by Alan Paul
SHANNON: We were loud as shit in rehearsal, and the crew kept saying, “Can you guys play any quieter than that?” Mick Jagger was there because his wife, Jerry Hall, was hosting the show.
LAYTON: Mick hung with us for most of the night in this real tiny dressing room and told Stevie that he wanted to sing “Little Red Rooster” with us. The Stones had broken up temporarily, and just before we went on, Mick said, “Maybe I better not do it, because Keith and I have this problem right now. Maybe I shouldn’t appear by myself on national television, because it might piss Keith off.” He was uncomfortable and decided not to do it.
It was exciting to play on SNL, but the truth is, I can’t say whether it was really fun or even a good time because we were so burnt out and on edge. There was none of the peaceful contentment that normally goes along with achieving a career accomplishment like that because we were all too fucked up on drugs.
On March 8, Stevie and Double Trouble and Jimmie and the T-Birds embarked on an eighteen-day tour of New Zealand and Australia. Stevie had insisted on the T-Birds’ inclusion. It would be the most time Jimmie and Stevie had spent together in decades. Tensions between Stevie and Chesley deepened throughout the blurry, drug-fueled tour of Oceania. Stevie also met Janna Lapidus in Wellington, New Zealand, the fourth stop on the tour. The tall brunette beauty, who would be his closest companion by the end of the year, was a month shy of turning seventeen. She and her parents had fled the Soviet Union and moved to Wellington in 1974 when she was five.
WYNANS: We were driving in from the airport in Wellington, and Stevie saw this beautiful woman and told the driver to stop and he would see us later. He had to meet her. He was immediately smitten.
JANNA LAPIDUS, Stevie Ray Vaughan’s girlfriend, 1986–1990: I was familiar with him because I’d seen a few clips on TV, and he had a popular fan base in New Zealand. But I was listening to bands like the Clash and the Psychedelic Furs.
After we spoke for a while, Jimmie came out, and the three of us walked around town. When I had to leave, Stevie asked if I would come back before the show, but I already had plans with a friend so I was noncommittal. My friend and I walked over later and saw a long line of people waiting to go in. Jimmie saw me and asked where I’d been and said Stevie had been waiting for me. I was surprised and amused as we walked back into the lobby and Jimmie called up to Stevie and said we were there.
We went up and hung out with Stevie, then walked across the street to the show with him. I thought he was quite incredible, and after the show, Stevie took my jean jacket and gave me his black velvet cape so that I’d have to come back the next day. We met in the afternoon and talked for hours about life, feelings, relationships, and the marriage he was trying to make a break from. He was intrigued that my family had moved from Russia to seek freedom, and despite our differences in age and background, we realized a lot of similarities. I was just getting through a struggle with an eating disorder, and he was struggling with the control that drugs and alcohol had on his life and searching for serenity. Before I left, he asked me to come to Auckland the next day, and I said I’d see. The next morning, caution wrestled with a sense of intrigue and a true feeling of connection. I decided I had to go and made sure I had my own hotel room.
WYNANS: Janna joined us on tour. They seemed to have become immediate soul mates.
LAPIDUS: My dad just looked at me and said, “What are you doing?” They knew I was going to do what I was going to do, so they didn’t fight too much. I was their only baby, but they knew that I had my wits about me, that I wasn’t just coming from butterflies and fairyland. My parents had been through a lot; they were kids through World War II and left Russia for a better life. I had a sister who died there. They weren’t easily scared.
PROCT: I never got the feeling that Stevie’s attraction to Janna was about trying for a one-night stand. It was like a light bulb went off when he saw her, and we could all feel that. He loved talking to her and being with her. He could go off on these raps that didn’t make much sense and were impossible to follow, but he was very clear about wanting to be with her. He wanted companionship and love, and he found someone he could really talk to and open up with.
In Auckland, Vaughan asked Lapidus to stay on the road and join them the next day when they would fly to Australia for a ten-day, five-city tour. She agreed again.
