Raisin' Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter (Kindle Edition)

by Mary Lou Sullivan

  “Woodstock was a trip,” said Shannon. “We rode bubble helicopters. You know where you get above the Earth and you can only see so far? That is how the people looked... it just went on and on from the air. It was like, ‘Wow!’ We didn’t know it was going to be that big until we got there. You couldn’t get there by car. We had heard it was a big deal, but I didn’t think it was going to be anything like that. We went on about ten hours later than we were supposed to. We were late going on and then they came up and said, ‘You got to go on, you got to go on.’ We weren’t even prepared—mentally or in terms of our equipment. First thing I said was, ‘Where’s my bass?’”

  Psyched about playing for such a large crowd and the opportunity to hear so many phenomenal bands, Turner was determined not to miss a minute of the experience. Unlike Johnny, Edgar, and Shannon, who slept before the show, he took amphetamines to stay awake and still has vivid memories of Woodstock and the days leading up to that festival.

  “We played in Chicago and Detroit the Friday and Saturday before Woodstock,” said Turner. “We were scheduled to play on Sunday, so we were watching it on the news on TV. We got into New York City at about seven o’clock in the morning. We were scheduled to take a private plane up to the Woodstock airport at 11:30 AM, so we checked into a motel near the airport to try to get some sleep. The roadies overslept and didn’t wake us up, and we missed our flight. Steve Paul had to run around and charter two small airplanes to get us to the Woodstock airport.

  “When we got to the Woodstock airport, there was a blinding rainstorm. They had helicopters going back and forth. We started out toward the festival site in a little whirlybird helicopter with just a seat and a glass bubble, and a gigantic black cloud started coming toward us. So he turned around, went back to the airport and set the thing down. I arrived at Woodstock at three oʹclock—thatʹs the time we were supposed to play originally. Everything was so messed up by then, we ended up not playing till midnight. Played forty-five minutes or something like that. Because the thing was running so ridiculously late, they were cutting the times short.

  “The first thing I saw backstage was a large tent for the staff and the performers. Then I saw Jerry Garcia and somebody else sitting on stools, singing through a small sound system in the tent. Then I saw Jimi Hendrix’s manager carry Mitch Mitchell, Jimi’s drummer, out of the mud so he wouldn’t get his English boots muddy before the show.

  “As soon as we found out we’re not going on at three, I popped some more pills—diet pills to stay awake. I tried to see everybody. Johnny was smarter—he found the Look Magazine guy who had a traitor—Johnny stayed and slept in the trailer. I stayed up the whole time. I was exhausted by the time we played but I stayed up and saw Santana, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, several people.

  “People brought their own rented trailers—there were 500 trailers in the backstage area and maybe 1,000 people. In back of the stage area was a freight elevator that moved all the people and the equipment up and down. So I’d see somebody playing, go back down for a while. Then when a band came back on, I’d go back up to the stage on the elevator and see somebody else playing. I watched everybody playing before us from the side of the stage.

  “It was so exciting to see all those people playing. I stayed all night to see Jimi Hendrix. About eight o’clock Monday morning—Jimi Hendrix hadn’t come on yet—I looked backstage and there was only one car left. Everybody was gone. The guy who was getting into that car had a crew shirt on. I thought if I donʹt catch this ride, I don’t have a ride back. I had no idea where I was, so I had to go back to the hotel in Woodstock with that last guy. I’m driving off the Woodstock grounds with my window open and I hear Jimi starting out. And I had stayed all night to see him.”

  Although Johnny played an incredible set at the festival, his performance never appeared in the Woodstock film or on the soundtrack album. Filmmaker Michael Wadleigh recorded his performance, but Johnny’s manager refused to let them include it in the film.

  “Steve Paul didn’t want us to be in the movie because he thought we wouldn’t make any money,” says Johnny. “Woodstock had lost money up to that point and he thought it was gonna be a drag so he didn’t want us to be on it. Of course it helped a lot of people’s careers. I wish I could have been in it. Later on he admitted he fucked up. I heard the filmmaker said he thought the act was too strange. I donʹt know if that’s true, but I heard that. The whole thing was full of strangeness—thatʹs what Woodstock was all about—strange people.”

