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The back cover of the disc reads: "This is an interview with Jimmie
Vaughan, along with Chris Layton and Tommy Shannon of Double Trouble, conducted
by Dan Neer of Neer Perfect Productions. The excerpts contained here cover
the making of The Sky Is Crying, as well as selected quotes highlighting
the illustrious but too short career of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble.
As an added bonus, Dan has included some quotes from an interview he did
with Stevie Ray Vaughan."
Stevie Ray Vaughan
22. Learned guitar from brother Jimmie
23. On Hendrix
24. "The Blues"
1. ---- Putting "The Sky Is Crying" together --------------
Dan Neer: Now, was getting this record together a daunting task?
I mean,
did you have like truckloads of
tapes to go through, to get it
down to these ten songs?
Jimmie Vaughan: Uh, there was quite a bit of stuff! There
was literally
a van-full! There
was a lot of tapes to go through.
DN: Did you, like, set up some ground rules for yourself?
JV: Uh, no, I just did it. I just
listened, and listened, and
listened. I had a
lot of cassettes of the main stuff. And I
would just, uh, I just went
through and picked some songs and
then had to go find 'em.
And I was short, and then I'd have to
go back, or I'd hear about
some song, you know, that they did.
I guess it was kind of like
detective work.
DN: Yeah, kind of. And how long
of a period did you start listening
and going through? Was it
a real long time?
JV: It was several months. I mean,
I didn't ...not "nose to the
grindstone," twenty four
hours a day, but...
DN: When you listen to The Sky is Crying
it's obvious that this is
really "primo" stuff, really
good Stevie Ray. And I think that
when a lot of folks heard
that this CD was coming out they were
concerned, you know, that
we would be hearing outtakes, or just
stuff that, you know, never
should have come out and stuff. Did
you have that on your mind?
JV: Well I would...that's what I was
concerned about, too. I didn't
want that to happen.
And at first, when I started listening to
all the stuff, I didn't
know whether or not...I didn't really
know if there was even gonna
BE a record, I mean, if there was
enough suitable stuff for
a studio record. 'Cause from MY
experience with recording
(I've put out a few albums), you
usually put out the stuff
that's good enough to put out. You
put it out! You know, I
don't know too many people that have a
lot of great stuff just
sittin' around, you know?
DN: Yeah, but...
JV: I mean, I... and he actually, I guess,
you know, over the years,
he just had extra stuff.
I mean, everybody has extra stuff, but
in your mind when you put
a record out, it's not the "good"
stuff, you know what I'm
saying? You put the "good" stuff out.
DN: Right.
JV: You think...
DN: Right. This is actually LOTS
of "good" stuff on this
particular...
JV: But I just kept finding, you know,
I'd find another one, and
then, it just sort of fell
together like that...
2. ---- Any additional production? ----------
DN: How much additional production did you have to do, Jimmie?
JV: All I did was really mix it and say
I think it needs to be more
like "this". It needs
more guitar or less guitar, or whatever,
and clean the stuff up,
and make it sound like a record, that's
all. I mean, nothing
really...no big surgery or anything like
that.
DN: Yeah...
JV: 'Cause it was all pretty much here.
>3. ---- "The Sky Is Crying" ----------------------------
DN: Not only is this collection of songs
a tribute to Stevie Ray,
but it seems like it's a
tribute to Stevie Ray's heroes. For
example, let's take the
title piece. Why don't you tell use
about the people who originally
did The Sky Is Crying, and how
Stevie Ray felt about them?
JV: Well, The Sky Is Crying is really
an Elmore James song. It's
really a sort of a standard
blues. It's a blues that pretty
much every blues singer,
you know, like all of our heroes and
all of Stevie's heroes like
Albert King, uh, anybody, Buddy Guy,
B.B. King any of those
guys has probably recorded or sung The
Sky Is Crying...
DN: Clapton did a version of it...
