“I just didn’t want to go,” says Johnny. “I didn’t care about him at that point. I was almost glad [he died]. I hate to say that but ... ”
When asked if he felt any sorrow over Slatus’s passing, Johnny’s initial response was “No, I’m just glad.” Yet his words were betrayed by the sadness in his voice. When pressed, it was difficult for him to separate sorrow from his feelings of betrayal.
“I guess I do [feel sorrow),” he says softly. “It pisses me off that I was that dumb; that I let him get away with it. He was so close to me for years, but he was still unfair to me. I can’t believe he did that. It’s hard to believe he was that bad, and everybody else saw it but me.”
“We could never get back what Teddy took,” said Susan. “We find out almost every day something else that Teddy’s done. Paul made sure everything comes to us now and I have control of all bank accounts. I see what he spends; I control everything. With Teddy, we had an accountant who didn’t care about receipts or invoices.”
Despite the betrayal and the enormous financial hits, including attorneys’ fees for the lawsuits filed by the German promoter and against Slatus’s estate, both Susan and Johnny are happy that what one music writer called the “Slatus Death Ride” is over. “Johnny’s doing so much better,” said Susan. “It’s like a big cloud went away.”
15
FULL CIRCLE
Fully aware that Johnny had been his own worst enemy in terms of career decisions, Paul Nelson made it clear at the onset that Johnny would have to follow his directives. Rather than allowing Johnny to “worry” himself out of doing interviews or playing with other artists, Nelson waits until the last minute to discuss it with him.
“What I do with Johnny is—and he knows I do this—I tell him everything two minutes before he’s supposed to do it,” said Nelson. “He’s accepted me as manager, and I’ve accepted the responsibility to do the right thing. I know if it’s a huge interview, if I tell him in advance, he’s going to worry about it, stew over it, brood over it, and eventually cancel it. So I don’t give him that opportunity. Every time, he always says, ‘I’m so glad I did that—this is great.’”
Johnny’s renewed health and busy touring schedule left no room for Montgomery to further his career with his own band, so he left and Nelson joined the lineup.
Johnny’s career has experienced a renaissance under Nelson, who rebuilt bridges Slatus burned, got him endorsement deals for a Gibson Custom Shop Johnny Winter Signature Firebird V, a re-creation of Johnny’s 1963/1964 Firebird (when Gibson analyzed Johnny’s Firebird at the Custom Shop in Nashville, they found a serial number on the headstock and were able to date the neck as 1964, and the body design as 1963), the Dunlop “Texas Slider,” a pinky slide modeled after Johnny’s slide, and D’Addario strings. He is back in the headlines with stories in Guitar World, Vintage Guitar, Goldmine, Modern Guitars, Blues Matters, Blues Revue, Penthouse, and the AARP Bulletin, which recognized his achievements on his sixtieth birthday.
Fans can still buy music new to their ears: Breakin’ It Up, Breakin’ It Down, a live recording of formerly unreleased material with Johnny, Muddy Waters, and James Cotton, was released in June 2007. That CD won “Historical Album of the Year” in the 2008 Blues Music Awards presented by the Blues Foundation in Memphis. Live Bootleg Series Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4, and Volume 5, authorized bootlegs of live archival material, were released in October 2007, March 2008, July 2008, February 2009, and June 2009 respectively, generating brisk sales and rave reviews from fans.
Johnny played guest DJ on Bill Wax’s Bluesville program on XM satellite radio, and does interviews with newspapers on tours across the U.S., Canada, and Europe that keep him playing three to five nights a week. He began with an average of 120 to 140 gigs a year; by summer 2008, his price had increased so he could cut down to one hundred gigs without losing any income.
For the first time in thirty-seven years, Johnny performed with the Allman Brothers Band. He joined them for three songs on April 8, 2007 during their sold-out run at the Beacon Theater in New York. Allman Brothers’ guitarist Warren Haynes, who caught one of Johnny’s shows and visited him in his bus, invited him to that show.