  The audio and video of Johnny’s fiery slide playing on “Mean Town Blues” eventually hit the stores, but it took years to surface. In 1994, the audio and video was released as Woodstock: Three Days of Peace and Music, 25th Anniversary; Woodstock Diary was released as a CD. The fortieth anniversary in 2009 generated a glut of DVDs and CDs, including Warner Home Video Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music Director’s Cut—40th Anniversary; The Woodstock Experience, a ten-CD box set by Sony Legacy; and Johnny Winter: The Woodstock Experience, a two-CD set by Sony Legacy.

  Johnny spent Thanksgiving weekend 1969 playing the West Palm Beach Festival in Florida, a three-day festival featuring the Rolling Stones, Janis Joplin, the Chambers Brothers, Sly and the Family Stone, Jefferson Airplane, the Byrds, Steppenwolf, and others. It was his first meeting with Joplin and proved to be a concert and an evening neither one would forget.

  “I met Janis at the Miami Pop Festival where I ended up jammin’ with her and doin’ vocals and drinkin’ Southern Comfort,” says Johnny. “I had taken acid before and Janis and I were drinking Southern Comfort on the stage like it was Kool-Aid. Later on down, I got real sick. I threw up on her in the helicopter. We went back in the helicopter and I threw up all over her. It was terrible—it was a mess. She was alright with it; she called me up later on and asked me for another date.”

  Turner remembers that weekend in Miami. “Here were two misfits from Beaumont and Port Arthur on top of the world and they were determined to sample each other,” he said. “They went about this odd courtship for a while. Janis was determined to hook up with Johnny that weekend. We played the first night and she played the first night. On the second night, Janis shows up with a quart of Southern Comfort and proceeds to get Johnny drunk. She got drunk too and they jammed with Vanilla Fudge. It was pretty funny—the whole affair. They got real drunk and rode back to the hotel in a helicopter. Johnny is so drunk, he keeps throwing up; and Janis has his head in her lap, saying, ‘Oh my baby, my baby.’ Roadies had to carry her from the helicopter to her room. Pitiful, but that’s the way we lived.”

  Johnny saw Janis several times after that but it never evolved into a serious relationship.

  “I didn’t see her a lot, but from time to time I’d see her,” Johnny says. “When we got together, she would usually call my agency and I would call her back. One time her office called my office and asked if I wanted to go to the premiere of Myra Breckinridge with Janis. It was Mae West’s last movie. That was the first time I spent any real time with her. We went to the premiere in New York and it was a lot of fun. We were both dressed up. I was wearing a long velvet coat with bellbottom pants and a long scarf. Janis dressed in feathers and a big ole cape.

  “Janis was a real sweetheart but she was drinking too much and taking too much dope—mostly drinking too much. We both felt comfortable being around each other because we were both born in Texas in towns close to each other. We didn’t really have a relationship—Iʹd just see her once in a while and we’d go to bed together. We stayed on Fifth Avenue when she was in New York.

  “She had talked to me about going to her high-school reunion; I guess it was because I was from around that time. I didnʹt think it would be the kind of thing I would like, so I didnʹt go. It sounded like it was pretty bad—they were screamin’ at her, ‘Remember me in the back of the car,’ and stuff like that. I donʹt know why she wanted to go. I guess she wanted to prove she was cool. But those kinds of things never work.

  “Me and
Paul Butterfield jammed with her at Madison Square Garden that December. Janis asked me to play with her at that show. It was her last night with the Full Tilt Boogie Band; I never was crazy about that band. Janis was doing heroin at the time. She really didn’t want me doin’ it at the same time she was doin’ it herself. She told me it was a bad thing. She tried to keep me from it-she didn’t succeed, but she tried.”

  Johnny’s fame allowed him to meet and hang out with famous musicians, but it was Steve Paul’s reputation and nightclub that led to a meeting with noted artist Salvador Dali. “A lot of artists came to the Scene,” explained Paul. “Great men fascinate each other and that’s how Johnny got invited to his suite.”

  Johnny remembers meeting Dali, accompanied by a small pedigree dog wearing diamonds, during one of the gatherings in the artist’s suite at the St. Regis Hotel on East Fifty-Fifth Street.

