Guitar Player - August 1974 Garden Concert
Beginning with his great grandmother's hundred-year old Spanish guitar with a neck "all horribly warped like a bow," Johnny Winter -- the Texas blues rocker -- has been stringing guitars since he was eleven. He's worked his way through the years with first a Gibson ES-125, then a white Stratocaster, a couple of Gibson Les Paul customs (one gold, one white), and a '66 Fender Mustang.
Johnny Winter 1974 Guitar Player magazine
With allowance money earned by grass mowing and lugging out garbage, Beaumont, Texas' best-known guitarist began accumulating his giant record collection of rock and roll (Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, Fats Domino, etc.), post-war Chicago blues (Muddy Waters , Howlin' Wolf, Otis Rush, Sonny Boy Williamson, etc.), and later the blues of the Mississippi Delta, of Louisians, and Texas. "Lightnin' Slim and Lonesome Sundown and Lazy Lester; I mixed all that stuff up," Winter recalls. "A lot of it was still on 78s, but on the backs of albums by people like Muddy Waters I'd read about Robert Johnson, and Son House, and Leadbelly, and Blind Lemon. When their albums finally did come out, I'd remember their names and buy them, buy the Delta blues."
Today, Winter is still listening to those same artists, having found little in the more recent music scene that interests him with the exception of Jimi Hendrix, early Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton, and now John McLaughlin.
Even though Fender guitars are his favorite sounding instruments, Winter invariably hangs Gibsons around his neck, since he likes to rest his hand on a bridge which isn't as far down as on Fenders which he says further plague him because of their middle pickups, the tremolo bar's "interference with intonation," and because Johnny doesn't feel he can get as great a switch in tone when he pushes the strings as he can with a Gibson.
Winter, an engaging and jovial interviewee, answers questions quickly and thoroughly in an unabashed drawl "speeded up to a New York pace." But most interestingly, his responses come in a surprisingly expansive delivery (that unfortunately cannot be conveyed by the printed word) characterized by the timing of the best of story-tellers, by ready and accurate imitations of those of whom he speaks, and muted by a self-mockery that's back-handed but gloved.
When did you first get involved in music?
I started playing clarinet, but the orthodontist said I was going to have a bad overbite and that I'd better quit. So, I found a ukulele around the house, and daddy taught me a few chords. I had a rabbit that I liked a whole lot, and when the rabbit died, my great-grandfather felt sorry for me and bought me a baritone uke. I played that for a couple of years, me and Edgar, doing those barbershop quartet harmony things that daddy would teach us, like "Ain't She Sweet" and "Bye-Bye Blackbird."
I didn’t want to play guitar for a long time because my hands were too small, and those finger positions were too strange. But daddy said, "The only two big ukulele guys I can think of are Ukulele Ike and Arthur Godfrey. You don’t really have too much chance playing ukulele. You’d better try guitar!"
And then when rock and roll started coming out, and there weren’t any uke players in rock and roll that I really liked, I thought, "OK, I’ll try guitar."
How did you first get acquainted with the blues?
There was this black disc jockey on a black station in Beaumont who was also a guitar player. His name was Clarence Garlow. [A recording artist for labels such as Aladdin, Feature, Flair, Folk Star, Goldband, Lyric, etc.] He had a blues show, and I called him up and asked him to play songs on the air for me. We got to be friends, and I'd go down to his show. He was the first guy who really played the blues that I ever came into contact with. He played a mixture of blues and Cajun stuff, like Clifton Chenier: French-oriented blues. He was a weird guy, but he was nice, he was cool.
Not too many white people were into the blues, and Clarence could tell I was really digging it, so he didn’t mind taking the time — like I was his protégé. I'd come down, and he'd show me things. He'd play anything I wanted to hear. He was the first guy who turned me on to unwound thirds [strings]. I’d listen to those blues records, like Bobby Bland and Otis Rush, and I wondered, "How can they push their strings? How can they do this!"— like with a regular old set of Gibson Sonomatics [laughs]!