JV: Clapton, uh, you name it...I mean
it's just one of the songs
that you have to learn.
If you don't know that, then you don't
know your stuff, you know?
DN: Yeah.
JV: And it's a song that Stevie did all
the way through his career,
and recorded it a couple
of times. But it was also a blues
song, you know? A
lot of times the record company, they don't
want to hear, they don't
want to hear eight blues, slow blues on
the album. So that's
my only reason to think why it wasn't on
the record, because it was,
it just didn't fit what the album
was going to be at the time.
DN: I just think it's a tremendous, tremendous version of this song.
JV: To me this record is SCARY!
>4. ---- "Boot Hill" -----------------------------------
DN: Boot Hill is a song that apparently
he's done a bunch of times,
right?
Tommy Shannon: Yeah. Been doing (it) for a long time.
DN: You want to talk about it?
TS: Sure! Yeah, it's one of those
songs, you know, that were done
live before, and Stevie
was real hesitant about recording it
because of the lyrics, you
know. It's, uh...
DN: It's a NASTY song!
TS: Yeah, it's a pretty nasty song, and
you know he was trying to
really put across a good
message, so he had some trouble with
that at first. But
I think that Boot Hill is one of the best
tracks that we've done.
I really do! I think it's great!
DN: And he never included it on any particular
album, even though
it's been recorded a couple
of times, right?
TS: Right.
DN: Just because of the message?
TS: Yeah.
DN: I guess this one here is from the In Step sessions, right?
TS: Yeah.
DN: Which, I guess, goes totally contrary
to what that record was
all about!
TS: Yeah, definitely!
Chris Layton: Yeah, at the time, he said, "Guys,
it's a great track!"
You know, it was just like one of those things where
we went in and just "did
it", it just came out just right. It had the
right feel. And Stevie
was really hedging on it, going, "Well,
I don't know..." He'd
sing it, and he would like, really pick
his vocal apart, for one
little thing that I wouldn't see him
NOT do on another song.
I kept thinking, "Well, what is it?
What's gettin' him about
this song?" And then, you know, it
just dawned on me, in the
context of the record, it just was
really out of place, lyrically.
But then, once again, it was
this song is not gonna make
another record. And before it was
maybe the performance isn't
like we wanted it...I think the
addition of, at this time,
with Reese in the band, that added
that really nice other dimension
to the song, having piano on
it. It made a real
nice, good, strong rhythm track. It was
clearly in my mind the best
one we had ever cut of it. I'm glad
to see it on this record.
>5. ---- "Empty Arms" ------------------------------------
DN: Now, how did Stevie wind up playing
drums on the original
version of Empty Arms that
was released on Soul To Soul?
TS: Well, him and I went in early one
day. You know, he's a good
drummer, and we were just
playin' around and we started playing
it. So, we told Richard
Mullins to turn on the machine, and he
didn't want to do it at
first. He thought it was the wrong
version. But we ended
up putting it down on tape. It sounded
good. Even though
it wasn't anything at all what we'd planned
on doing, at first.
DN: Now, we happen to have the drummer
on the version that appears
on the CD (The Sky Is Crying)
with us, as well - Double
Trouble's Chris Layton.
Now, which one...which version was
recorded first? Was
it the one with Stevie on drums, or...
CS: No, the one that appears on The Sky
Is Crying was the first
version. And, um,
like Tommy was just saying, that Richard
didn't really want to...he
was sitting in the control room...I
mean, I wasn't there, but
this is the story that he related to
me. He went, "Yeah,
Tommy and Stevie came in, and Stevie played
drums, and he did this different
version!" And he goes, "I
don't know...!" This was
a more, like, "uptempo" version. It's
kind of like, "up".
And he said, "I think I like that better!"
Stevie really liked that
beat, that (vocalizing a drum beat)
"bop-boom, bop-boom, bop-boom".
