Raisin' Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter (Kindle Edition) (48 page)

“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.

“It [having an albino child] would be much easier for me and for the child, than if an albino child was born to parents who were totally normal—having a father you could relate to,” said Johnny. “I think I’d like a little girl though. If I had a normal little guy, it would bother me a little bit that I couldn’t go out and play baseball and football with the kid and do the things fathers normally do. That would bother me. But with a girl I wouldn’t feel that pressure I know I would feel with a boy [now his voice takes on an inflection] be a man and do those manly things, play football, baseball, hockey, and everything we just can’t really do. I did them anyway and it was really embarrassing to go through PE—physical education—and play baseball when you really can’t see the ball but about half the time.”

Susan reluctantly gave up her dreams of starting a family, but gave Johnny an ultimatum about marriage. “I told him, ‘Either we get married or we break up; I believe in God and this isn’t right,” said Susan. “I let him go way past the ultimatum because I had invested my life in him and didn’t want it to end.”

Johnny never questioned the idea of spending the rest of his life with Susan until a woman from his past showed up at a gig. “I’ve known Diana [Williams] since she was a go-go girl at Love Street Light Circus and Feel Good Machine—she danced there every night we played,” says Johnny. “I had had a thing for her since the old days. We had a real past. She remembered me from the good ole days, and I went to bed with her a couple of times back when I first knew her. I didn’t see her for a while—until she came out to see me when I was playin’ in Houston in the ’80s. I had a hard-on, and asked her if she wanted to go on the road for a while. She went on the road with me for a month. She wasn’t workin‘—she was livin’ with a guy who worked. After that, we started seeing each other every time I went out on the road and I was playin’ pretty regular. I’d call her from practice and tell her when I was goin’ on the road and she’d fly out.”

Within several years, Johnny put Williams up in a high-rise apartment in Houston, where he stayed with her when he was in town. By then, he had become her sole source of support. “She was livin’ by herself and I was sendin’ her money,” says Johnny. “We were together maybe two or three years steady. A lot of people thought she was my wife.”

Williams knew Johnny was living with Susan but never pressured him about it. Unlike Susan, she didn’t want children and never talked about marriage. “She didn’t look that forward in the future-she was just glad to be with me at the time,” says Johnny. “She was true to me all those years because she didn’t want anybody else—she was in love with me. She may have been hopin’ I’d leave Susan and come down there and live with her, but she never said that to me.

“I’d see her when I was on the road and see Susan when I was back at home. I’d been going with both of them for three years or so. Susan hated me seeing her too and finally told me, ‘You have to marry me and have a normal relationship or I’m gonna leave.’ She really put it to me good—‘What do you want to do? Who do you love? You can’t go with both of us anymore.’ That convinced me Susan was the one I loved the most and I had to break up with Diana. I’m sorry it took so long but it was a hard decision to make.”

Having to finally choose between two women, after spending his life with a woman at home and various girlfriends on the road, was emotionally devastating to Johnny. He had always insisted on free rein when he was on the road; now that door would be closed forever. “It was hard,” he says. “That’s one of the things that made me crazy, made me completely fucked up. I couldn’t figure out which one I wanted. I really loved Diana too and it was hard for me to break it off with her. That’s why it took awhile. I didn’t want to get married ’cause I didn’t want to commit myself to one person. I never thought I could do that. I don’t know why Susan went along with that for so long. I’m glad she did though. Susan knew I loved her and I needed to take some time to work it out. She was real understanding.”

Susan and Johnny separated in late December 1991, and he spent Christmas in Houston with Williams. When he returned, he agreed to get married. “It just seemed to be the right thing to do,” he says. “I know how much she loved me and how much she’d given up for me and I felt like it was time to pay her back for all she’d had to go through. We’d been livin’ together for twenty years when we got married.”

In February 1992, they were married in a quiet ceremony in the Carlyle Hotel in New York. Susan’s best friend stood up for her; a longtime friend and roadie stood up for Johnny. “I wanted Teddy to stand up for him, but we hadn’t planned ahead of time,” said Susan. “We had the room for the night, and had a bunch of food there, but everybody left, so we just went home. I was disappointed. I wish his parents and my parents were there. But after this long, I think they were just happy we made it official.”

“We didn’t have time to invite my parents and Susan’s parents,” adds Johnny. “We just wanted to do it in a hurry. Susan knew it was hard for me and I just wanted to get it over with. I wanted to have as little commotion as possible ’cause I didn’t take it too seriously. She thought I wouldn’t cheat if I was married, but I probably did in the very beginning. I’m true to her now. I’ve been married for sixteen years now and have been true to her.”

Although Williams was given $12,000 as “severance” so she wouldn’t be left high and dry without any income, she was devastated by the ending of their relationship. “Diana took it pretty bad,” says Johnny. “Sometimes she tried to call me but she knew it was my decision. She knew it wasn’t going to do any good to try to get me back. I saw her when I was down in Houston—when I play there she comes out and sees me. Diana said she still loved me. I told her I couldn’t be married to Susan and see her too. We still talk to each other every once in a while.”

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