So, I used a whole lot of the tremolo bar and got that down until it sounded pretty close to where it should, even with an unwound third. Then I found out what most people did was to take a second string and put it on the third, and they'd play with the regular bottom part, two seconds, and then a first. And then, I wanted to get real cool: I used a second for the third, a first for the second, and an A tenor banjo string for the first. That was really cool, a really hot lick! To say the least, it helped a lot.
Was Clarence Garlow your only teacher?
No, there were several guys. I never took lessons to learn how to read music or where to put my fingers. I would just ask these guys to show me whatever they thought I ought to know. The guy who really started me off was a guy named Luther Naley, a really good country guitar player. The last time I talked to him, he was playing bass with Roy Rogers [laughs].
Luther was working at Jefferson Music Company in Beaumont. I guess he thought I was good, and we became really good friends. I really dug fingerstyle — the Merle Travis/Chet Atkins kind of things. I still love those guys. Chet Atkins is a fantastic guitar player. I just got off on a completely different game. Country and western were all around, and Luther played really good country and western. He'd show me things like "Honky-Tonk." He'd go to a lot of trouble. If I asked him to show me something he didn’t know, he'd go and get the record, figure it out, and come back and show me.
When I got interested in blues, Luther really didn’t know too much about that, so I picked that up a lot from records. I knew enough to go on from there by myself. I could listen to the record and learn the licks on my own.
For a while, there was another guy, Seymore Drugan, who played in gig bands. In the old days, he worked for Rickenbacker for a while. He was kind of a jazz guitar player. I took two or three lessons from him and learned some chords and different things. I didn’t want to get into jazz, but I thought it would be cool to learn some of the things he could show me. His son, Dennis, ended up being my bass player in my first rock and roll band, Johnny and the Jammers [laughs].
When you were learning from records did you steal licks or did you just get the feel?
I would just learn how to play the record note-for-note. After I kind of got the feel of what was supposed to be going on, I just took what I heard and assimilated it, and I guess it would come out part mine and part everybody else's. There's nobody that really plays original. You can't. You can find some of everybody's licks in almost everybody's playing, but I tried to make it my own after I got the basic things down.
Did your parents support you psychologically?
At first they supported me, but they tried to convince me that it probably wouldn't be the coolest thing to do; that I'd be on the road all the time, and that all musicians were either drunks, dope addicts, or sexual perverts of some kind. And I said, "It don't have to be that way though." Of course, they were right. But after they realized that that was what I wanted to do, they did everything they could to help me.
Were they themselves musicians?
Mom played the piano and sang a little bit, just strictly for fun, and daddy played in the college bands -- sax and a little banjo, just mostly for fun.
Were you and [brother] Edgar the only white people in town that were really into the blues?
Edgar was never into the blues. He couldn't stand it. He plays his John Coltrane and Dave Brubeck records for me and says, "Now isn't that great?" and then I play my Muddy Waters and Lightnin' Hopkins records for him and say, "Now isn't that great?" and then I'll say "But what is that stuff you're playing for me, man? I don't feel it -- I mean there's feeling in it, but it just sounds like a bunch of notes; now listen to this!" and then I'll play some record where the guitar's out of tune and someone's screaming, and he'll say, "That's not even music! That's terrible, man! The guitar's not in tune, it doesn't have a melody line, nobody's playing together... " And I'll say, "Yeah, but it feels so good!" And he'll say, "It just makes me feel sick!" So when we were growing up it just went on and on like that. It's still going on [laughs]. We both have respect for what each other are doing, but really wouldn't want to be doing it ourselves. As to Edgar's jazz, it's fun to listen to, but I wouldn't want to live there.
Were you unique --
[Laughs] Ah man, I was really unique. Everybody thought I was crazy. Nobody wanted to hear that stuff. I was almost embarrassed to play it. I used to shut my door and people would come by and say, "What is that music, man? You don't really like that stuff!" I didn't find one other friend that liked the blues until I was about 23 or 24.
What about Clarence Garlow and....