He thought it was a really
funky sound, almost like
a backwards shuffle. So he just wanted
to try it, and he and Tommy
did, and we all liked it.
DN: I got a question...which one do YOU like better, and why?
CS: (Long pause) I like Stevie's version
better! (Lots of
laughter!) I like
the song, I like the way it came out better.
But I like this one, too.
It's almost a toss-up, but I think I
like the version of Stevie
playing better! (More laughter)
TS: It's hard to play that slow.
It's real slow.
>6. ----- "Little Wing" ----------------------------------
DN: This next song on the CD is the most
amazing thing, I mean, his
version of Hendrix's
Little Wing...would you agree with that?
JV: Yeah, well, you know, everything
KILLS me on this, and it's all
got a different story, but
this one seems particularly,
"tender". This song
reminds me of Stevie's tenderness, and
friendliness and everything.
How he could get quiet and
understanding, if that makes
sense, I don't know. He starts
out, he does the Hendrix
song, he does the intro, you know,
pretty much like Hendrix,
and then he goes off... I don't know
whether this is jazz, blues,
or...I don't know what this is, you
know? I don't know
what kind of music you would call this,
'cause it's got every one
of those things in it. There's some
really great, sensitive,
guitar playing on here. It's like he's
talkin'!
DN: Yeah! And you can hear the amp buzzin'.
JV: You can hear the amp buzzin', yeah.
I thought this is a great
song, and I thought, "Oh
no! What am I gonna do about this? "
I could see all the guys
with their Sony Walkmans, you know,
listening for all the pin
drops going, "Oh no! This is a
defective recording!" (Laughter)
I can see the guy, "Oh no!
What am I gonna do?
I have to take it back!" (Laughter) But
this is actually the amp
buzzing. When you have your amps
turned up real loud, to
get "that tone", and you can back it off
on the guitar...but if you're
standing next to your amp, you
have to turn a certain direction
so that it doesn't buzz,
because of the Fender pickups.
That's why they invented
humbucking pickups, so that
it wouldn't buzz like that. But a
Fender doesn't have that,
so ... they probably do now. He
probably turned around to
change the tone, or do something like
that. You hear it,
"Rrrrr, rrrrrrrr," you know?
DN: Yeah. Yeah!
JV: So that's what it is, that effect.
>7. ---- "Wham" ------------------------------------------
DN: This next song, Wham, comes on like
a house on fire. Now, tell
us a little bit about Lonnie
Mack, who wrote this song, Jimmie.
JV: I don't know, I guess when I was
twelve or thirteen and first
started playing, he was
really hot. In the early sixties, he
had "Chicken Pickin'" in
the (plan???), he did "Memphis," he had
all these instrumental,
these great fabulous instrumental 45s
out. They were in
the house. I had 'em. If I didn't have 'em,
Stevie had 'em. Every
time he would come out with a new record,
we'd go get it, and put
it on 33 (rpm), to try to figure out
what he was doing!
DN: Slow it down, huh?
JV: So this is really, uh, really roots...
DN: It's really unusual. Lonnie
played, like, a Flying V, didn't
he?
JV: Yeah, oh yeah! He played a Flying V with a capo, just wild.
DN: I guess Stevie liked those guitar
players with the Flying V,
'cause he liked Albert,
too.
JV: Oh yeah!
DN: Well, this one is just amazing.
He played it a lot, though,
didn't he?
JV: Wham?
DN: Yeah.
JV: Oh yeah, I mean, every time that
I would sit in with him we'd
play this. I've seen
him do it fifteen, twenty times. I've
seen him do it at home,
when we were kids, you know, we used to
do this. It's a great
tune!
>8. ---- "May I Have a Talk With You?" --------------------
DN: Howlin' Wolf - now this is a guy
that did some great ones, like
"Spoonful," "I Ain't Superstitious,"
"Little Red Rooster," "Back
Door Man"... Was Stevie
always in your record collection?
