Editors of Guitar World magazine - The Complete History of Guitar World

SEPTEMBER 26-year-old jazz star Pat Metheny gives a detailed interview on a range of topics, including the crucial elements of his distinctive guitar tone, his development as a musician and his disdain for the word fusion. I hate that word. It makes no sense and whenever I hear it applied to my music, I want to kill.

COVER STORY BY JOEL SIEGEL; PHOTO BY ROB VAN PETTEN

NOVEMBER GW continues its jazz coverage with this profile of legend-in-the-making Al Di Meola. In it, Di Meola opens up about his perfectionist nature when it comes to writing and recording. Theres a certain sound I want to create. My band is here to recreate what I have in mind. Its not loose.

COVER STORY BY JOHN STIX : PHOTO BY RICHARD AARONS

VOL. 1 / NO. 7

Johnny Winter

In Guitar world s debut issue, Johnny Winter describes his love for the blues as well as the career problems and drug addiction that led to his downward spiral in the Seventies and, ultimately, his salvation.

Johnny recalls the late Sixties, when rock and roll fans discovered the blues. Things were better in terms of blues appreciation, says the guitarist. The Rolling Stones and some of the other English groups were starting to do blues. People came on to the blues through those guys, but most of those English guys didnt stick with it.

Before that time, things were really rough for real blues musicians. Even black people didnt want to have anything to do with the blues for a long time. They thought the blues was not an educated music, and it brought back to many people the memories of the bad times. There is still an appalling lack of appreciation in this country for blues. To me, it is the finest music.

And what does it take to play this fine music?

I used to wonder if you had to be suffering all the time to play the blues. It wouldnt be worth it. Everyone has pain in their lives. Everyone has problems, some more than others. When youre really down, it is hard to be creative. When you are looking back at the time you were down, hindsight, then you can write songs. When youre going through the process, through some really horrible life or death situation, its hard to even care about music.

Johnny experienced some of those real bad times while trying to cope with the rigors of his three years of constant touring. It would take me a long time to go into the whole thing, but the one thing to keep in mind is that there was always something in me saying stay alive. I felt for quite a while like killing myself. I couldnt stand the life I was leading. I was real down, and death seemed like an easy way out. If you want to make up your mind that youre not going to die, then you have got to figure out a way to make yourself happy. You have to figure out what is making your life so miserable and set out to change it.

To me, it was everybody wanting to get on the Johnny Winter bandwagon, everybody wanting a little piece of the actiongive me a loan, give me some of your hair, have sex with me, show me how to play guitar, how did you make it? There was no time for sleep, or for friends, or for doing normal things like watching television and eating. It didnt look like things were going to change. I could picture it being like that forever and evereverybody taking their 10 or 20 percent out of my money and leaving me with nothing.

It was a real lonely time. The people Id meet were all after something. It was mentally and physically draining. After three years of that I knew that if I didnt get away from it, the business, the people, the drugs, the whole bitat least for a whileI wouldnt have been able to live with myself. I didnt know if I was ever going to play again. The main thing, for me, was to figure out what went wrong.

I locked myself up. I checked myself into a hospital where I was getting constant psychotherapy. I couldnt get any letters. The first three months were real painful, coming off the drugs and just being in one place, not having a job to go to. At the time, it was real horrible, but I wouldnt take it back. I am real glad I went through it. After I decided that there was a chance for me to be happy, I began to learn a lot. I can look back at that time with enjoyment, now, as I have gone through it on to better times.