LAPIDUS: It was still cocaine and Crown Royal backstage and flying around Australia, they’d be drinking and getting into rowdy fights with flight attendants. It was a bit rude and unnecessary. Stevie had this element of badassery. He carried around a lot of anger, but he was so bloody honest and open with me. You could see a beautiful heart struggling.
Stevie loved this guitar, which was stolen in 1987 and never recovered. (Agapito Sanchez)
PROCT: In Australia, everyone was way over the top, acting excessively. It was crazy over there; everyone in the bar in the middle of the afternoon knocking down shots of vodka and whiskey. We all felt like we were invincible, but Stevie hit it a lot harder than any of us. There was a show towards the end of that tour, which was the first time I had ever seen Stevie unable to play well. He was always great no matter what he was doing, but not this time, and the Double Trouble guys did not know what to do. At one of the airports, Jimmie was just out-of-control hungover, and Stevie got so frustrated that he took this metal walking stick and smashed it into a pillar. It was that kind of tour.
At the end of the tour, in Perth, March 27–29, 1986, Vaughan and Millikin had a heated meeting. Chesley continued to find it ridiculous that Chris and Tommy were making the same amount on the road as Stevie, a longtime point of tension, but he also didn’t appreciate Layton questioning the finances. Layton had long been a voice calling for financial accountability and what he considered common-sense business practices.
LAYTON: Australia promised to be a good tour, and before we left, I asked Chesley for a business projection, which he didn’t have, so I said, “I want to know clearly, are we going to lose money, yes or no?” He said, “You’re not going to lose a penny.” We got to the end of the tour and found out we were in the red, and I told Stevie, “This is bullshit. It’s killing us. I’m not going to be around to watch us hit the wall, so either he goes or I’m leaving. We cannot operate like this and think we’re ever going to make any real headway in our career or our music because it will drag us down. It’s got to change.” It’s not just that we had more to lose. A lot more was being lost.
PROCT: Chris was trying to figure out how they could stop losing money, but it’s hard to make money when it’s all going up your nose, and that’s the situation everyone was in. Stevie had also insisted on having the T-Birds along, though we weren’t really a draw yet, and I’m sure that cost them a bunch of money. Chesley was trying to keep it on track, and he definitely believed in Stevie, but he was kind of a control freak, and I’m sure that grated.
HODGES: Chesley had a lot on his plate and was going 24-7. He had the ability to think big, but some of the other attention to details weren’t maybe as keen as Stevie recognized they needed to be.
LAYTON: It was a scary moment for me because quitting the band was the last thing I wanted to do, but I really felt that continuing as we were was going to be the end of us anyway. You could see the handwriting on the wall; it had to change, or there would be a day of reckoning when we would be staring at a dead end, asking what happened. I couldn’t stand by and watch that happen. The way things were going was heartbreaking, and I had to take that stand. I really don’t know if Stevie fired him or Chesley quit, because I wasn’t in the meeting, but Stevie agreed that something had to change, and in short order, Chesley was gone.
Tommy Shannon and Chesley Millikin in Australia, 1986, during the manager’s final days with the band. (Mark Proct)
The result of the meeting was an agreement that Classic Management would no longer represent the band as of June 1. They had two months to finalize the split. Stevie’s two most intimate relationships—with Lenny
and with Chesley—were both splitting apart.
EDI JOHNSON: I knew Stevie was going to leave, and it wasn’t about money. Stevie wanted someone to take care of him, to be on the road every day and watch out for him. Stevie asked me to talk to Chesley, and I tried, but he wasn’t getting it. Chesley was not a guy that was going to change. He did a tremendous job getting Stevie out into the world, but he wasn’t tuned in to what Stevie needed—which was to feel taken care of.
HODGES: The kind of tender, loving care Stevie needed at that time was not necessarily Chesley’s forte, and I somehow got into that role. I loved Stevie and knew how sensitive he was.
J. MARSHALL CRAIG: Chesley was hard on Stevie, who was probably ready for something different at that stage of his career. It was just time to part. Chesley always said that he wasn’t fired.