JV: Yeah, when we were kids we had this
regular, small little room,
with two little bunk beds,
a Sears and Roebuck record player, or
Montgomery Wards or whatever
it was, and a stack of albums...I
brought home...and I spent
all my money on records. So I was
always bringing home Howlin'
Wolf, Muddy Waters, or B.B. King,
you know, something like
that...
DN: The "real stuff."
JV: We'd just play the stuff until it
wouldn't play any more. I just
played it over and over,
and that was all that happened in that
room, really. There
wasn't much homework, you know, that kind
of stuff going on in there.
"May I Have a Talk With You" is
Howlin' Wolf, and he's sort
of just doing, uh, "OK, we're gonna
do the Howlin' Wolf song."
He couldn't think of the name of it.
This is one that was off
of an album that I used to have called,
"Folk Festival of the Blues."
It was on Checker...no...Argo! It
was on Argo label.
It was a live album. It had Muddy Waters,
Buddy Guy, Howlin' Wolf,
Sonny Boy Williamson, Willie Dixon, and
a whole bunch of guys playing
at some club live in Chicago in
1962 or something like that.
And this is one of the songs that
Howlin' Wolf did, "May I
Have A Talk With You." But, it's
funny...one of the lines
on this song is part of another song
that Howlin' Wolf sang on
the same record. So it's just from
listening to this record,
you know? See what the deal was, it
was the same band, and each
singer would come up on this record,
so it was kind of confusing,
as to who did what. And sometimes
you'd get one verse mixed
in with another one or something...
DN: And that's what actually happened here, right?
JV: Yeah!
>9. ---- "Close To You" ----------------------------------
DN: "Close To You" - Willie Dixon, the
way he writes lyrics! I mean,
it's got that good sense
of humor in it, and all those great
lines, and stuff.
And I think what Jimmie talks about this song
it's Stevie as a singer.
Do you have some comments about Stevie
as a singer?
CL: I always thought that Stevie was
kind of overlooked as a singer,
for his guitar playing.
He had such a great emotion to his
singing, but people would
not really comment that much on it,
'cause they were always,
like, "stepping over" his vocal to get
to his guitar playing. I
think this song could have been written
just for Stevie. Maybe
years ago Willie said, "Stevie Ray
Vaughan - I think I'm gonna
write a song for him!" 'cause it's,
like, got that humor like
Stevie had. I know that one thing he
really liked about the song
was that Muddy would do that kind of
laugh in there, and that
was like what "got him." Stevie could
get drawn into a song for
like one thing, one guitar lick, or
one little characteristic
in a vocal or something he'd just
like, and he would fall
in love with the song. Which was kind
of neat, 'cause it was really
kind of like, this like child-like
way about him in that way.
Just one little tiny thing that made
it all beautiful.
>10. ---- "Chitlins Con Carne" -----------------------------
DN: "Chitlins Con Carne." (Laughter)
This doesn't sound like a
particularly appetizing
dish! (Laughter)
TS: I had to go to Memphis and re-do
the bass part on this, 'cause,
uh...we did that during
Soul To Soul, didn't we?
CL: Yeah, I think so... (Laughter)
TS: We were kind of "out there" then,
you know? And actually we cut
part of the song out.
There's probably another two or three
minutes that was in there
and we cut it out because it got real,
real sloppy.
DN: Sloppy and spacey, maybe?
TS: Yeah, but uh, I don't really remember that much about it.
