I actually grew up in a house of classical musicians. I'd started violin lessons, but my violin teacher's 8-year old, Mike, just a year older than me, decided he wanted to start a rock band with another friend who played the drums. I still picture the afternoon he opened the door to the rec room out back, and his electric guitar, which had maybe most of its strings. The idea of that shape, those colors, the mystique, like a window into another way of being - the seed was planted deep! A year later, I'd made the deal with my parents: if I agreed to continue to suffer through the violin lessons, I could get my own electric guitar. Guitar playing wasn't actually even allowed in our house on Sundays, but it didn't take me long to catch up with Mike and start living the dream, playing lead guitar in Mike's band, The Fiery Flames. While there remains no extant recording of The Fiery Flame's two-gig career, my little brother, Ian (pictured with big brother's rig below), took up the drums a few years
later and together we laid down this incendiary rendition of Rick Derringer's Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo:
At age 12, I was already intent on becoming the next Rick Derringer, or better yet, his bandmate Johnny Winter - my personal favorite.
John Dawson "Johnny" Winter III is not exactly a household name anymore. After the continuous devastation of decades of substance abuse, he doesn't really resemble the studly Great White Hope of the American guitar he was in the late 60s (see above), when he scored a $600,000 advance from Columbia Records, the single largest in the history of the rock industry at that time.
Winter's first big break was a performance of B.B. King's It's All My Own Fault. When he plays this tune, it's really not even blues guitar anymore, just the raw, steely-tongued lashings of an improvisor who realizes emotional escape is no longer an option. Many, many recordings have been released by this artist, but for me, few hold this emotional focus and pacing, as devastating for me now it was when my big cousin Jeff introduced me and Ian to this man so many years ago...
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