“We all tried to say, ‘No problem, the pizza is on its way, it’ll be here in a minute.’ He just went into a rage about being hungry and started grabbing instruments and throwing them around, and jumping at people and screaming horrible obscenities. Almost tore the studio up and made a big mess of the session. At that point, I came up to him and put my hand on his shoulder, and said. ‘The pizza is on the way. Take it easy, we will eat in a minute. Whatever it is, we’ll get through this.’ Then he started pushing and swinging. I don’t want to go too far with this....
“I firmly grabbed him under the collar, by the shirt, and held him up against the wall and said, ‘I don’t want any problems here. The pizza is on the way.’ He was shaking like a wild man and would not calm down. Everybody was trying to calm him down, and it wasn’t possible. So I said, ‘Session’s over. I’m done with this project. I can’t do this. This is not professional.’ I left and sent him back to the hotel.”
Manning waited it out at Ardent Studio, while Johnny tried to get out of the contract. The realization that Slatus had signed him to a record deal that wasn’t blues-oriented eroded Johnny’s trust in his manager.
“I wasn’t sure Teddy still wanted what I wanted, which was to be a blues artist,” says Johnny. “The record people convinced him he had to talk me into being more radio, become more of a Top Forty musician. I was willing to try it and he was sorry for that. I went up there in the middle of the night screamin’, saying I can’t stand this anymore. I ain’t gonna put up with this shit anymore. Teddy tried to get me out of it, but we made a deal so we had to perform.”
Three days later, Johnny called and apologized, ready to finish the album. “It may not have been the album Johnny wanted, but it was certainly the album his management wanted,” said Manning. “Ted brought in a list of pop songs and said, ‘We want the blues flavor in it, but we want pop songs.’ I had just done a total makeover of ZZ Top. The album before had sold 700,000 or 800,000 copies. After the full makeover, going harmonies, pop hooks, no real drums at all, Eliminator sold 15 million copies. I’m sure that was highly seductive to a manager who had an artist with a blues background. But all elements have to click and Johnny wasn’t prepared to quote—fully sell out. Not that he would or should, but I’m sure in his mind, it would be selling out to go to those lengths.”
After playing with Johnny for eleven years, Jon Paris left the band in 1989. According to Paris, it was to “concentrate on working with my own blues-rock group ... singing, songwriting, and playing guitar and harmonica.” Johnny remembers it differently. “We were having trouble that he played too loud,” he says. “We figured it would be best if we’d part company or things would have gotten worse. He’s still a good friend. I see him when I go into the city and he always comes out when I play.”
Jeff Ganz replaced Paris, playing his first gig in May 1989 after three weeks of rehearsals. Both Johnny and Slatus were familiar with Ganz’s chops, so he didn’t have to audition. Slatus had managed Roy Buchanan up to his death in August 1988, and Ganz had played in Buchanan’s band. A studio musician with a Broadway and jazz background, Ganz played fretless and fretted basses, including a six-string electric and an upright. He also sang a number of tunes on the road, including “Turn on Your Love Light,” “Can’t Judge a Book by Its Cover,” “Politician,” and “Born Under a Bad Sign.”
Throughout the late ’80s and early ’90s, Johnny played clubs in the U.S. and Canada, with occasional dates in Spain, Denmark, Germany, and London. He would tour for three weeks, take off for two or three weeks, and go back on the road for another three weeks. The band rehearsed when they weren’t touring.
“We traveled in a rock ‘n’ roll bus, but there wasn’t any ridiculous legendary stuff going on,” said Ganz. “We were just out there playing. Working with Tom Compton was great. Tom and Johnny were really locked in because they had already forged the dynamic of what they were doing in 1985. It took me a few minutes to figure out how I was supposed to play. I said to Johnny, ‘This section here feels like it’s rushing a little bit.’ He turned to me and said, ‘Well, I rush. If you’d be happier somewhere else...’ and I realized all bets are off. Just shut up and play; that’s why you’re here.”
