There were a number of years where Johnny Winter was a forlorn and forgotten man within the music industry. Ill-health brought on from years of overindulgence and drug abuse had left him a mere shell of his former incendiary awesomeness.
This state of affairs lasted throughout the 1990s and into the 2000s, but over the last years of his life, with a new management team and some key people looking out for his personal welfare, Winter made an epic comeback as a songwriter, producer and performer. His last two albums, 2011s Roots and Step Back, released in 2014, were tour de force expressions of a true creative craftsman who had returned to the top of his game. His touring schedule was almost as busy as it was in his late 1960s-early 1970s heyday, as he was being discovered by entirely new generations of music fans, and rediscovered by older fans who revelled in his return to form.
Unfortunately, not all the damage to his health could be undone, and Winter died on July 16, 2014, two days after performing at a prestigious music festival in Switzerland. The band that had backed him on that tour has continued on, performing Winter’s songs around the world to adoring multitudes. Lead by bandleader, guitarist and producer Paul Nelson, The Johnny Winter All Star Band comes to Barrie, ON on March 18 for a show at Violet’s Venue, 52 Morrow Rd.
“I wanted to turn this into the same kind of thing as the Experience Hendrix Tour, which started as a birthday party at B.B. King’s and Johnny and I played in that first one. It turned into two shows, and then 25 shows, and now it’s a huge thing. And since Johnny was having a real comeback I am kind of inclined to keep his name and his music alive,” said Nelson, who won a Grammy in 2015 for producing Step Back.
“I have worked closely with his estate to be able to keep doing what we have been doing. And the same thing has happened with B.B. King’s last band. They are touring now and doing the same thing we are. We, as a band, felt it was the right thing to do. And of course it’s therapeutic for us as well because we get to keeping playing together and playing the great music that Johnny created. We know he is not here but we do our best to reproduce his shows and sets the way he did them.”
Besides Nelson, The Johnny Winter All Star Band is comprised of bassist Scott Spray, drummer Tommy Curiale (who previously worked many years with Rick Derringer) and fronted by another blues legend, James Montgomery on vocals and harmonica. During the last couple of tours, the band has also been joined by a number of special guests onstage – all friends and devotees of Winter. These have included Warren Haynes, Sonny Landreth, Joe Louis Walker, Lonnie Baker Brooks, Earl Slick, Debbie Davies and many others.
“We feel, who better to do this that the guys who were actually in the band. This is not a tribute band; that’s one thing, because we’re the actual guys. Johnny is not there but a large portion of his legacy is there and it’s also about all the stories that we can tell the fans. That’s something a tribute band really couldn’t do.”
Winter was known for his blistering live shows and his truly authentic and bad-ass interpretation of the blues. Besides his breathtaking musicianship and outstanding songwriting abilities, Winter also became a producer of note, winning Grammy awards three years in a row (1977, 1978 and 1979) for his work producing albums by Muddy Waters. He was also nominated for four other Grammys for his own work before winning, posthumously, in 2015 alongside Nelson. In 1980, he was on the cover of the first-ever edition of Guitar World magazine, and in 1988 was named into the Blues Hall of Fame.
So what made Winter such a special artist, one who was so beloved by fans and so well respected by his fellow musicians?
“It was the talent, even more so than Hendrix, more so than [Eric] Clapton, because they all knew that he was the total package: he had the singing, he was also the greatest slide guitar player and he was the greatest conventional blues guitar player. There are photos of Johnny after he walked into an open jam with Hendrix and Hendrix said ‘I’ll play bass.’ There are stories of Johnny walking onstage at Madison Square Garden for a Bob Dylan tribute and everyone overheard Clapton saying ‘uh oh, here comes Johnny. We’re all in trouble.’ They all knew,” Nelson said.
The two met in a studio shortly after the millennium. Nelson was an in-demand session player who was working with NBC TV and also the WWE wrestling organization creating original music for their programming. Winter knew who Nelson was and asked him if he had any songs. Nelson submitted one; Winter liked it and asked for more, eventually bringing Nelson in to play on the record and then tour with the band.
“And then he said, ‘well, since you’re on tour with me, do you want to help me out and be the band leader.’ So I did. But I saw how weak he was and how management was enabling his self-destructiveness and not doing anything to help. I knew something was seriously wrong, so I stepped in at a certain point and risked everything I had with him, even my position in the band,” Nelson explained.
