I remember flying over the crowd, just thinking: “Look at all these fuckin’ people.” It was really something else. We had to take a helicopter out of there, you couldn’t drive at all. There was mud everywhere and nobody knew who was going on when. That’s when I thought we’d pretty much made it. Was there one show where you realised you were a success’?
The week before, we were playing to a hundred people. And then a Rolling Stone article came out about us and everything changed overnight.
We were really struggling, sleeping on floors and stuff. I didn’t know if we could make any money off of it. It was really my drummer ‘Uncle’ John Turner’s idea. I wasn’t making nearly as much money playing the blues. There was a club called the Love Street Light Circus in Houston, and a place called the Vulcan Gas Company in Austin.
JW: There were only a couple of places to even play it. How did audiences react when you first started playing the blues? I never wanted to be a rock star, it’s just that Steve Paul wouldn’t let me play the blues. So I didn’t really get to start playing it until about 1967. It wasn’t until the Rolling Stones and John Mayall and people like that, when white people started caring about the blues. Until the British bands came around, white people didn’t even want to hear the blues. I was playing rock and R&B for a long time before I started playing the blues. Johnny, when you were coming up, were you on a different circuit to bands like Aerosmith? But then there’s that night when there’s new faces in the audience, and you realise you’ve got something that they want to hear. At first you’re just calling up all your friends to come to the club so the owner thinks you’ve got something going on. JP: It’s that time when people you don’t know start showing up at your shows. JW: That was very fun, when you’re still trying to make it. But I have to say, some of my best times were back when we were struggling. JP: I like to have a comfortable bed, and I like to eat once in a while. JW: I like being successful a lot better. Which is better – being successful, or being hungry? I still love hearing it, and I still love playing it.
#JOHNNY WINTER TV MAMA HOW TO#
I thought: “I have to learn how to play this, this is cool.” It was just more emotional, it had more feeling, than any other kind of music I ever heard. Johnny Winter: When I was twelve, hearing the blues on the radio. Johnny, when did you first realise that you were going to be a blues player? That’s what I got from Johnny, watching him pour his heart and soul into it. It’s not the blues per se, but you’re giving it that platform, you’re giving it some guts. I mean, we’ve done some songs that were pop hits, they weren’t the blues, but I tried to carry over that feeling, to make them a new song every night. The thing with the blues is, you can play the same song every night, and every time it’s a different song. Just like Johnny, I’m just another link in the chain. Johnny’s got the credentials and he’s played with a lot of the greats. I think you’re both bluesmen, at the core. That show got me to put a slide on my finger. That was Johnny and Rick Derringer, and it was a really kick-ass rock band. But I remember going to see him at a club called the Boston Tea Party in Boston in 1969. Johnny and I might have passed each other in the hall that day, but that was probably it. Joe Perry: This one time, many years ago, at the Academy of Music in New York in 1972 – this was before we had a manager – Steve Paul had heard of us and said: “I’ve got this show with Humble Pie and Edgar and Johnny Winter, and I’ll give you twenty minutes so I can check you out.” So we played that show, did our twenty minutes, and he passed on us. And is this really the first time your paths have crossed?
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