EDI JOHNSON: Neither Stevie nor Frances liked confrontations, so there was grumbling, not fighting. But none of it would have ever happened without Frances’s backing and the money she poured into the band.
BRANDENBURG: Frances Carr took a leap of faith and invested money into something because she and Edi and Chesley felt it.
WYNANS: When we got back and had a meeting, everyone was sort of shocked to find out how much money we had lost on that trip.
HODGES: It’s a tough thing when a manager loses a client’s enthusiasm, but it’s not uncommon, and the manager who gets an artist’s career moving is often not the right guy once they’re established. Stevie asked me for help finding a new manager, and I set up tentative meetings with ten people, and he was not at all pleased with the results of the first few because he felt like these guys were trying to tell him what to do. Regardless of drug issues, Stevie Ray Vaughan was 100 percent clear about who he was as a person and a musician. He wanted support and guidance, not a new musical plan. After a few meetings, he was complaining about these guys, and he said, “If you’ll be my manager, then it’s a list of one because I don’t think anyone else understands what I’m doing.”
EDI JOHNSON: Chesley talked about Alex Hodges as his best friend, and I can’t imagine how he felt about this.
HODGES: His mind was made up by the time he came and talked to me.
19
LIVE—AND BARELY ALIVE
Hodges left International Creative Management (ICM) to focus on his Atlanta-based management company, Strike Force. Gregg Allman was another client. Stevie and his crew’s work-hard, play-hard ethos did not intimidate Hodges, who had worked for years with the Allman Brothers Band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and other road-tough rockers. But once he began studying the band’s finances, it became clear to him that the situation was dire.
Double Trouble was deep in debt to Classic Management from early loans and everyone steadily taking “draws” and was facing lawsuits from Cutter Brandenburg, Richard Mullen, and others who filed suit after mounting frustrations that they had not been paid what they felt had been promised.
“There were some muddy waters,” Hodges says. “Stevie couldn’t pay all the bills. They had a road manager who was making promises and dispensing money. He was cutting and dispersing the drugs, and the protocols of a road manager were not being met or honored.”
Hodges says that he lent a sympathetic ear to Vaughan’s desire to play less but quickly realized that the only financially responsible recommendation he could make was the opposite: the band had to play more shows to dig out of their hole. “I saw that the touring could be done differently, but it was an absolute necessity,” says Hodges. “Stevie’s health was the paramount concern, but the only sustainable income was from the road.”
Says Layton, “When Alex took over management, our fees somehow doubled. A $25,000 gig became $50,000.”
HODGES: When I was told everyone in the band and crew was on salary, I said, “Uh-oh,” because they weren’t making enough money to do that, and I had to tell them, “You can’t write the checks, and you really are going to have to listen to me.” There were outstanding debts to people who said they had been promised money. And tax issues arose pretty quickly. The amount of debt seemed staggering. We had to change everyone’s thinking. And that’s what Stevie did.
Buying gear on the road.
WYNANS: We suddenly had exact knowledge of what we had—and what we owed. Debt had piled up, and for the first time we knew exactly where we stood, and it was cold water in the face.
LAYTON: It was like we woke up one day and realized that our business wasn’t being handled right, we were in debt to the IRS, we’re high on drugs, we’re gigging every single day, we’re doing five interviews, we gotta catch a plane, we’re checking in and out of hotels. All of this became a weight that got heavier every day; you’re walking along, and soon you’re not upright and almighty anymore. The weight gets heavier and heavier till you just can’t bear it anymore, and you fall.
HODGES: No one could disagree that Stevie was in rough shape. It would be hard to exaggerate the situation. I went out with them a lot, then I hired a friend of Stevie’s, Tim Duckworth, to go on the road, and I think Stevie and the band understood why that was necessary.