CL: I do remember this, that um... this
was before Tommy was in the
band. We were probably the
most (shot???) loose early on. It
was like everybody lived
in... had a sax player that lived in
Fort Worth, and the bass
player lived up there... We'd like
have gigs that we'd all
converge, and go play gigs... Stevie
might call up and say, "Oh,
there's a gig tomorrow, we got a gig
tomorrow!" Or he might call
that day and say there's a gig
tonight. A number of times
everyone would say, "Aw, man!" Say
it's like, too late, or
even tell him, "You can't call me at
eight o'clock and say we
got a gig like in two hours!" that he
came up with... I
remember a couple of times we'd end up
playing that song, "Chitlins
Con Carne" at a little place called
the Aus-Tex Lounge, on South
Congress. It'd be just Stevie and
I. Just guitar and
drums, and there'd be like maybe five people
out there, sittin' in this
little, it was like a bar, you know,
a "lounge." Sittin' there
playin' that... I remember that one
night, sittin' up
there doing that. It's real vivid! There was
like four people and we're
like playin', just me and Stevie...
and they're goin', "Gawd,
where's the rest of the band?"
(Laughter)
>11. ---- "Life By The Drop" ------------------------------
DN: The last song on the CD shows yet
another aspect of Stevie Ray
Vaughan's playing.
Tell us a little about "Life By The Drop,"
Jimmie.
JV: Well, uh, I don't really know much
about this, except that Doyle
Bramhall wrote it.
DN: Now Doyle goes back a long way with both you and Stevie, right?
JV: Yeah, right. I played with
Doyle for years and years and years.
He was the drummer in bands
that I've been in, you know, back
twenty years ago.
One of my first bands I was in was with
Doyle.
DN: Swingin' Pendulums, was it?
JV: Uh, no, after that! A band called The Chessmen. (Laughter)
DN: Ah, yes, The Chessmen!
JV: But anyway, Doyle ended up writing
a lot of songs with Stevie.
A lot of songs off of In
Step... actually off all these albums,
I guess, the last three,
I believe.
DN: Yeah. He co-wrote like, "Wall
Of Denial," "Tightrope," "Change
It," "The House Is Rocking,"
and on Family Style he co-wrote
"Long Way From Home," and
"Telephone Song," too.
JV: Right! So this is a song that
Doyle wrote, and this "B. Logan,"
that's Doyle's wife, Barbara.
Stevie never told me about this
song, when he was doing
In Step. So I don't really know much
about it. It's just
beautiful, though. I don't know the story,
or anything like that. He
liked it...
DN: It seems...
JV: He told them he didn't want to do
it with the band. He wanted
to do it by himself, 'cause
it was personal. So everybody can
make what they want out
of it.
TS: It meant a lot to Stevie, that song
did - the lyrics, you know,
he really liked Doyle's
songs anyway. I think it came out real
good, just doing it acoustic.
CL: It kind of brings, uh...In a way,
you shouldn't even look at the
lyrics. It kind of
brings Stevie's life like full circle. In
most of the song, between
two people, it could also be the same
two people in one man.
I think it's a perfect song to end the
record. That song
was considered to be put on In Step, but it
was just one of those things
that it seemed too far out of
character musically, more
than anything. Lyrically, it was
right. As it turned out
I guess it's great that it's on this
record and maybe wasn't
on the last one.
>12. ---- Jimmie's favorite songs on "The Sky Is Crying" ----
DN: Now what would be your personal favorite? Could you pick one?
JV: On this whole record?
DN: Yeah.
JV: That's tough, because it's usually
the one that's playing! I'm
really close to all the
stuff, and it was like, uh, all this
stuff spoke to me and reminded
me of when we were kids, or a
certain tour we were on,
or a certain thing that was happening,
you know? So I get
pictures when I hear it, you know?
DN: I think everybody does, to tell you
the truth. Because, in one
way or another, you know,
whatever your memories are, you know,
some of these really hit
on them.
JV: It's funny that these songs were
the one that were really left
behind because they, to
me, this record speaks to you. I mean,
in a lot of ways, so I don't
know. Everybody has to make their
own... I don't want to sound
too far out or anything,,, it's
really nice.
>13. ---- Any more Stevie Ray Vaughan material? -------------
DN: I guess the question is, is there
more you think we'll hear from
Stevie Ray?