“When I met him, he weighed about 90 pounds and he was being written out of musical history. The drugs caught up with him. He could barely walk. That guy I idolized as a young musician was fading before my eyes and he was not going to last much longer. So I told him everything’s got to go: the drinking, the smoking, the pills. But the results were there. He was back where he should have been and left us on a high note. Listen, what he did to his body was incredible. He made Ozzy Osbourne look like he had training wheels on. We looked at that TV show he did and said, ‘are you kidding me? That’s nothing compared to what Johnny put into his system.’ And on top of that he was an albino and most people thought they died by 40.
“So things had to change. I fired the management that was feeding him and we started playing this amazing game of catch-up. We got to the point where we were doing 120 to 140 shows a year, all around the world. He was healthy and he was playing his ass off.”
Nelson said Winter was stubborn and bristled at what he saw were restrictions on his lifestyle, but once the positive repercussions of his more abstinent lifestyle became more and more apparent, Winter realized that Nelson was right and bought into the program.
Much of this has been recorded for posterity in the documentary Down & Dirty, which was released earlier this month to rave reviews.
“The press was getting better and there was more of it. We was getting more of the awards and recognition that he always deserved. Each little step forward was important. I even got him laser surgery. He was no longer legally blind. Nobody knows that. The old management never had him checked and it was cataracts. After a one hour visit for laser surgery he could see better, he could see colours and he could walk onstage unattended. All the reviews before were people saying, ‘oh he had to be helped onto the stage’ – he couldn’t see! By the time he died he went from 90 pounds to 180 pounds. He was working out and had a personal trainer,” he said.
“But it was all the smoking that killed him. We couldn’t fix that damage and he died of emphysema.”
Nelson said that besides his phenomenal gifts as a musician, songwriter and producer, Winter was also a true historian of music, particularly the blues. And it was the wisdom that he imparted to his collaborators that Nelson remembers most fondly, and for which he is most grateful.
“Forget about the playing and the songwriting and that iconic kind of stuff; he Billy Gibbons [of ZZ Top], Bill Wax from Sirius Radio and Dick Sherman, a producer who worked with Stevie Ray Vaughan, those were the guys who knew every single nuance of the blues. They knew every detail of who played what instrument on a certain track on a certain album. It was amazing,” he said.
“As a guitar play I would say, ‘Johnny show me some stuff.’ He’d say, ‘well, okay listen to such and such a T Bone Walker record.’ So I would go and get everything of his I could get my hands on. Johnny said, ‘no, no, just get this song, listen to the riff.’ I said, ‘that’s it?’ He said, ‘yep.’ And that’s what I learned. Then he would say to listen to a certain Chuck Berry riff or something cool B.B. King did on a track. So he cut to the chase which sped up my education. And as I learned that stuff we communicated even better on stage. It wasn’t a competition, but as I got better it fuelled him, especially once he started to get healthy. The whole band was improving because of all the knowledge Johnny was imparting to us.
“We were learning songs that Johnny grew up on, and that was the premise for both the Roots and Step Back albums. And as his producer I had to make sure that we had those songs down tight because we were bringing in all these heavyweights to record tracks on these albums – people like Clapton and Billy Gibbons, Ben Harper, Warren Haynes and Sonny Landreth.”
Nelson’s own pedigree is both prodigious and interesting. A long-time session musician, he was born in Manhattan but grew up in Connecticut, attending the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston where he studied with Steve Vai.
“I really was a blues guy first. I definitely was into Johnny Winter, Hendrix and ZZ Top as well as Aerosmith, Led Zeppelin and the Allman Brothers – all that kind of stuff. But hard rock and metal was all around at that time and after working with Steve, that’s what I found myself doing for a while. But I managed to transition back to the blues and really got my chops together working with Johnny,” he said.
Nelson said he and the band are looking forward to returning to Canada, as it has always been a favourite territory to tour.
“I have been up there with Joe Louis Walker and Johnny and I played there as well. Before, during and after Johnny we have been up there a lot. I almost feel like a registered citizen up there. I have played in so many bands and done so many guest appearances up in Canada because it’s such an appreciative place to play,” he said.
“You’re the best for blues music, really. You get it. You like authentic music and you still look at music as an art, not as strictly a commercial enterprise. You get it, and we all appreciate that.”
For information on the March 18 show at Violet’s Venue in Barrie, ON, visit http://tickets.violetsvenue.com/events/view/99
For more on Nelson, the Johnny Winter All Star Band and his other musical pursuits, visit http://www.paulnelsonguitar.com.
The Johnny Winter All Star Band is also playing Buffalo, NY on March 19 at the Iron Works.
- Jim Barber is a veteran award-winning journalist and author based in Napanee, ON, who has been writing about music and musicians for a quarter of a century. Besides his journalistic endeavours, he now works as a communications and marketing specialist. Contact him at jimbarberwritingservices@gmail.com.
great Interview, Paul !!!