My forthcoming book, My World Music, is now with my editor and will be published before the end of this year. Chapter 17 is about Eric Bibb and the Spitz music project. If you like what you read here please consider giving the Spitz your support. More info HERE
NEEDED TIME
‘We'll get over these rough waters / We'll come through.’
ERIC BIBB
I first came across Eric Bibb at his gig at the Spitz in East London’s Old Spitalfields market in 2000. He performed songs from his 1994 album, Spirit & The Blues. My favourites were Rough Waters and Needed Time. I had recently returned from Mostar after being sacked from War Child for exposing corruption, and so was in need of a little ‘needed time’.
The Spitz was a bistro and music venue managed by Jane Glitre, who I got to know during my time in Bosnia. She had made four trips to besieged Sarajevo when she climbed over Mount Igman as part of a group invited there by Sarajevo women.
After returning to London, I became a Spitz regular and enjoyed hearing their eclectic mix of artists. They included performances from musicians such as John Renbourne, Beth Orton and Bert Jansch, as well as Eric Bibb. As a black blues’ singer with a deep warm voice, he was born into a lineage of music and activism. His father, Leon Bibb, marched with Martin Luther King Jnr, and Eric found his inspiration from Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, and Taj Mahal, all of whom he synthesised into his own unique style.
He has said music allows us, ‘to celebrate the good things in life and also to be aware of our spirituality in the midst of all this difficulty and oppression ... I think musicians have a role to play in uniting people ... to make some kind of universal family of us, as we’re meant to be.’
Needed Time was first brought to prominence by blues singer, Lightning Hopkins, who recorded it in 1950. ‘You’re gonna hear this in your heart,’ he said, ‘slowly rough and delicately brutal, like stones being rattled in a can.’
Eric Bibb speaks of Needed Time as a modern psalm, expressing despair and hope as we face our troubles. All his songs are overtly religious, but the aspirations give voice to a universal need for help in the difficulties we all face in life. I’m an atheist, but say Amen to that.
That night at the Spitz, Bibb also sang Rough Waters, with this chorus line:
We'll get over these rough waters
There's a new shore yonder waiting
Jane told me that when she was on was on her way to Mostar for the opening of the Pavarotti Music Centre, Bibb sang it on a phone call to her, encouraging her to greet a new and positive change in her experience of this war-torn country.
The Spitz venue closed in 2007, a victim to corporate greed. The London Magazine said of its enforced closure, ‘investors take advantage of London’s unique creative environment by destroying it.’ They couldn’t destroy the woman who had climbed over a mountain in wartime, and she set up The Spitz Charitable Trust. Today, they take live music into care homes and hospitals. A lot of their work takes place at Bridgeside Lodge Care Home in Islington, and they also work at Great Ormond Street, Northwick Park and Ealing hospitals. They bring music to geriatric, stroke, mental health and children’s wards, and have recently been asked to work in children’s hospices.
I visited Bridgeside in February 2024 to witness a musical session with guitarist Marcus Bonfanti, and saxophonist Pete Wareham. At a time when the world seemed to be fast-tracking its way into barbarism, it was refreshing to witness a strong dose of love, tenderness and excitement. The musicians first visited the common room and played Music is Friendship to the residents. The song had been composed by one of the residents, Big Joe (his preferred stage name) who smiled from his wheelchair. He is a younger man for whom creativity and songwriting works wonders for his mental health.
Music is friendship
Music is life
Music is friendship
And it takes away my strife
They went on to play Bill Wither’s Lean on Me, and Stevie Wonder’s Don’t You Worry about a Thing. The residents there are now much closer in years to The Rolling Stones than to Vera Lynn.
Marcus and Pete then moved on to residents who are unable to leave their beds. I stood outside one elderly woman’s room as they played one of her favourites, Love Me Tender. As they left, I heard her say ‘Bless your hearts. That was really great’.
On the next floor there was a man whose face lit up when he saw that Marcus had brought him a guitar to play. His favourites included Chuck Berry’s No Particular Place to Go and Memphis Tennessee. One of the care workers added to the percolating joy with a routine that involved spontaneous dancing and tenderly holding the hands of the otherwise isolated residents.
The two musicians completed their set with John Martyn’s May You Never.
And may you never lay your head down
Without a hand to hold
Back in the corridor we passed a resident who told the musicians he loved Balkan music. Jane and I could have helped here if only we played guitar or sax, but the two musicians managed to oblige.
Six months later I returned to witness a singing workshop with the residents. I was expecting a ’sing-along’, with everyone encouraged to join in that old chestnut Kumbia. Not so. They were harmonising to Ben E King’s Stand by Me andTammy Wynette’s Everything’s Going to be All Right. The following day, and with the sun reluctantly appearing, we were in the garden, and two musicians, Ben Hazelton on double bass, and Keli Woods on guitar and vocals filled the air with music and song. Their session ended with All You Need is Love. I watched as the mostly wheelchair-bound residents allowed the sunshine and music to light up their faces.
William Congreve got it right when he said, ‘Music hath charms to soothe the breast, to soften rocks, or bend a knotted oak’.
All the songs from these two sessions dealt with human empathy in times of trouble, and the need for love and understanding. Great songs with positive emotions but sung in this setting they carried a truth whose strength was at its most powerful.
I saw wives, daughters and sons of residents engage with their relatives, enabling the music to help them with their tenderness. This second visit to Bridgeside was more dramatic for me than my earlier visit. I was strongly aware that many, if not most, of the residents were younger than me. One man in his early forties, who had suffered brain injury, appeared to be asleep and was slumped on one side as he was wheeled out into the garden. But he sat upright and joined in the singing and smiled and clapped at the end of each song. Another middle-aged man, who had suffered brain damage, after being found alone five hours after a stroke, was accompanied by his wife and daughter who spent the afternoon talking to, and caressing, their loved one. With Billy Joel’s Just the Way You Are, his daughter danced in front of him as Keli sang,
I would not leave you in times of trouble
We never could have come this far,
I took the good times, I'll take the bad times
I'll take you just the way you are
I couldn’t help but think ‘there but for the grace...’ I had had heart surgery, been kept alive with a cow’s heart valve and spent seven weeks at Barts Hospital after a stroke, and while their laboratory struggled to find a way to remove an infection from the valve. Before that I’d had a subdural hematoma which had pushed my brain into less than 50% of my cranium. And here I was now, an observer to others who had not been so lucky.
As I left, walking with my stick, I raised my eyes to the god I do not believe in. The care home staff are skilled practitioners of love and affection. In so far as there is still any civilisation left in this world, it is because of the residents and staff of places like Bridgeside Lodge and the work of The Spitz and these musicians.
Once again in my life, I was witness to the power of music. Care home residents who could forget their problems with song and music and with the help of musicians and carers who have the skills to transform troubles into a blaze of light. And a hand to hold.
Right now, is the needed time
Now is the needed time.