JV: Yeah, there'll be more. There's
not like a lot of studio stuff
of songs that have never
been released. There's alternate
takes, and there's, you
know, like different versions. But this
is pretty much the stuff
that we haven't heard. You know what I
mean?
DN: Yeah. Yeah, so there might be...
JV: I'm gonna go, in sometime coming
up , and work with the record
company on the Stevie Ray
Vaughan Box, the "ultimate" Stevie Ray
Box. And there will
be a lot of some goodies in there! But,
there is live stuff ...
DN: Yeah, that's what I'd imagine... I've heard tapes...
JV: But there's not ... And
there's some good, some really neat
stuff, too. But this
was it. I mean, to me, this was the "good
stuff."
>14. ---- Stevie Ray Vaughan the perfectionist ---------------
DN: Was he a perfectionist? I mean,
you would cut something that
you guys would think was
pretty "right there," you know, and
then he'd pick something
that you say well, boy, can most people
hear that even?
TS: Yeah, yeah he was definitely like that.
CL: Yeah, he was a perfectionist.
But in playing the music, it
wasn't so much like it was
a "technical" perfection thing. If
it had the right feeling
that he was looking for, or that we
were looking for, then we
were "there." Even if there was some
mistakes or something,
that didn't matter. Which was kind of a
beautiful thing because
then the real essence of the music was
kind of coming out, not
just to get this "technical" portrayal
of something. But
on the other hand, when it came to guitar
sounds and whatnot, he was
an absolute fanatic. He would site
there for eight hours working
on one particular tone. Or he
might be there longer than
that...
TS: Two days, or three days sometimes...
CL: Yeah, he could be well, like, saying
this tube, the second tube,
the second power tube I
think is bad. Or, he's got all these
amps chained together, and
he's like, "This second cord's wrong,
get me this different cord,
gimme that cord." Or, "I need a
different guitar."
He would, like, sit there for hours and
hours and hours, technically,
trying to get his sound...
DN: Or trying to get the right buzz on the amp... (Laughter)
CL: Yeah, whatever it was, there wasn't
anything real spontaneous
there! I mean, it
was like a real exact science in his mind.
He had this method to the
madness of getting just the right
sound. But the music
was: when it feels right, all things
aside, we've got what we
need.
>15. ---- How Stevie progressed as a guitarist -------------
TS: First time we played together, he
was about fifteen or sixteen.
We played together in a
band called Blackbird. Even then, and
through Double Trouble it's
like I never got "used to" playing
with him. What I mean
is, I never took it for granted. It's
like he'd do stuff every
night that would just blow me away!
I'd stand over there and
just couldn't believe it!
CL: He was always searching. He
wasn't trying to get "better"
technically, as a guitar
player...I think he was always trying
to distill what his guitar
playing meant in the context of just
playing good music.
He was always searching for a way to make
better music, more essential
music. I know that he would say
every so often that he would
get kind of frustrated
with...sometimes he'd hear
a tape and say, "God bless...I'm
playing all these notes,
sounds like some machine gun or
something!" And he
didn't like it, 'cause he though at that
point in time he was kind
of like passing off, you know, doing
this cheap music, when he
would rather be playing something more
essential. 'Cause,
he could play real fast. When he wanted to
get really ridiculous about
it he could play as fast as anybody,
you know, just to show me.
"Hey, check this out!" And he'd play
this really incredible stuff,
and he'd say, "It doesn't sound
like anything to me!" (Laughter)
>16. ---- First time they heard Stevie Ray Vaughan -----------
TS: I heard Stevie when he was about
fourteen years old. I'd just
broken up with Johnny Winter,
I'd been playing with Johnny
Winter. I flew to
Dallas. I was walking down the street. I
was going to this club called
The Fog. And, I heard this guitar
player from outside, and
I was going, "Who's that!?" It was
incredible! And I
went inside, and there was this little kid
standing there looking up
at all the big guys around him. You
know, it was like I was
the only one that would even talk to him
back then. He was
like a little punk to everybody else. I knew
he was special. It's
like it came right from his heart. There's
no foolin' around there!