Ganz’s collection of fretted and fretless basses was the perfect fit for Johnny’s system of tuning down a whole step from normal guitar tuning. “Instead of tuning to E, he would tune down to D,” Ganz said. “I had several Fender and Ibanez basses set up to that tuning. Johnny was intrigued with the eight-string bass, and loved the upright because it was closer to the roots thing.”
Johnny still got hassled by fans, so he didn’t go to clubs very often. But on July 13, 1990, he and Ganz stopped by Tramps to see Danny Gatton, a guitarist Johnny admired. Johnny met Gatton that night when he handed him his Telecaster and invited him to take the stage. “Johnny got up onstage and the audience went berserk,” Ganz said. “Danny is a master musician, but not an entertainer. Johnny was not as technically proficient, but he was the whole entertainment package.”
Johnny played B. B. King’s “You Done Lost Your Good Thing Now” to the delight of the audience. When Gatton returned to the stage, he said, “Now, ladies and gentlemen, that’s the blues.” The respect was mutual. “Danny Gatton was great,” says Johnny. “He played every style of music, a little bit of everything. He could play blues too. He played it pretty fancy, but he played everything.”
Johnny ran into Stevie Ray Vaughan on the road, and one night they got together to compare their versions of “Boot Hill.” Vaughan recorded “Boot Hill” several times but never included it on his albums; he recorded it again in 1989 during the sessions for In Step, but again, it didn’t appear on that recording. Although unreleased until the posthumous The Sky Is Crying in 1991, Vaughan told Johnny about the recordings. Eager to compare it to his Guitar Slinger version, Johnny invited him to his hotel room.
“I wanted to show him mine was better,” says Johnny with a laugh. “He played me his version and I thought it was not as good as mine. When I played him the final version from my record, he said, ‘That’s real nice, man,’ but he didn’t admit it was better.”
“Stevie and Johnny met up several times,” remembered Shannon. “Johnny listened to the killer version we did on In Step, and they were both kind of battlin’ there.”
Their rivalry tended to be playful, so Johnny was crushed when he heard Vaughan deny knowing him. Artist Jim Franklin, who was in New York to paint Johnny’s portrait, remembers his reaction vividly. “I think this was the same year Stevie Ray died,” said Franklin. “Johnny was listening to him on a blues show in New York City, and the guy asked Stevie Ray about the influence Johnny had on him. Stevie Ray said he didn’t know who Johnny Winter was. That tore Johnny up; he was hurt. I could see Johnny was shaken by that when he was telling me about it. Tommy was in Stevie’s band, he’s got a trio playing power blues just like Johnny, and Johnny was well established when Stevie started coming to Austin. Johnny couldn’t understand why he would not own up to knowing him. This was a real blow.”
In late June 1990, Johnny suffered another emotional blow. Ikey Sweat was found dead in his own garage in Fort Bend, Texas with a gunshot wound through his left temple. Sweat, who was forty-five, had been Johnny’s bass player from his early years in Texas, and one of the true friendships—like that of Turner, Shannon, and Franklin—that helped Johnny stay grounded.
The initial ruling of suicide didn’t fit the evidence. Sweat was right-handed and police found his .25-caliber automatic, keys, and sunglasses by his left hand. An autopsy showed no evidence of gun-powder residue on either hand. Although Sweat had always talked about committing suicide, his wife Sharon Sweat was indicted and arrested on a murder charge.
“I took his death real hard,” says Johnny. “I loved Ikey. He was one of my best friends. He was there from the beginning. I went down to see him in Texas pretty regularly. He used to threaten to kill himself all the time so nobody believed him too much
. He said, ‘I think I’m gonna have to kill myself—I can’t stand this any longer.’ He had a nonspecific urethra infection—now it’s called Chlamydia. But in those days they called it NSU because they didn’t know what it was. He got where he couldn’t get hard anymore unless he did cocaine. With cocaine, he could get a hard-on. He left a note that blamed his doctor for not knowing what the hell he had—for not being able to get rid of it.”
Johnny went to Texas for Sweat’s funeral services, but did what he called a “deposition” over the phone from his attorney’s office in New York City. “My lawyer listened to the conversation to make sure I wasn’t incriminating myself in any way,” says Johnny. “They asked me if he had ever talked about killing himself, and I said, ‘Yeah, all the time.’ I heard him talk about killing himself a lot, so I just don’t know.”