  “He thought I was a deity and wanted to meet me,” says Johnny. “He asked me to come to his suite in the hotel where he always stayed when he was in New York. He thought it would be a good experience if we could get together. It was like he was holding court—he had people all around him. He gave somebody a chance to speak. Then he went to the next person and asked them what they wanted to say. I saw him once after that in the same hotel. He showed me a photograph of an albino rhinoceros fucking a girl. I guess that was supposed to mean I was a deity. He never showed me his paintings—just showed me the albino rhinoceros fucking a girl.”

  When Paul and Johnny were invited to Dali’s suite for lunch, Paul broached the concept of him designing one of Johnny’s album covers. Aggressive in his approach, he soon felt Dali’s scorn.

  Johnny’s childhood home on 275 West Caldwood Drive in Beaumont, Texas. (Photo by John D. Winter Jr.; courtesy of Johnny Winter)

  Edwina Winter with infant Edgar and little Johnny. “The boys were musical from birth.” (Photo by John D. Winter Jr.; courtesy of Johnny Winter)

  Edgar and Johnny played Everly Brothers songs on ukuleles as a duo. (Photo by John D. Winter Jr.; courtesy of Johnny Winter)

  Edgar and Johnny outside Beaumont TV station KBMT, where they won their first talent contest in 1953. (Photo by John D. Winter Jr.; courtesy of Johnny Winter)

  Marquee at the Beaumont Drive-In for Johnny’s 1958 gig on top of the concession stand. (Photo courtesy of Dennis Drugan)

  Johnny’s first business card. He used this at age fifteen. (Photo courtesy of Dennis Drugan)

  Johnny and the Jammers (with Edgar on keyboards) at a school dance. (Photo courtesy of Dennis Drugan)

  Johnny Winter’s Orchestra with their trademark shades and Edgar on tenor guitar. (Photo courtesy of Dennis Drugan)

  Johnny with his first collection of guitars. L-R: early ’60s Fender Precision Bass; late 1950s Les Paul Custom (Black Beauty); early ’60s white Gibson Les Paul Custom, SG body style; 1960s Gibson acoustic J45. (Photo courtesy of Dennis Drugan)

  Johnny “Cool Daddy” Winter with his diamond ring and record collection—he still has all his 45s. (Photo courtesy of Dennis Drugan)

  Marquee featuring the Gents on Chicago’s Rush Street in 1963. (Photo courtesy of Dennis Drugan)

  The Gents wore suits with velvet collars before the Beatles. (Photo courtesy of Dennis Drugan)

  Tommy Shannon, Uncle John Turner, and Johnny in a shot that graced the back cover of Progressive Blues Experiment. (Photo by Burton Wilson)

  Johnny, Shannon, and Turner with lightshow at the Vulcan Gas Company in 1968. (Photo by Burton Wilson; from the personal collection of Uncle John Turner)

  Johnny at Palmer Auditorium in Austin in November 1969. (Photo by Burton Wilson)

  Turner, Shannon, and Johnny at the Staatsburg, New York, house where they lived when they moved to New York. (Photo from the personal collection of Uncle John Turner)

  Acetate record Johnny used to shop for a record deal in England in 1968. (Courtesy of Mike Vernon)

  Johnny in the rehearsal space in Staatsburg. (Photo from the personal collection of Uncle John Turner)

  Both Johnny and Janis Joplin were featured in ads for Tijuana Smalls in 1969. (Photo by Susan Winter)

  “‘You are just business, business; we want to talk art,’” Dali told Paul, in an incident Johnny gleefully shared with his artist friend Jim Franklin. “Steve always wanted to be right in the middle and Johnny was so pleased that Dali put him in his place, which was across the room, where managers should be,” remembered Franklin. But Johnny passed on Daliʹs suggestion that he put a microphone up his derriere so his inner body sounds could also be broadcast when he was performing.

  When they weren’t on the road, Johnny and his band lived in a house Paul rented in Staatsburg, New York, a rural town in the Hudson Valley about ninety-five miles from New York City. The house was part of what they called the quadrangle, consisting of two houses and two renovated barns, not far from an estate owned by the Astor family.