CL: I first met him in...or actually,
I first saw him in 1975. My
roommate at the time was
playing in a band with him and he said,
"Yeah, why don't you come
out and see us! The band's real good,
and I think you'd really
enjoy it." So I did. I went to a place
called Soap Creek Saloon,
in Austin, and I walked in and I
couldn't believe it!
This guy was like...I thought this guy was
like a human diamond, or
something. He had this "power." It's
like when he played, it
was almost like he "was" the music. I
felt that way about him
until the very end. It was like, the
night that he died, we did
the show up in Wisconsin, he played
guitar that night and it
was like the band never sounded better.
Later on, when he jammed
with Eric Clapton, the first note that
he played, it was like it
covered the entire band and the whole
audience. It was like this
thing, like this energy that he had,
that I had never really
felt from anybody else. And I'm talking
about the standpoint of
playing with him.
>17. ---- Beginnings of Double Trouble -----------------------
CL: It was Triple Threat Revue was together,
and at that time the
band was just transforming.
I think he had some personnel
problems. I approached
him and said, "Hey man, we can do some
great things together."
I could see that obviously that the
band I didn't think was
really gonna go anywhere. There was a
serious problem, and I thought
that I could help cure that.
TS: I was playing...I was living in Houston,
and playing around
there. I went in Rockefellers
on night, and they were playing.
It was like a revelation,
that's where I want to be, right
there, that's where I belong.
And I just went up and told
Stevie that, you know, "I
want to play with you." And I kept
bugging him, you know?
I guess about a month later, he finally
gave me a call. But it's
strange - I knew exactly what I wanted
to do there. And I
really felt like that's where I belonged.
>18. ----- Montreaux Jazz Festival --------------------------
CL: It was definitely the most "eventful"
thing that we had ever
done, you know, far away.
I'd never travelled abroad, myself.
It's like all of the sudden
I'm going to Switzerland, oh, great!
This ought to be a lot of
fun! After our show we went downstairs
into the basement, into
the musicians' lounge, which is where
everybody went after they
played, and drank or whatever. So,
uh...
TS: That's where we met Jackson Browne.
CL: Yeah. I thought a lot of this
was too good to be true. And you
know, let me correct something.
It was actually the next night
that we played there.
It wasn't the night after we played. The
next night we were in Montreaux
with nothing to do. We could go
to the festival. The
manager said, "Well look, I can book y'all
in the musicians' lounge,
you know, downstairs. Y'all want to
go down there an play?
There's no money in it but I thought
maybe you might like to
play." Yeah, sure! You know, we were
jazzed! So that's
when we did that, and it was after Jackson's
show that night he came
down with the whole band and we all got
up and jammed until after
daybreak. That might have been the
longest I ever played in
one sitting.
TS: Yeah! There was like one break
the whole night. It went all
night.
CS: Yeah, we stopped for like twenty
minutes, and then got back up
and just played and played.
>19. ---- David Bowie tour ---------------------------------
CL: I think what it really boiled down
to is that our record was in
the can -- Texas Flood --
and Stevie played on the Bowie record,
and then there was the offer
for the world tour. I guess it was
our understanding that this
band would open... Stevie Ray
Vaughan and Double Trouble
would open for Bowie on this tour,
and that Stevie would then
play guitar with him in his show. I
guess some wires got crossed,
and that never really happened, or
wasn't going to happen.
I think it was just at a point in time
Stevie had to make a decision
whether or not he was gonna pursue
his own career from the
very start, with this record as the
lead-off, or abandon that
path and go play guitar with someone
for the notoriety or money
or whatever. And, this won out. It
was something he had wanted
to do all his life. It was like,
there we were! You know,
the band was there, the record was
there, and it was like he
just followed his heart, "This is what
I've got to do. This
is what I've been working for, so I'm
gonna go do it!"
