Raisin' Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter (Kindle Edition) (52 page)

Although Johnny’s hip should have been healing, his problems were far from over. A year after the first surgery, he was still in pain and unable to play standing up. X-rays revealed the metal plate had broken in his hip, and he needed another operation.

When Johnny returned to the stage, he walked with a cane and played sitting down. “It’s a drag to have to sit down,” says Johnny. “I thought there’d be a lot of rumors about me being too messed up to stand up, but I didn’t hear anything. There are always rumors because I had that problem with heroin in the early ’70s. People think I’m going back to heroin for some reason. I hate that.”

In February 2001, Johnny released a video compilation entitled Pieces & Bits with concert footage, TV clips, and personal photos. The video got poor reviews for the “grainy clips and bad sound,” with one reviewer calling it a “nothing but a big money grab by Teddy Slatus.” When it was released on DVD that December, fans who purchased both formats complained the DVD version wasn’t as good as the video. The reason was obvious. Slatus didn’t want to invest any money in the project so asked Minett, who produced it, to ask fans for footage via Johnny’s website. Fans obliged but the footage was copies of copies of copies—much of it fifth-generation.

In May 2001, a devastating outbreak of Mad Cow Disease cancelled Johnny’s plans for a European tour, which included headlining the Bishopstock Blues Festival in England. When he embarked on a month-long tour of the Midwest, Northwest, and western Canada to make up the dates he canceled when he broke his hip, Johnny and his entourage came down with the flu. Worried about his reputation, Johnny performed anyway. “I had a hard time singing, but I wasn’t gonna stop just because of the flu,” he says. “I didn’t want to get the reputation of a band that cancels every time the wind blows the wrong way.”

With Johnny’s health issues and a sporadic touring schedule, Johnny’s band fell to the wayside. Epstein moved to Hawaii, making it too expensive to fly him in for gigs. Whether it was over financial matters or because Epstein and Liuzzi had seen too much (which often predicated a change of lineup), Slatus convinced Johnny to hire new musicians.

“Mark wanted more money and Vito wanted more money, and I just couldn’t afford them,” says Johnny. “I hated losing Mark and Vito because I thought they were real good. Teddy didn’t—he didn’t think they were as good as they should be.”

Although the Pointblank label had disbanded, Virgin agreed to pick up Johnny’s option for one more CD. Slatus, still eager to get a crossover hit, enlisted Tom Hambridge to produce
I’m a Bluesman.
Hambridge, the writer, producer, and drummer who produced Susan Tedeschi’s Grammy-nominated
Just Won’t Burn
CD, wrote two songs for Johnny, recorded them in Boston, and sent the tapes to Johnny.

“Dick’s a good producer but Tom was more commercial,” says Johnny. “Tom wrote ‘Lone Wolf’ and ‘Cheatin’ Blues’—they were a little more commercial, more rock flavor. I did guitar and vocals over the tracks his band played on. Tom was a good drummer and the bass player [Tommy McDonald] played real nice too.”

While dubbing the tracks with Hambridge at the Carriage House Recording Studios in Stamford, Connecticut, Johnny met a guitar player who would turn his life around. Paul Nelson had just finished cutting tracks for the XFL, the professional American football league created as a joint venture between NBC and the World Wrestling Federation that only played for one season. Nelson had studied with Steve Vai at the Berklee College of Music and played with Liege Lord, a heavy metal band that released two recordings on Metal Blade Records in the late 1980s. Slatus was impressed with his musical and technical knowledge and told Nelson he wanted him to be Johnny’s second guitarist. Because of Johnny’s resistance to having another guitar player in his band, Slatus said he would work him in slowly and tell Johnny he had been hired as his guitar tech. Nelson flew to England with the band the following week. He quickly expanded his role by co-writing three songs with bassist Scott Spray for the CD, and playing rhythm guitar on five tracks.

Slatus hired Hambridge and McDonald as Johnny’s rhythm section for the rescheduled Bishopstock Blues Festival in August. The CD was scheduled to be recorded between tours in 2001, but fate has other plans. When Johnny tried to sign a work permit in the airport in London, he had no feeling in his right hand.

“I couldn’t move my right hand; it was just hanging down limp from the wrist down,” says Johnny. “It was completely numb. I thought it would be okay the next day, and it wasn’t, so I went to see a doctor in Bishopstock. He said it was radial nerve palsy and would last about six weeks. If it hadn’t healed by then, I’d have to have an operation. It just happens, there’s no reason for it. We’d flown all the way over there, and to get off the plane and find out your hand doesn’t work—it was real tough.”

Rather than letting the promoter break the news to the 5,000 fans waiting to hear him perform, Johnny stepped onstage to announce the cancellation before heading to the doctor. He felt his fans deserved a personal message, and Slatus wanted the audience to know Johnny could walk and talk, and thus quell rumors he had a stroke.

“That was a hard decision to make,” Johnny says. “I told everybody I was sorry; that I wanted to play for them, but I couldn’t. I was afraid I was going to get booed and have people throw things at me. But they clapped and gave me a standing ovation. It was great.”

Despite the damage control, losing feeling in his hand and canceling that gig was another rough blow. “It was a pretty big financial loss,” says Johnny. “They were going to pay us pretty well. You have to give back the advance; you have to pay for the rooms and the flights. I lost a lot of money.”