  “It was an old house on an estate that looked like a compound,” said Turner. “A large brick three-story house with four bedrooms and a brick wall around it. Behind it were two barns. The newer barn was one big room with fourteen-foot ceilings for an artist studio and one bedroom. The other one had two bedrooms and a hayloft. Steve Paul eventually rented the main house too. Originally, it was occupied by a Shriver. He had used it as a getaway for several years and came up on weekends. Our all-night affairs, plus our goings-on in the large heated pool outside between the two houses, ran him off.”

  Shannon remembers one bizarre evening when the band dropped acid and headed into the cold winter’s night for a swim in the heated pool. “Johnny decided Steve Paul was literally the devil,” said Shannon. “We did a lot of drugs in Staatsburg—mushrooms, acid, pain pills. All of a sudden, all of that dope was free and we took advantage of it, tried stuff we never tried before. We were pretty high. When you reach a certain point of success, people start giving you drugs all the time.”

  It was at the quadrangle that Edgar wrote the riff to a song that eventually became “Frankenstein.” That single reached the top of the Billboard charts in only eleven weeks, and boosted sales of Edgar’s 1973 Columbia LP, They Only Come Out at Night, to more than 1.2 million copies.

  Edgar has fond memories of living in Staatsburg with Johnny and his band. “Living at the quadrangle with Uncle John and Tommy, it really felt like a band, and was very reminiscent of the old days,” said Edgar. “We had a great big rehearsal room in the back of our house. We could make as much noise as we wanted and play any time of the day or night. It was what we had always dreamed of when we were little kids, having our own place and having a band and being able to play music at whatever time we wanted. That was when I originally developed ʹFrankensteinʹ—in that house with that band. We called it the ‘Double Drum Song.’ I played Hammond organ and sax and did a drum solo with Red. I wrote the basic riff specifically with Johnny in mind, thinking of his band, and an instrumental that would have a bluesy feel, and make sense in an instrumental show.”

  “We’d start the song with Edgar on the organ,” said Turner. “Then we’d get to a point where the band would stop and I would start doing a short solo in time for Edgar to leave the organ and take a seat at my extra set of drums. As soon as Edgar would get seated, I’d do a special fill, and then Edgar would come in and take it for a little while. We had the tandem drumming thing worked out so we drummed together. Edgar is always a real joy to play with; he is such a great musician.”

  Edgar played with Johnny’s band from time to time, and took on a bigger role in Johnny’s second Columbia recording. Johnny returned to the studio in late 1969 to record Second Winter, which had a harder rock feel than the straight blues of Johnny Winter, and introduced Johnny’s version of “Highway 61 Revisited.” Although pegged as a blues-rock record, Second Winter marked the beginning of Johnny’s move toward rock and away from the blues. The inclusion of songs by Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Dylan wasn’t lost on him, and he had serious misgivings about taking tha
t musical direction.

  “It was mostly Steve’s idea,” he says. “They were blues-rock songs—all bluesy but not straight blues. He convinced me I wouldn’t be around for long if I didn’t play more rock on my records. It seemed like the blues was so big in the late ’60s, that by the early ʹ70s, people were tired of the blues—they wanted more rock. I felt like I had to do ’em or I wasn’t going to make it. And that would really hurt me if I had gone so far and then become a nobody. That scared me. By Second Winter I was doin’ more rock ’n’ roll, but I don’t like it as much as I like blues.

  “Blues purists didn’t like that record. They said I sold out, and I guess I did.... It hurt me to hear that but you just had to deal with it. It’s hard because people have strong opinions about what blues should be like. You miss a lot of good music by saying anything but straight blues is not blues and by not playing rock ‘n’ roll because there’s a lot of good rock ‘n’ roll out there too. To say it’s not blues unless it’s acoustic blues—thatʹs just crazy to me.”

  Jimi Hendrix producer/engineer Eddie Kramer, who is credited as producer consultant on Johnny Winter, was hired to help with production of Second Winter, but never made it to the end of the sessions. “He wasn’t doing his job,” says Johnny. “He was outside the studio recording rainstorm sound effects. So we fired him midstream leaving me and Edgar to finish the job of producing and recording the album.”