In March 1992, prosecutors dismissed the murder charges for lack of evidence. “The investigators ended up letting her go—which I hated—because everybody down there thought his wife had killed him,” says Johnny.
The circumstances surrounding Sweat’s death were custom made for tabloid television. Sweat had filed for divorce shortly before he died and had a long-term affair with a younger woman. According to his wife, his oldest bass guitar, which he wanted Johnny to have, disappeared from a shed outside his home around the time of his funeral. Sweat’s son contested a 1989 will leaving everything to his stepmother, calling it a forgery. The courts issued a temporary restraining order and froze the estate. Six months later, a fire nearly destroyed Sweat’s home.
“It was on Entertainment Tonight or Access Hollywood,” says Johnny. “You know how those shows are—anything they can get that’s crazy and fucked up, they’ll jump on it. He’d tried pills and they didn’t work, so he used something he knew would work. A gun is messy but it works.”
Despite his loss, Johnny buried his feelings and carried on. “Johnny wasn’t a screamer and a crier but it was obvious it affected him very deeply,” said Ganz. “As close and as friendly as we were, he could still be a fairly stoic guy.”
Meanwhile, Slatus had begun negotiations with Pointblank, a blues-oriented subsidiary label of the then-London-based Virgin Records Ltd. Started by John Wooler in 1989, Pointblank was working on a deal with John Lee Hooker. After the fiasco at MCA, Johnny was reluctant to sign with another label, but Wooler, who had always been a fan, convinced him he would have total control.
“We had a respect for each other,” said Wooler. “He appreciated me letting him do the record he wanted to do. He said, ‘MCA wanted me to be like Robert Cray, and I’m not like Robert Cray.’ I said no, you’re Johnny Winter, and you’ve made a lot more records than most people. I am not going to tell you how to make a blues record. I’m going to give you creative freedom, because I’m confident you know what you’re doing.”
“I wasn’t in a hurry to sign with anybody else unless it was a real good deal,” says Johnny. “Pointblank was willing to give us pretty good money and said they’d promote us real well. That was important. MCA didn’t promote my record—they didn’t do much of anything for it.”
With Wooler and the label behind him one hundred percent, Johnny was ready to return to the blues and to working with Shurman, who understood what he wanted to do and did what he wanted. “After Terry Manning, I’d had enough of that shit,” he says. “I went back to blues because that’s what I always wanted to record. I went back to using Dick as producer because I like him a lot and enjoy working with him. I trusted Dick. It took a record or two [to build the trust] but he convinced me he knew what he was doing. I’m perfectly willing to, not perfectly willing, but I’ll do a song over if he thinks it needs it. I may not like it, but I’ll do it because I figure Dick knows and he’s not gonna tell me something wrong. He’s got a pickier ear.”
Wooler gave Johnny free rein, as well as the money he needed to make the record he wanted. “John didn’t confine us musically, and the budgets were good,” said Shurman. “Tom Compton had a pretty big drum kit for a blues drummer; he had five toms and a lot of cymbals. Jeff Ganz wanted to bring about six basses. I was able to have one of the road guys rent a van and drive the equipment to Chicago. It was the best of both worlds. You had the resources and muscle of a major label, but you weren’t swallowed up in this huge corporate structure.”
Like the records on Alligator, the Pointblank albums were cut at Streeterville Studios, and took two to three weeks. Musicians included Johnny on vocals, electric, and acoustic guitar; Ganz on electric, fretless, and upright bass; Compton on drums; Dr. John and Ken Saydak on piano; and Billy Branch on harmonica. Dennis Drugan, his wife Margaret, and sons Johnny and Brian had stopped by the studio so they joined Shurman and others on the chorus of “Hey You.”
“The Let Me In sessions were very smooth,” said Ganz. “We rehearsed a few days but we didn’t have hardcore arrangements; that didn’t happen until we got in the studio. There weren’t a lot of takes; by the third one, that was pretty much it. If Johnny felt good about his performance, that was the barometer.”