Yeah, black people, yeah! I'd go to black clubs and play the blues, but that was the only place. I'd get a few gigs, and I'd go sit in places like The Raven. I met B.B. King there. I jammed with him the first time I met him. One night, when I was about 18, I went down there. We were the only white people in a club of about 1,500 people. Nobody bothered us at all. Everybody was real cool because I knew them from hanging around there before.
B.B. was playing, and I wanted to show off so bad. I wanted him to know I could play. And the more I drank, the more I wanted to sit in. Finally, a few of my black friends came over and said, "Come on, man, why don't you sit in with B.B.?" So finally, I went up during a break and asked him if I could [laughs]. B.B. thought I was crazy. He said, "Can I see a union card?" I whipped out my union card, and that shook him up because that usually gets them, you know? I mean, if I were him, I wouldn't let anybody play. It was absurd, man: some little white kid asking to sit in and play. He was big. People loved him. He just couldn't have me sitting in when he didn’t know if I could play or not.
He said, "Well, I don't know, you don't know our songs." I said, "Man, I know your songs. I know all your songs. I can play anything, just let me play." "I don't know," he said. "Let me think about it." Then my friends came over and asked, "Is he going to let you?" "I don't know," I said. "Why don't you go ask him?" So we started out, and about two or three hundred black people started yelling, "Come on! Let him sit in, man! Come on!"
Finally, B.B. realized that even if I wasn’t any good, I had enough friends there that it wouldn’t hurt to let me sit in and make an ass of myself. So, he let me play. I think I did one of his tunes, and everybody just flipped out. This was before any white people wanted to be a part of that scene, and those people knew I was really sincere, and I really wanted to be friends and loved their music. Anyway, everybody just flipped out and went crazy.
B.B. told me, "Man, you're great! Keep on doing it, and you'll be successful someday." I saw him again years later, and he remembered me immediately, hugged me, and said all kinds of great things about me in all of his interviews. He really helped me a lot — great person.
But I used to hang out at The Raven and jam with whoever I could — Bobby Bland, Junior Parker, pretty much everybody came in there. I kept doing that until the race thing started getting weird. A lot of younger black people were starting to resent white people coming into their club, and so I just didn’t feel comfortable and quit hanging out there.
It was a mixture of things. Partly, "You haven’t let us into your clubs, so why should we let you in our clubs?" and also because by that time, the blues got to be a thing they didn’t like. They didn’t want black people playing it, much less white people. It was a disgrace to them; it was like the music of the poor, ignorant black people.
Before, you’d go to somebody's house, and you’d see Lightnin' Hopkins and Muddy Waters records, but after a while, they’d break those records and get Nina Simone albums and whatever else was supposed to be cool. The old stuff, the blues, just went out. The black people were ashamed of it, and white people didn’t like it yet. So there was just nobody to hear it until the young English guys started picking up on it.
What sort of guitars are you using now?
Firebirds, I love Firebirds.
Any modifications?
Just taking the tremolo off and changing the tailpiece.
Have you ever played around with different necks, like maple as opposed to rosewood?
Not really. I don't really know the difference. I like kind of large frets, but what the neck's made out of doesn't seem to really matter. I like real high action. I had it pretty high before I played slide, because I played hard. Just for pushing strings it's important for it to be high. When I have low action I can't get my finger under the string to push it as well. I'm just lost on a guitar with low action. The main thing I worry about when getting guitars is how easy it is to push the strings, how many notes I can get.
Where do you set the tone and volume?
Everything on all the way.
And what about your amps?
Everything on all the way, and all treble and no bass. We're using a stack of 100-watt Marshalls. One head and two bottoms, and one head and two bottoms of the Ampeg SVT's.
What amps are you using in the studio, the same Marshalls?
Yeah, pretty much. I used to hate Marshalls, they were just way too distorted. I didn't want to use anything except [Fender] Twins, but I guess after this many years of listening to music it's just kind of changed my way of hearing the guitar. I kind of like the distortion of Marshalls now. I like a little distortion. Not a gigantic amount but -- 'specially in a small group because you need more noise, a little more sustain. But the larger the group, the less distortion really fits in. All depends on the type of music I'm playing. On a slow pretty song, I don't like any distortion. But if it's a "Get it on!" with all that screaming, I like distortion.