“I told Johnny the day before the gig, but I had already agreed with the Allman Brothers that it was gonna happen,” said Nelson with a laugh. “When musicians ask, ‘Is Johnny excited about playing with us?’ I have to say something like ‘Words can’t describe his feelings,’ because he doesn’t know yet.”
Rather than bear the exorbitant expense of the tour bus that Johnny loves, Nelson found a less expense mode of transportation with a similar set up. The same model is available throughout the U.S., so Johnny, whose vision is greatly diminished, doesn’t have to adjust to a new layout in every city. He still stays up all night listening to the blues, but now it is on an iPod that Nelson has loaded with 10,332 blues songs, including Johnny’s entire catalogue.
The highest visibility gig of Johnny’s renaissance in 2007 was his performance with the Derek Trucks Band at the Crossroads Concert in Chicago on July 28. Crossroads generated a spread in Rolling Stone titled “Clapton’s Guitar Summit,” that included a photo of Eric Clapton and Johnny, with the caption BLUES BROTHERS CLAPTON WITH JOHNNY WINTER, WHO ROCKED A TEN-MINUTE SLIDE VERSION OF DYLAN’S “HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED.” According to writer David Fricke, “The show’s first highlight came during Derek Trucks’s set, which peaked during his version of ‘Highway 61 Revisited’ with Johnny Winter.” Johnny also joined Clapton, Buddy Guy, John Mayer, Hubert Sumlin, Robert Cray, and Jimmie Vaughan on “Sweet Home Chicago” during the all-star jam.
It was Nelson’s perseverance and quick thinking that got Johnny that gig and coerced him to hang around for the jam. Knowing Johnny wouldn’t play in the daytime, Nelson waited until the day of the concert to tell Johnny he went on at 1:30 PM. Getting Johnny to hang around till the 11 PM jam took a stroke of genius.
“After Johnny did the show with Trucks, he wanted to go back to the hotel,” said Nelson. “I said hold on, went outside, and saw B. B. King. I told him Johnny Winter wants to say hello to you and he said great. I asked him to wait a minute, and told Johnny, B. B. King wants to say hello to you. I sent him in the bus, and he was in there for half an hour. Then I thought, how many musicians will it take for Johnny to meet to kill enough time to make him sit in this bus until the all-star jam? So I went out and did that to Vince Gill, Hubert Sumlin, Los Lobos, John Mayer, Robert Randolph, Stevie Winwood. I told him each one wanted to meet him, brought them on the bus, and by the time it was done, it was thirty minutes before show time. The jam became the last song on the [2007 Crossroads] DVD and was all over PBS. It was a hit, it showed him healthy, and Johnny’s price went up for all his gigs. I got a letter from Clapton, saying thank you very much; we’d love to have you again in three years.”
Professionally, Crossroads was a high point, but the close-up shots of Johnny during that performance depict a man who looks like he lost his best friend. And he did. Uncle John Turner, his closest friend, and the man who convinced him to take a chance on playing the blues, died in Austin on July 26, two days before the concert.
One of Johnny’s deepest regrets, one that has stayed with him, was firing Turner and Shannon, who believed in him before he became famous and were willing to take a financial hit to play the music he loved. Following the directive of his manager to let them go with a severance payment of $2,000 each still bothered him, although both had forgiven him and never let it affect the friendship. When he discovered Stevie Ray Vaughan has generously shared his success with Shannon by giving him “points” or a percentage of profits from the recordings they made together, he felt even worse.
In November 2006, Johnny called them onstage to play “Johnny Guitar” at a gig at La Zona Rosa in Austin. It was the first time they had performed live together since 1970. The audience surprised Turner and Shannon with a rousing cheer when they walked onstage and a standing ovation when they finis
hed. But Johnny, who has become quite taciturn due to a decade of overmedication, didn’t have much to say when they visited him after the show. The reunion they had longed for was hardly the heartfelt moment they had hoped it would be.
“It was bittersweet,” said Shannon. “It was a lot of fun playing; the chemistry was just like the old days, like we never lost anything. But it brought back a lot of memories, including the pain of when Uncle John and I left.”
