—the solo took off. It was like two Ross Hannafords were playing—it was simply fucking amazing! Dah di dah dah, dah di dah dah, dah di dah dah … whack! Then it was a U-turn back to Jamaica with Ross launching into a version of ‘Snake’ from Dianna Kiss’s first album. I didn’t know what the fuck we were doing but whatever it was we were encouraged by the audience, loudly and insistently, to keep doing it.
Then suddenly it was the end of the hour and a half set, we played our customary finisher ‘Everything is Broken’ by Bob Dylan, thanked the audience for coming and then introduced the band: ‘Wayne Duncan on bass’ … roar … ‘Gary Young on drums’ … shouts and roars … ‘and MR ROSS HANNAFORD ON GUITAR AND VOCALS’ … stomps roars applause and shouts of ‘More! More!’ I thought the roof would soon lift off the theatre.
But there was no more—it was all we could do, we were all exhausted. Gary and Hanna left the stage leaving Wayne to shake his head, sidle up to the microphone and enquire of the audience, ‘Haven’t you got homes to go to? Go home it’s too late!’
When they again screamed for more, Wayne smiled and said,
‘Ah, no we can’t play any more—we’ve got another gig at Berties later tonight.’ Some faces split into a smiles, others nodded, and gradually the applause and calls for more died down, leaving Wayne and me to exit the stage.
We collapsed in the green room and pulled a couple of ice-cold stubbies out of the esky. I noticed the Stoli was gone and so were Hanna and Gary. I finished my beer, immediately opened another and started to pack up my guitar. The manager came backstage, ‘Terrific night boys, thanks so much. Let’s talk through the week Craig and arrange another date for later in the year.’ He handed me the envelope with the night’s pay.
‘No worries mate, thanks for your hospitality,’ I answered, ever the diplomat. I shook his hand and he disappeared back to the bar to no doubt open the over-stuffed registers and count the night’s healthy takings. It was then that Hanna and Gary finally came back, smiling like lunatics, with Hanna carrying a near-empty bottle of vodka.
‘Let’s get the fuck outta here!’
The gear was packed, the money was divvied and goodbyes were made. We climbed into our respective cars, Gary and Wayne in one, Hanna and myself the other—and off we sped into the coal-black, misty night.
Before we had even reached Daylesford, the cabin of my car resembled the Reefer Café and the vodka bottle was empty. By the time we hit the Western Highway we were talking about dome tents, naked hippies and desegregated toilets—don’t ask me why. After inhaling another joint, Hanna passed out, so I drove the rest of the way in silence.
I had mentally prepared myself to break the news to my wife Karen that Hanna would be staying the night; we had two young children at the time so we would have to move one of them in with us to free up a bed for him. Karen would not be pleased. When I pulled up outside our Holden Street home Hanna immediately woke up.
‘Where are we man?’
‘Um back in Fitzroy North mate; better come inside and stay here for the night, you can go home in the morning, wad’ya reckon?’
‘Ah no man thanks, thanks a lot but no—I’ll drive home,’ was the crazy reply
‘Fuck me! Mate, you can’t!’
‘No, no I’ll be fine,’ he insisted, and with that he got out of my car, pulled his gear out of the back, loaded it in his wagon and disappeared into the night!
It was about four o’clock the next day when the phone rang.
‘Craig, hey Craig it’s Ross.’
‘G’day mate, how are you? You got home alright last night?’
‘Yeah, cool … umm you know the cash from last night, um where is it man?’
I was instantly on guard; money could be a tricky subject with Hanna.
‘Well, I gave it to you last night and you put it in your jacket, the blue one.’
‘Yeah, yeah, right right. Um … where’s my jacket man?’
‘Well you were wearing it when you drove home last night!’
‘Right right! I drove home, yeah.’
‘Yeah!’
There was a pause; I could hear him breathing into the phone.
‘Hey Craig … where’s my car man?’
‘Fuck Ross I have no idea!’
‘Okay man, see ya later.’
As I hung up the phone I had a brain wave. I rang a mate of Hanna’s who lived nearby, I wondered if he had crashed there last night.
‘Hey mate its Craig Horne here, did you see Hanna last night, he’s lost his car. He didn’t crash at yours did he?’
‘Yeah I did hear someone come in last night, let me check!’ He put down the phone and was gone for some time. Then: ‘You won’t fuckin’ believe it, I found his car—it’s parked in the back lane, the doors swung completely open, his gear in the back in full view! The crazy fuck must’ve come in last night, then called a cab and gone home! How lucky can one cunt be?’ I contemplated that question for some time before replying, ‘As Stephen King once said: “God favours drunks, small children, and the cataclysmically stoned”. See ya later mate.’ I chuckled as I hung up the phone.