What's your monitor system?
I don't know [laughs]! I don't even know how to plug in my amps any more, man! I don't know what's going on. I'm back in the old days of Fender Bassmans with no piggiebacks, and Super Reverbs and all that kind of stuff. That's the stuff I understand. I don't know what's going on now [laughs]. I really don't.
What sort of guitars have you got besides the Firebirds?
I've got three Firebirds. I've got a '58 or '59 sunburst Gibson. I'm terrible on remembering models, but it's a jumbo flat-top -- no fancy inlay work on it, probably the cheapest. I used it on stuff like "Cheap Tequila" and "Too Much Seconal" [Still Alive and Well]. Pretty much anything I need an acoustic guitar for, unless I'm using one of my steel Nationals. I love those little guitars [Nationals]. I've got a new one and a couple of old ones; I collect them. I've also got a two-pickup, solidbody Epiphone. I've got a doubleneck, I've got a fairly new V [Gibson Flying V], and this one isn't one of those really horrible new ones. In fact, it's pretty good. I'm not sure what year any of them are. I've also got a really strange all-metal guitar made by John Veleno. It's got the thinnest neck in the world. Since it's solid metal, you don't have to worry about it warping. But I'm not quite used to it. The neck's a little too thin. The worst part about it is that the neck is silver, and it's got little black dots on it, and when the spotlight is shining on the neck I really can't see the dots, so I haven't been using it on stage. But he makes pretty nice guitars. If I played it, and got used to it, I think it'd be a real nice guitar to play.
Do you read music?
No. I don't have the faintest idea.
How do you communicate what you want to the other musicians in the studio? Do you get someone else to write it down?
No, never [laughs]! No, no! Nobody in my band would have any idea if I wrote anything out. I just say, "Play this song," and if I don't like it, I'll say I don't like it and try to explain what it is that I don't like about it. We just work it out until it starts sounding good. It's kind of a trial and error thing. My way definitely isn't very rigid, things just kind of fall into place.
So you never got into theory or books or that sort of approach to music?
No, there wasn't any of that stuff I wanted to learn. I just wanted to learn some hot licks so I could show off [laughs].
Did you practice regularly?
It wasn't systematic, it was just that I didn't do nothing else. Every second that I wasn't doing something else that I had to do, I'd be playing guitar. It was just an obsession. I guess I played at least six or eight hours a day from the time I started until I was 15. Then when I started playing in groups, I didn't practice unless we were having a band practice. I'd just sit around too much. Otherwise, it was more like an hour a day.
Do you practice now?
Yeah, but usually it's when we're going to go on tour or going to make a record. I'll go a couple weeks and never even touch my guitar. Of course, when I start back, it definitely takes a week or so to get back in shape. It's hard making myself practice 'cause there's not much I'm interested in learning. I like my style, and if I'm working up a new tune, or if I do hear something that turns me on and I want to figure out how it's done, then I get out my guitar. But pretty much it's just practicing for a reason. We play so much on tour, that usually when I get off the road I don't want to see my guitar for a while anyway.
Do you use the little finger of your left hand very much?
I do use it some, but not as much as most people. I learned how to play all wrong. Same thing with my right hand. Since I started out playing Chet Atkins' style, I used a thumb pick. Really a flat pick would have been a lot better, but I've just been doing it so long, it'd be too hard to switch. And I never used my left little finger much until I finally decided that you could do a lot better things if you used all five fingers instead of four of them. And so I just made myself learn; and it was really hard. My little finger still isn't as strong as it should be, so if I want to use strength I use my ring finger instead.
Which do you use for the slide?