“It was fun—it had been a long time,” Turner said in March 2007. “I went early and chatted with Johnny a little bit before the show. He doesn’t have much to say to anybody anymore, so I just chat a little bit and get out of the way. I wish we could’ve got to play some more. That’s probably the last time we’ll take a stage together. I’d play with him again when he came back to town, but—to tell you the truth—I doubt if we’ll ever do that.”
Turner was right. Less than three months after he spoke those words, Turner was hospitalized for complications due to Hepatitis C. He had been accepted on the University of Texas Health Science Center’s liver-transplant list in December 2006 and had been moved up in April 2007. In May, Austin musicians Carolyn Wonderland and Erin Jaimes began planning benefits to help with medical costs. By June, Shannon’s wife Kumi Smedley, club owner Susan Antone, and booking agent/web designer Beverly Howell joined the team. They wanted to ask Johnny to headline Uncathons in Austin and San Antonio, but Turner refused to violate his friend’s privacy by giving out his home phone number. They contacted Johnny through Nelson, and when Johnny called to say he’d be coming down to play the benefits, Turner was thrilled.
“You cannot believe how happy and relieved Unc was when he found out Johnny was actually coming,” said his wife Morgan. “He thought maybe Johnny and Paul could come down but he never dreamed Johnny would come with his full band. He was really humbled that Johnny was coming. I don’t believe he ever thought it would be possible, and when he found out it was, then it was a big emotional sigh of relief. It was the last time I ever saw him really happy. He even planned out where he was going to sit during the performance and how he would be able to get to talk to Johnny. By this time he was in a wheelchair. At first he felt bad about the chair, but decided that the important thing was that his old friend was coming down to support him, and nothing else mattered. He knew Johnny’s presence was going to make a big difference in attendance and the money, and boy did it, but the most important thing to him was Johnny.”
Although Turner didn’t live long enough to see his old friend again, Morgan met with Johnny in his bus before the Antone’s benefit in Austin on August 1, 2007. It was an emotional moment for both of them.
“I sat with Johnny for a while before the performance and he was crying,” she said. “That made it harder but I loved him for it. He said Unc had been his best friend and he was going to miss him very much. I was so moved that he cried in front of me. Tears just rolled down his cheeks. He was completely broken up and told me he had hoped that he would get to Austin in time to see Unc again.
“When Unc and I had come earlier to a concert, they talked for quite a long time. Unc was the only person he wanted to talk to. He asked Unc all kinds of questions about how he was feeling and what he needed. He asked about the transplant and Unc’s symptoms. They were both so earnest and talked for a long time.”
When Johnny played the Uncathon at Antone’s, the line snaked in front of the club and down Fifth Street for several blocks. Tickets sold out before the benefit; scores of people had to be turned away.
“Susan Antone told me it was the biggest benefit that Antone’s had ever held,” said Morgan. “It was more than sold out. There was an incredible crush of people and you could hardly walk through the crowd. People went wild. When Erin and Carolyn started in the early summer, they were told they’d be lucky to get $5,000 from the benefit. It turned out that from tickets, donations, and the silent auction, we received over $40,000 just from Antone’s.
“It was all because of Johnny’s performance. The media had been all over Unc’s death—even to a crawl during the ABC news—and it had been in every paper and on the front page of the Austin American Statesman. Everyone knew Johnny was coming down to honor his old friend. It was such an emotional thing that it became the event of the summer.”
Pinetop Perkins was at Antone’s that night, as was harp legend James Cotton, who sat in on “Hoochie Coochie Man.” Shannon joined Johnny onstage for “Johnny Guitar,” and the two men shared a heartfelt embrace on the way back to the dressing room. It was an evening Shannon called “magical.” No matter how painful their breakup had been, there was no doubting the love the former band mates still shared.
Now that he’s in his sixties, Johnny can look back on all the twists and turns and reflect on his life’s journey. Although many artists would shy away from exposing the underbelly of their life story, Johnny is an honest man who believes it’s time for his story to be told.
“I’ve made enough mistakes, where I think it’s important for people to know my mistakes, why they happened, and how I got out of it,” he says. “Who knows better than I do? I’m the only one that really knows what happened. All they know is that I had a problem. It’s important that they know the truth.”