“The chemistry was great—both Tom and Jeff are wonderful guys,” said Shurman. “They’re really respectful of Johnny and vice versa.”
Ganz agreed. “If you listen to recordings of that era, Johnny started to really trust Tom and I,” he said. “The band was playing with a lot of dynamics. Usually Johnny Winter songs went a million miles an hour from the beginning of the song to the end of the song. But we had some really nice contrast going on. I would deliberately play less, place stop time, play whole notes for two bars. More like a jazz concept.”
Johnny played National guitar on T-Bone Walker’s “Blue Mood,” accompanied by Ganz on upright bass. Johnny added National slide licks to Robert Parker’s “Barefootin”’ and J. B. Lenoir’s “Mojo Boogie,” a crowd pleaser that he still plays as an encore. He wrote “If You Got a Good Woman” and “Let Me In” in his hotel room, getting his inspiration listening to WNIB-FM’s late night blues shows hosted by “Mr. A, Your Entertainer” and Big Bill Collins, who spoke with thick Southern accents.
“They were Southern Negroes—I could understand them easy but a lot of people couldn’t,” says Johnny. “They were great. Let Me In was my favorite project with Dick. It had everything going for it. I was really happy with how it sounded. I hate to name just one project but if I had to, that’d be it.”
Let Me In, unlike previous recordings, generated airplay on both blues and rock radio stations. “Illustrated Man” received the most airplay and also provided the soundtrack for a JBL TV commercial with the tagline “Concert Sound for Your Car.”
“Johnny still had fans on rock radio, and we got a lot of airplay for that record,” said Wooler. “He was considered a rock artist as well as a blues artist, and we got play on a lot of stations because it had more of a mainstream feel. We did over 100,000 in sales in America.”
In October 1990, Johnny played a John Lee Hooker Tribute Concert at Madison Square Garden. Although a review by Jon Pareles in the New York Times called him one of the “concert’s better performers,” Johnny was beginning to have anxiety attacks that would plague him throughout the next decade.
“I wanted to die when that show was happening,” says Johnny. “I don’t know why I was anxiety-ridden—I couldn’t figure it out. I was just feelin’ terrible. It was real important to me to do the show with John Lee Hooker, so I just downed a lot of vodka and made it through. I played toward the end. I was so worried about myself, I’m not sure who was on when I played. I don’t remember what song we played but I was real happy with the way it sounded.”
Shortly after that concert, Hooker invited him as one of the guest artists on Mr. Lucky which also included Robert Cray, Albert Collins, John Hammond, Van Morrison, Keith Richards, Carlos Santana, and Ry Cooder.
“I liked playin’ with John Lee on that record—I had a ball doin’ it,” says Johnny. “We didn’t rehearse. You just had to get it when he was ready ’cause you weren’t gonna get a
second chance. I liked John Lee a lot. He was a real good guy. You better watch your woman though—he’ll take a chick away from you in a second. He had a lot of charisma. There’s not too many John Lee Hookers around. His playing was real Mississippi-ish—real bluesy. He was hard to play with because he did all his changes the way he wanted to—not the way they were supposed to be. You really had to work hard to play with John Lee.”
By the mid-1980s, Susan was in her mid-thirties and wanted to start a family. Johnny didn’t want the responsibilities of fatherhood. “She started talking about it way back in our relationship,” says Johnny. “I said, ‘No, forget it.’ I just didn’t want kids. I was still enough of a kid myself—I didn’t think I could be a father. She didn’t bring it up a whole lot, but more than I liked. I was always on the road—gone all the time; and I didn’t feel like it was something that I could handle.”
The question of children came up often during Johnny’s interviews; his standard answer was the lifestyle of the music business—constantly being on the road—would make it too difficult. Yet when he was interviewed by film director Lois Siegel for Strangers in Town, a tasteful and poignant documentary released in 1988 about the medical and social aspects of albinism, he delved much deeper into his feelings about being a father. He addressed the aspects of having both an albino child and a “normal” child.
Raisin' Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter (Kindle Edition) Page 32