FROM THE BOOK
It is July 1, 1999, and Nina Simone, for many the greatest jazz and soul artists of the 20th Century, is about to perform at the Meltdown Festival in London, despite concerns over her health. Here, in an extract from his book – Nina Simone’s Gum, published by Faber – Warren Ellis, sitting five rows from the front, describes her arrival on stage.
She was staring everybody down. I had the feeling she loathed everyone. It was the most powerful thing I’ve ever seen, terrifying and awesome. And then she walked over to the piano, sat down with great difficulty and wiped her brow with a towel that was positioned on top of the piano. She placed the towel on the left side of the piano, next to the bass keys, put her fingers to her lips, took her chewing gum out of her mouth and pushed it on the piano. I clocked that straight away.
She raised her fists and started playing. Hammering the piano. I can’t remember what the first song was. Maybe Black Is The Colour. Only her and the piano. The band watching on...
At the end of the song she got up and
walked to the front of the stage again and put her fist up in the air, and gave this ‘yeah!’. And there was some sort of semblance of a softening in her face. Something shifted. She went back to the piano and sat down.
She launched into the second song and the most incredible transformation took place. Her voice lifted and she seemed reborn. She pounded the keys and her voice railed in defiance against her body.
You could see her acknowledging the audience’s screams and adulation. You could see her absorb it, fuelled by it, tapping into the genius that had defined her all her life. A total transformation and transcendence beyond the physical kind of problems she was having; shed of her physical problems, some inner force taking over. Summoning herself to her own rescue. Dr Nina Simone...
The lights came up and the room seemed suddenly normal. People were in shock. Faces wet with tears, not knowing where to look or how to speak. We had witnessed something monumental, a miracle. This communion that had taken place, between her and us. This concert that would inform our lives for ever; to have been in her presence. To watch her transformation was a religious experience. Spiritual.
I left my seat as people left the room, and made my way to the stage...