From the time he was a child, Johnny always believed he’d be a successful musician; there was never a doubt in his mind. When asked if it was fate or free will that brought him success, he ponders the question before answering. “I think you have a lot to do with your fate,” he says. “You can’t say its fate and leave it up to that; you’ve got to work out your own fate. Everything I wanted, I always got. I feel like it was something I had to keep working at, but I knew I was going to be successful. I was determined to get what I wanted and knew I would eventually. It didn’t surprise me when it happened; I just was surprised it took so long.”
Looking back over a career that has spanned five decades, Johnny feels his biggest mistake was losing his faith in a higher power. “The toughest lesson I ever had to learn was that there was something else up there in control,” says Johnny. “That I couldn’t make things happen on my own completely—it was very important that I believed in God. I think God is involved in everybody’s life; that He is an important part of everybody’s life. I don’t know exactly why or how, but when I quit believing in God, I got miserable, very unhappy. I stopped believing in God when I thought for a while that I was so cool that I could make anything happen on my own. And it made me realize that you can’t do it on your own; you definitely need some help from God. When I asked God for help, I always got it. When I was on heroin, I promised Him that if He could help me get off drugs, I would never disbelieve in Him again. And I never did because He did help me get off drugs and I couldn’t do it on my own.”
If he had his life to live over again, Johnny wouldn’t change a thing. “When I look back on it, I’ve learned from everything that’s happened to me,” he says. “I think everything has a reason to happen. Sometimes you don’t know what the reason is, but I believe there is always a reason. Setbacks happen to everybody. They make it harder for you, but they’re an important part of life and living. And I think they make you stronger.
“Sometimes I wish I hadn’t signed with Steve Paul. I thought he was just using me for what he wanted and not really helping. I guess that’s just about my only regret. I wish I hadn’t taken drugs, but at the same time, I always wanted to know what they were like, so I can’t say that I’m sorry I did it. It was something I always wanted to try, so I can’t say that’s something I would have changed. I’ve done just about everything I wanted to do and I’ve been lucky enough to travel just about every place I wanted to travel.”
One of the things he has finally learned is to appreciate Susan, and the impact she has had on the quality of his life. “Having Susan in my life—she’s made it better in so many ways that I can’t even imagine what it would be like without her,” he says. “She’s done things for me I could never do for mysel
f. She’s made me feel useful and is an important part of my life.”
Being recognized as a musician all over the world is a heady feeling, and Johnny plans to continue playing the blues as long as he can. “If I hadn’t been a musician, I can’t imagine being anything else,” he says. “It was something I’ve loved to do all my life. I can’t imagine taking it away; being a musician is part of me.”
Like most baby boomers, Johnny isn’t looking forward to aging, even though longevity runs in his family. When he was fifty-nine, Johnny didn’t like approaching the big six-o. “It’s scary,” he says. “I’m scared of old age. I don’t want to be older. To me, I figure sixty is entering old age. I didn’t know if I’d make it this far, but I sure hoped I would. I used to say I wanted to be playing the blues when I’m eighty. Now I’d like to go a lot further than eighty. Eighty’s nothing now; I’d like to go to one hundred.”
When asked how he would like to be remembered, he doesn’t think twice.
“As a good blues player,” he says with a smile.
DISCOGRAPHY
AUTHORIZED RELEASES: ALBUMS
Johnny Winter, Columbia, 1969
Progressive Blues Experiment, Imperial/United Artists, 1969
Second Winter, Columbia, 1969
Johnny Winter And, Columbia, 1970
Johnny Winter and Live, Columbia, 1971
Still Alive and Well, Columbia, 1973
Saints and Sinners, Columbia, 1974
John Dawson Winter III, Blue Sky, 1974
Captured Live!, Blue Sky, 1976
Edgar and Johnny Winter Together, Blue Sky, 1976
Nothin’ But the Blues, Blue Sky, 1977
White, Hot & Blue, Blue Sky, 1978
Raisin' Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter (Kindle Edition) Page 38