TS: Yes. That's one thing I think
Stevie really showed his
character. Everybody
had talked him into going ahead and doing
the David Bowie tour.
But when it came down to the last minute,
he couldn't go against what
he believed in.
CL: He really struggled with it.
People would say, just forget
about the band for a year,
eighteen months, however long the
tour lasts. You can
always go back and pick them up later.
This will do great things
for your career. You'll be a big
star! Everybody in
the world will know who you are! And then
you could just pick right
back up. In his heart, I think his
heart just said no, this
is what I want to do, and I'll do it
now.
TS: Yeah, it turned out to be the right
decision, too, 'cause Texas
Flood did real good.
CL: I think for a time he was known as
the "guitar player that
DIDN'T play with David Bowie,"
as opposed to the one that did!
>20. ---- The Fire and Fury tour with Jeff Beck -------------
CL: It was fun! We had a hard time
getting it off the ground,
trying to figure out how
we're gonna bill it, and who's gonna
play first, who's gonna
play last, you know... The managers
were going, " Who's really
more important?" "Well, he's new and
fresh." "He's old,
and he's established; he's a legend." "Well,
he's a legend, too!" "But
he's not more of a legend than my
guy!" But it worked
out real good. It ended up being a great
tour! A lot of good
music was played on that tour.
TS: Yeah, everybody got along real good.
>21. ---- Stevie Ray's death -------------------------------
TS: That's one of the things that really
comforts me about it, you
know? It's when Stevie
went, he was clean and sober. He had
his life put together.
He was happy. He had grown spiritually
a long way. It's real
comforting to know that he went like
that. And I love him,
and I'll always miss him!
SRV: He definitely got me started, and then
somewhere along the line,
showed me that I was supposed
to learn, myself! (Laughs) I'm
glad he did! He's
probably my biggest influence, for many
reasons. Mainly because
when he first started, I watched him, I
watched him a LOT.
It was so easy for him to learn and pick up
what he picked up, that
it just didn't seem that it could be
hard.
>23. ---- On Hendrix ----------------------------------
SRV: I just thought he was the greatest thang
I'd ever seen! I never
got to see him live, but,
there's a whole lot about his life,
you know... I was
influenced by his music, his style, his
attitude, what he was looking
for, or at least my interpretation
of what he was looking for,
which was growing from the inside
out. Another thing
that really struck me hard was a lot of the
same influences that I had
musically were his influences as
well. That's probably
what made it a little easier for me to
pick up some of the thangs
that he plays. Some of the distance
that people put between
playing music and playing Hendrix's
music is kind of strange
to me. Why isn't it just as accessible
as Chuck Berry, or B.B.
King, or Albert King, or Bo Diddley.
Granted - it's hard to play!
(Laughs) And, there's a lot to
it. There's a lot
to understanding what he's doing. I don't
even begin to know how he
did some of the things he did. But
that doesn't mean I shouldn't
try!
>24. ---- "The Blues" -----------------------------------
SRV: Let us hope that the music is taken seriously,
you know? That
doesn't mean it can't be
fun, but it doesn't mean it can just be
skimmed over and called
"the blues" because it's got three
chords, and it's in so-and-so
key, and it's the speed, you know?
(Laughs) There's too
many thangs going on in life that are hard
to deal with, or hard to
look at. That's what the blues is
about. It's about,
as far as I can tell, it's a way to tell
somebody what's going on,
and by doing that, either whoever is
listening to it can relate
to what you're saying, because it's
the same thang that's happening
to them, and as a result they
feel better. Or it's
worse than what they're going through, so
they go, "Whew!" and feel
better. Or it's not quite as bad, and
then go, "Well, this is
WORSE, but at least somebody
understands!" and feel better.
And then there's the happy side
of life, you know, when
that part's over! And that's blues,
too, you know, because you
grew from it!