I started out using my ring finger, until a friend of mine in the Denver Folklore Society advised me to switch to my little finger so I could play chords and do all those other things with the other fingers. I've had my slide for years. I was using test tubes and playing with the back of my wristwatch and everything imaginable, and he said I'd better go to a plumbing supply place and get a 12-foot long piece of conduit pipe and have it cut into pieces and rounded out on one side. When I got it, it was kind of dull, gray, and real rough. Then I just played and wore that off, and it became kind of a shiny black, and then I played it for a little while longer and wore that off, and now it's kind of silver. Crust just sort of built up inside: Rust and dirt and sweat and everything. I love it! I don't even have any backup slides. I don't know how I've managed to keep myself together enough to keep this slide for five years [laughs].
How do you get your vibrato?
It wasn't until about '67 that I started using my fingers. Up to that point I always used the tremolo bar. And about that time, to be a cool guitar player you had to use your fingers. It was cheating if you used the bar. So I wanted to be cool like everybody, so I figured, "If those guys coming up can do it with their fingers, let them! I'll learn to do it with my fingers, too [laughs]!" I worked at it about a year getting better and better until I got to the point that the tremolo bar got in my way. It's harder to keep your guitar in tune with, so I'd really rather not use one, even though there are effects that are cool. Like Jimi Hendrix could use one so good! And people would put him down for using it, but man, it was just a whole different dimension when he used it. Even when his guitar would be horribly out of tune, he could play so cool, you'd hardly ever know it. He had a way of bending the strings just enough to where it could sound in tune, even though it was horribly out of tune. Like, if I'd pick it up and play a chord on his guitar, it would sound ungodly. I don't think there's anything wrong with using the bar, if you can do it and get a lot of extra effects. But it gives me a little extra trouble, and I'd just rather not have one.
Who makes your thumb pick?
Gibson. I wish I knew the exact model because they quit making them. I've been playing with these for so long it's the only pick I can play with. Luckily, I bought a hundred of them a couple of years ago, because I had so much trouble finding them, and a few months after that Gibson quit making them. I still got about 50 left, but I'm going to have to quit playing the guitar when I run out, unless I can talk Gibson into making me some more [laughs]. I figure once I get down to the last 20 I'm going to get up there and plead and beg, "Please you guys, I'll do anything!"
When you're picking do you alternate up-and-down strokes?
I don't really think about it. When I started out with the Chet Atkins' stuff I was using those metal fingerpicks, and they just got in my way, so I quit using them. But on my blues stuff, I'm still using my fingers some; mostly the first and second finger with the thumb.
Where do you get your licks? Off chords, off scales, off patterns?
I don't know [laughs]! I just hear them, man! I've listened to so many records and heard so many different things going on that I don't think about it. They just come from everything I've heard. I don't think scales, chords, or patterns.
What sort of strings are you using?
.009, .011, .016, .024, .032, .042. The brand doesn't matter.
How often do you change them?
When they break [laughs]. When the low ones start to really sound funky I'll usually change them -- or if I break one low one, that sounds too weird [to just change the one], so I'll change all of them. If I break a high one, it doesn't make any difference. With the top three: First, second, and third, I'll just change the individual strings, but if I break the fourth, fifth, or sixth, I'll change them all.
On stage are you very improvisational or do you repeat what you did on records?
A little of both. I've heard my albums so many times that I'll tend to play an hour or two almost like it was on the record. But I play a lot more guitar on stage than I do on record, so I can't really just repeat things. My playing's pretty much spontaneous. Sometimes I'll just decide to throw in something we've never done before to see if the band can handle it. I get real bored playing the same thing over and over again. It really drives me crazy. I like working clubs better than a record. But everyone in the band listens to the same records, so if I say, "Let's try this one," it'll usually come out pretty good. We learn more things on the bandstand then we would practicing. After I learned how to play guitar I never have liked to practice that much. I get off on turning people on. It's hard for me to put everything into it, when I know there's nobody there.
Do you use any tone modifying devices?