When Johnny returned to Connecticut, he went back into the studio with Hambridge, who recorded and dubbed Johnny’s vocals on several additional songs. Slatus immediately posted photos of those sessions on Johnny’s website to show the label, promoters, and fans it was business as usual.

Yet being unable to play guitar and wondering if he’d need another operation took its toll on Johnny. Doug Brockie, his second guitar player from 1973—1974, traveled from New Jersey to visit him every week, offering moral support and massaging essential oils into his hand.

“I don’t know if that helped or not, but I was willing to try anything,” says Johnny. “I was afraid I might have to have an operation, and I sure didn’t want that. I hated it—I can’t even imagine what it would be like not to be able to play guitar. I thought what in the world will happen if I can never play guitar again? I tried not to think about it. I believe in God, and I believe God can do anything for you that you need done. I prayed a lot and it worked.”

Johnny wore a leather cast and an Ace bandage, which gave him minimal use of his fingers. “I could use my fingers to smoke or get an iced tea, but it was hard to eat with a bandage,” he says. He did exercises every day, and the feeling gradually returned. Within six weeks, he was able to strum his Lazer guitar. Encouraged by his progress, he practiced an hour every day. Within several weeks— which seemed like months—he regained his picking ability and could play both the Lazer and the Firebird.

Meanwhile, Val Minett was learning firsthand about Slatus’s deceptive business practices and alcoholic episodes. Lured by the offer of a fulltime salaried job, she had left Tennessee and bought a house in Connecticut, but it wasn’t long before she regretted her decision.

“I didn’t know Teddy had drinking issues,” she said. “The only time I realized I had seen him drunk so many times was the first time I saw him sober. It was an awakening. When I still lived in Tennessee, he would call me all hours of the night with, ‘I got this idea. What do you think of this?’ ‘Let’s do that.’ He always had a lot of good ideas but he never followed through.”

One of the things Slatus never followed through on was paying her a salary. He had a reputation of exploiting people without compensation, and Minett was one of dozens lured into his trap with promises of future projects and eventual payment.

“Almost as soon as I moved up here, their attitude started to change,” said Minett. “I noticed just how controlling Betty Ann was and how drunk he was all the time. He would go through periods of sobriety, and always fall back in. I think at times he had Johnny’s best interests at heart, but he was a very tortured man.”

Minett became increasingly concerned about Johnny’s overmedicated state, and the number of prescriptions he got from his doctor, who also kept Slatus supplied with pills. “Betty Ann called him [Johnny’s physician] Dr. Pill,” said Minett. “Even when Teddy was out of his mind, he made sure Johnny had his medicine. Maybe it was his way of making sure Johnny didn’t know how badly Teddy was doing.”

Slatus was in and out of rehab in 2001 and 2002, but couldn’t stay sober. “Teddy kept falling off the wagon,” Minett said. “I was doing everything: arranging the tour, setting up interviews, and going to the gigs. Teddy started crying one day, saying, ‘You’re Johnny’s manager now.’ Teddy would fall off the wagon every time something bad happened or something good happened; whenever there was any type of pressure. Two days before they went to Europe, he fell off and Betty Ann had to go to Europe.”

In late 2001, when Slatus had a meeting in New York with Sony Music executives to discuss the upcoming release of
Best of Johnny Winter,
he asked Minett to accompany him. When it was time to go to the meeting, he wouldn’t come out of his hotel room.

“He answered the door crocked out of his mind in his dress shirt and underwear,” Minett said. “I told him we had a meeting, and he told me to change it. I could see the bottle of scotch, and he was trying to not let me walk in the room, pushing me back saying, ‘Don’t come in here.’ Finally he said, ‘I’m not alone,’ and I saw a prostitute on the bed.”

Minett returned to her room to regroup, but the drama has just begun. She got a call from Johnston, who told her to get Slatus’s wallet when she heard he was drinking. “I asked how I was going to get his wallet away from him,” said Minett. “She says it’s in his pants pocket, and I said he wasn’t wearing any.”

Torn between leaving a bizarre situation, and looking out for Johnny’s interests, Minett returned to Slatus’s room, but he wouldn’t answer the door. When he finally answered his phone, he told her to go without him. She met with the Sony executives and returned to Connecticut that same day. Slatus was missing for a week. To finance his binge and penchant for prostitutes, he ran up $40,000 worth of charges on his American Express card, which Johnston later disputed as fraudulent, claiming the card was stolen.

“It was all to an escort service tagged as Hampton Bay’s Antiques,” said Minett. “When Teddy did come back, he was still out of his mind. Betty Ann made it like he was trying to break in and tried to hit her. I don’t know if it’s true, but I can’t imagine it. She had him taken away by the police, and then had him put away into a detox place.”

Slatus’s relationship with Johnston was mutually codependent—she needed him for financial reasons, he needed her to run the business, work as tour manager when he was drunk or in rehab, and convince Susan and Johnny he was looking out for their interests. She told women they were married. Slatus told women the relationship was strictly business.

“They both hated each other equally,” said Minett. “They were both so manipulative; I had a hard time figuring out who was the worst of the evils. If they got you by yourself, they would have you believing the other one was the devil on Earth.”

Slatus became an easy mark for the friends he made in rehab. He hired Ricky, a former heroin addict who didn’t stay clean, to do odd jobs around his house. When Johnston was away for a few days, Ricky stopped by with several bottles of scotch. They had a couple of drinks together, and before long, Slatus signed over $5,000 worth of checks to his rehab buddy.

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