TIM DUCKWORTH, Stevie’s friend; on the road in 1986: Stevie stayed with me whenever they were in Southern California, and I became so concerned that I went and told Alex, “I’m frightened for Stevie’s life.” I never told Stevie, “You can’t do drugs anymore,” and honestly at that point, I was still using with him, but I tried to help him put a little intelligence behind it. Stevie wasn’t ready to stop, but he wasn’t oblivious to his situation and how difficult it was getting to carry on.
HODGES: Stevie needed help, but you can’t get where you need to go by telling the person they can’t use anymore or that they can no longer perform. You have to find some balance that allows a person to feel that they are still whole. It never works to just say, “We’re off the road until you get sober.” I must have done a hundred interventions over twenty years with Gregg Allman, with the help of his mother, bandmates, and kids. We all tried to help Gregg work through his demons, but you can’t take a guy like Gregg or Stevie off the road and expect a miracle. You can’t deny them such a large part of what makes them whole.
WYNANS: The drugging was getting so bad that I was really scared for the guys’ health. Stevie was just so worn down and obviously needed a rest, but it’s hard to stop working when you find out you’re in big debt. So we stayed out there, and it got worse and worse, and probably reached sort of a low point at some of the shows we were recording for Live Alive.
Somewhere in Europe, 1986. (Chris Layton)
SHANNON: Stevie had wanted to do a live record for a while, and for many different reasons, this seemed like a good time to do it.
WYNANS: Everyone had been asking for years for a live Stevie Ray Vaughan album. We also didn’t have a lot of new material, so it was an easy way to come up with a new album. Or, I should say, we thought it would be easy!
LAYTON: Doing a live record was a cry for help, and it turned out to be the toughest live record to make, ever. We just weren’t playing well enough.
SHANNON: Truthfully, I’m amazed how well we functioned musically during that time. The growth of our sound was gradual, and by 1984/85, the band had become very powerful. We could still get in touch with the pure spiritual connection, and the playing was still there. But our minds and bodies were going through tremendous trauma. Eventually, in the very last period when everything got real bad, we shut ourselves off from that source.
STEELE: I was having dinner at a Mexican restaurant with some friends that Stevie knew well. He walked in dressed in full regalia and acted like he didn’t know us. He just stood there, looking all around the restaurant for someone, then he noticed us, said, “Gotta go,” and split. He was jacked up and looking to score. Stevie had been a really good friend, and I was hurt and angry. That was not the Stevie that I knew.
MARK LOUGHNEY, fan: I saw him in a Rutgers gym [April 15, 1986], and it was a mess. His solos were long, noisy, and self-indulgent. I was for
tunate enough to have seen him twice before, so I knew what he was capable of. Every song was really long and jammed out and not in a good way. In a venue with terrible acoustics, it was absolute cacophony. When he was done, he rambled on into the mic for five minutes. He sounded really drunk, and the whole thing was off-putting, especially after what I had seen him do before. It was obvious that something was really wrong.
OPPERMAN: I went to see them in Monroe, Louisiana [April 27, 1986], and it was clear Stevie’s drug addiction was getting worse. Chris and Tommy actually walked off the stage. Stevie was up there ranting and raving on the mic, talking nonsense to the crowd.
WYNANS: Stevie and Tommy were just completely out of control, and it was getting scary. The first year I was in the band, I saw people who were abusing substances but also were on top of it musically, but that started to change. Things were getting illogical and crazy, and Stevie would sometimes play himself into corners and not know how the hell he was going to get out.
LAYTON: We really did begin to get closed off from the spiritual part of playing. That had been our constant pursuit. Over the years, the music grew naturally, and the result was a bigger, more powerful sound; the music kept getting better. But as time went on, things changed.
HODGES: It took multiple conversations to have a single cogent five-minute conversation with Stevie. You’d have to repeat things over a number of conversations.
SHANNON: I have to be honest: when I first started doing drugs, they worked great in terms of feeling totally connected to music. For a long time, I did speed, smoked pot, stayed up all night playing, and learned some really cool things. But by the mid-’70s, I lost everything because the drug use had become my whole life.