No. That stuff is so complicated that it just freaks me out. When I try any kind of gadget, it ends up ruining the show. I don't have the patience to work with it, until I get it right. I just go crazy, rip it out, and throw it at the road crew [laughs]. After trying everything in the world, I decided that that stuff just wasn't right for me. A gadget will work just fine in practice, but as soon as I get it out there [on stage], it gets scared. I think it gets stage fright. It freaks out. It thinks, "No, I can't do it! I won't work right!" If I ever found something that worked right, that I could control, I'd be the biggest gadget freak in the world. But they don't work for me, they don't like me. Sometimes, in the studio I'll use the wah-wah or the Univibe. I really like the Leslie-effect Univibe thing. But it seems like those gadgets are a big myth, although some people can work them so that they do add to the sound of their playing. But if you use them to cover up bad playing, or if they're the only thing exciting about your playing, they're useless.
What sort of tunings are you using?
Open A and open E. Sometimes I play slide in regular tuning, but not too often.
Did you ever get any ear damage?
I don't know if my ears have been damaged, but I know they feel damaged [laughs]. After a tour, sometimes the ringing in my ears will be louder than the people talking, but as long as I have time enough off, it goes away completely.
Have you had them tested?
Yeah, they're OK. I was very happy about that. But it definitely messes them up, if you don't take off. It's a lot worse for the people that are sitting out in front. I try to have my amps off to the side where it's not nearly so loud where I'm standing as it would be for the people in the second or third row. You couldn't pay me to go to a concert and sit up there in front. It's really dangerous. We were up to 135 decibels one night! I couldn't believe it! Those kids loved it. They were just right there with their ears against the amps. We had a kid one night that crawled up into the speaker horn! I'm sure he was just completely loaded, man! That much sound would just drive you crazy.
You once said that you and Jimi Hendrix didn't jam well together because you respected each other too much.
Yeah, we'd both just lay back and wait for the other one. I felt weird, man, because I loved his stuff, but I felt weird with him playing rhythm. I'd play a little bit, and then I'd lay back and wait for him to play, and he'd start laying back and waiting for me to play, you know. We jammed a lot of different places, and were in the studio a couple of times together. He'd get a bunch of his friends in, just jamming all night.
Did either of you sneak anything in on each other's records?
No, I never did do it. There's a bootleg out in London I was supposed to have played on, but I listened to it, and it definitely isn't me. It's horrible.
Do you have any advice for upcoming musicians?
In the early days, nobody had the technical ability that they do nowadays. There weren't really good, fancy rock and roll guitar players. Chuck Berry was the best, but it was pretty much just rhythmic things. It was a struggle for guitar players to even play Chuck Berry's stuff. He was like the Jimi Hendrix of the '50s, and nobody could play like that.
Now, guitar players are starting out playing stuff that's as hard or harder. So, kids are coming up with a lot more technical ability, but they don't know exactly how to use it or how to fit it in with taste. I've talked to so many people who have been playing for a year-and-a-half or two years, and they're pretty fast, and they want to make it right. They don't realize that you've got to play, you've got to practice for years. You need to play with other musicians, play a lot of different kinds of music until you really know what you're playing and why you're playing it.
It's not just about throwing in things and saying, "Look, man, I can play a bunch of notes! I can play as fast as Albert Lee!" Some people put stuff like that in songs where it doesn't have the least bearing on anything else that's going on. I guess things are so sped up now that the general attitude is, "I want it, and I want it now!" But it really takes years if you're going to do it right, and a lot of kids just don't want to take the time to work on it. They don't see where it's all going, what it means, where it comes from, and how they should apply it in playing their songs.
It doesn't make any difference how technically good or fast you are, or how many notes you know — you just can't do it in two years.
In other words, the drive for stardom is not the same as the love of music?
No, it definitely isn't. Like I want to do a little bit of both, but you got to start out with the love for music. So many people just buy a guitar because they decided, "I want to be a rock and roll star. I'm going to learn how to play this son of a bitch." And after they get a few runs down they think, "Okay, it's time for me to be a star." You know, I was really ready to play for fifty bucks a week, if that's what it took. I wanted to be a rock and roll star, definitely, because I wanted to be accepted, and I wanted people to think I was good at what I did, but the basic drive and main thing was that I really liked what I was doing.
You've got to have that first, or you can't make it.
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