![]() ![]() He said he had talked to other writers, but chose me because “You have heart and you really care about Johnny.” It took another 15 months before Slatus made it official. It was on the day before Septemthat Slatus and I finally entered into a handshake agreement (actually he kissed my hand) to make me Johnny’s biographer. As I always say, “Everybody has a Johnny Winter story and some of them are even true.” I was determined to tell Johnny’s story with his input during his lifetime, rather than leave it to biographers forced to rely on the often self-serving memories of peripheral players after he was gone. I kept asking and he kept turning me down, but I never abandoned my quest. But Slatus said Johnny was still young and they wanted to wait until he won a Grammy. Johnny’s life story had all the ups and downs and twists and turns of great literature and, in 1985, I approached his manager Teddy Slatus about writing his biography. He was such a charming, larger-than-life character I felt I wanted to know more about him. When I asked him about how he’d practised his scream by yelling into a pillow as a kid, he grabbed a small brown pillow off the seat and screamed into it. Smoking his trademark Kool and sipping on a glass of vodka in the back of the bus, he pulled out a small velvet sack and proudly displayed the last remaining slide from a 12-foot piece of tubing he bought at a plumbing-supply store in 1965. Impressed by his honesty, affinity for storytelling, philosophical approach to life and self-effacing sense of humour, I set up another interview for a Johnny Winter special on my WCCC radio show in Hartford so I could meet him in his tour bus after the show. When I first interviewed Johnny by phone in 1984, he had just released Guitar Slinger on Alligator Records and celebrated his 40th birthday by getting the Screamin’ Demon tattoo on his chest. I had to pick him up off the floor and out of the place − it was hilarious.” That was pretty much the end of the song. He leaned back to hit this note and the stool fell backwards, he fell into the drums and knocked them over on top of the drummer. He had his top hat on and his fringed jacket. I’ll sit on a stool and sing and you play guitar.’ So we got up and he sat on a stool. You’re too drunk, you can’t stand up, don’t do it.’ He said, ‘Come on, Pat, just one song. “We’re in there five minutes, and the band says, ‘We see Johnny Winter, let’s get him up to play a song!’ Johnny stands up, ‘Yeah!’ I pull him back in the chair and say, ‘Johnny, no. I’m too drunk − I can’t stand up,’” Rush recalls. ![]() ![]() Nothing here is innovative or particularly startling, though, but it's all solid, and it's comforting to know that Winter went out in peace with the blues and his legacy, and most importantly, without his skills diminishing.“We sat at a table at The Ivanhoe and Johnny leaned over and said, ‘Pat, promise me that you won’t let me get me get up and play. John), and Gatemouth Brown's "Okie Dokie Stomp" (with Brian Setzer), and even with all the guests, it's still Winter's show. Highlights here include versions of Lightnin' Hopkins' "Mojo Hand" (with Aerosmith's Joe Perry), Bobby Bland's "Don't Want No Woman" (with Eric Clapton), Fats Domino's "Blue Monday" (with Dr. Produced by Winter's guitarist, Paul Nelson, the album is full of gritty, soaring guitar, the kind of straightforward blues-rock style Winter has always been known for, and it's obvious over his last two albums that Winter still found joy and excitement in it all, and he went out playing perhaps as well as he ever had, having learned the nuances of these classic blues songs inside and out. John, Leslie West, Brian Setzer, and Joe Bonnamassa helping out this time around. Step Back is his final studio album, and it follows his 2011 release Roots in paying tribute to his various blues influences, and, like Roots, it is essentially a series of duets with all-star guests, with Eric Clapton, Ben Harper, Billy Gibbons, Joe Perry, Dr. His death in the summer of 2014 at the age of 70 left an unfillable void in the international blues community. He released nearly 30 albums of blues and blues-rock in his 40-plus-year career, and delivered countless memorable concerts as well. ![]() Stepping into the role of a whirlwind albino electric blues guitar player from Texas with a brilliant slide style and a roaring voice was the very role Johnny Winter was born to fill. ![]()
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