Raisin' Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter (Kindle Edition) (18 page)

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Authors: Mary Lou Sullivan

BOOK: Raisin' Cain: The Wild and Raucous Story of Johnny Winter (Kindle Edition)
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One of the perks of fame that Johnny loved was meeting and jamming with Jimi Hendrix, who he, Shannon, and Turner had seen in Houston and whose songs they had been playing in Texas bars not too long ago.
“We first saw Jimi Hendrix at the Music Hall—it was about a 2,500-seat auditorium in Houston,” said Turner. “Then we saw him when he came back and played a bigger gig at the Houston Coliseum.”
“I remember that concert,” said Shannon. ʺI was so mesmerized. I couldn’t take my eyes off Jimi—he was like a god. I remember Johnny sitting there saying, ‘Nobody can be that good.’ He kept saying that over and over—ʹNobody can be that good.ʹʺ
Despite his initial reaction to Hendrix’s virtuosity, when Johnny met him in New York, he knew he had to play with him.
“I don’t remember when I first met Jimi, but I went up to him and asked if he wanted to jam,” says Johnny. “We got together at the Scene and I remember being a little intimidated. I jammed with him at the Experience in L.A. one night too—we both happened to be there.”
Hendrix’s favorite after-hours spot for jamming was the Record Plant, a recording studio that opened in New York in 1968. Hendrix recorded
Electric Ladyland
at the studio’s first session. A premiere studio with a living-room ambiance and what was then cutting-edge twelve-track equipment, the Record Plant’s early client list also included Frank Zappa, Buddy Miles, Velvet Underground, Traffic, and Vanilla Fudge. Johnny and Jimi got together for a jam there one night. In 1990, more than two decades later, Reprise released
Lifelines,
a Hendrix box set that included “The Things That I Used to Do,” a song they recorded during that late night jam.
“After he jammed at the Scene, he’d get a few people together to go over and record,” recalls Johnny. “So I went with him to the Record Plant and played on some songs. He did it a lot. I think he had time booked late at night so if he wanted to play, he could. The Scene usually closed at four and the jams in the Record Plant would go to five or six in the morning.
“He wasn’t messed up all the time, but he was high—he took acid and that affected his playing I’m sure. He’d tape everything and listen to it the next day. I usually gave him the reins pretty much—I mostly played rhythm. But on the song we recorded, ‘The Things That I Used to Do,’ we traded off—I played slide guitar and he played regular guitar. It came out real well. I believe that was the only song that was recorded. I played with him about ten times maybe and thought he was the best guitar player around. I didnʹt really know him as a person because he was high most of the time. He was hard to talk to; he didn’t talk about a whole lot.”
Dallas Taylor and Stephen Stills also played on “The Things That I Used to Do.” Although Johnny knew the recording existed, he didn’t know if and when it would ever be officially released.
“I was glad it came out because there was a record out that everybody said was us, but it wasn’t,” he said. “‘I Woke Up This Morning and Found Myself Dead’ was a jam recorded at the Scene [in March 1968] with Jimi and Jim Morrison and me supposedly—but it wasn’t me. Jim was just screaming, “Oh yeah, oh yeah,” and that was about it. He was drunk and it was a real mess. I didn’t play with him; I never even met Jim Morrison. It really worried me that they had that record out and said I was on it when I wasn’t. So I was glad to see something come out that was decent.”
6
 
THE HIGH PRICE OF CELEBRITY
 
J
ohnny’s success, which mirrored the rise of Hendrix’s career, cast the band members, and especially Johnny, into a perpetual spotlight. Steve Paul generated phenomenal press coverage including cover or feature stories in
Rolling Stone, Look Magazine, Time, Circus, Downbeat, Hit Pannier, Creem, Melody Maker, New Musical Express,
and the
New York Times.
Achieving celebrity status so quickly was a major adjustment.
“Becoming celebrities was a big deal to us,” said Turner. “I adapted by being humble, learning, and listening. Steve Paul was hanging around with the Warhol crowd and was a guru to us and the New York City scene. He guided us by his own actions and gestures. After we grew our hair long, we started wearing pretty wild clothes, psychedelic stuff, striped pants, two-tone pants with two different colors, scarves around our necks, Beatle boots. We were discreetly following the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, and the Who. Then we slowly evolved into something reasonable.”
“It was hard for me at first,” said Shannon. “I still had that hick-from-Texas feeling and then started getting treated totally different, which I really liked. The first year in New York, I became a rock star and started getting respect from these other cool musicians. I felt lonely, oh sure. It’s a nasty business, it really is. You do not know who you can trust. People come up to you as nice and helpful as possible and then turn around and screw you. You honestly do not know who to trust, except each other.
“Johnny took the overnight-celebrity thing real well; he knew what we had to do and he did it,” added Shannon. “At the same time, it was difficult for him because he had never been through anything like that. All of sudden, being up there in front of thousands of people almost overnight; that’s how fast Steve Paul was. So, he had difficulties. Johnny was self-conscious over being an albino. Growing up he caught so much shit over that—that was still with him when he got older.”
“Johnny was already such an oddity and had been one all his life,” said Turner. “Being applauded made it worse, because he was always standing outside of everything and looking in. Yet, he had the confidence of knowing he was that good, that he could go out there on any given night and create a lot of excitement.”
Johnny’s sudden celebrity status mirrored the dichotomy he had discovered during his childhood research on how albinos were treated in different cultures.
“I’d been born a reject and suddenly I was worshipped as a god,” Johnny told a Rock magazine reporter in 1973. “If I wasn’t worshipped, I was hated by jealous people. Both attitudes pissed me off. Either way, I felt left out, lonesome. I couldnʹt handle it.”
As the star and more easily recognizable member of the band, Johnny was constantly followed by throngs of fans, which made it difficult to lead a normal life. He found that aspect of hero worship unnerving.
“It was very strange,” says Johnny. “Wherever I went was a drag. Restaurants—you couldn’t eat without somebody comin’ over to you. I’d stay at the Chelsea Hotel and if I tried to walk down Twenty-Second Street, people would come up to me all the time. They’d follow me when I went shoppin’ for clothes; they’d follow me everyplace. It made it harder to go to a concert or club. If I went out, there would be a whole bunch of people comin’ over and tryin’ to talk to you. Asking for guitar picks, autographs, whatever, a lock of your hair. It made it impossible for me to see a band. I’d try to talk to as many people as I could without it making me crazy. I didn’t feel comfortable telling them to leave—sometimes I did, but I never did feel comfortable doing it. Steve Paul never did anything about it; he was probably scared somebody would knock him in the head. After a while, I just quit going places. It was a drag but it was the only way I could deal with it.
“People would try to take my hats, grab picks off my hand—I got a lot of that when I was onstage. Iʹd reach out to hold somebody’s hand and they’d try to grab my thumb pick. Girls came up with scissors to get a clip of my hair. It made it hard for me—I stayed home a lot. But I wanted to be famous and did everything I could to get there and had to put up with the shitty things about it. I didn’t know it was gonna be as bad as it was, though.”
Friendships are a rare commodity for celebrities, who are surrounded by sycophants and self-serving hangers-on with ulterior motives. Then there are the star struck fans that can’t get past their celebrity status. Fans by their very nature have an idealized image of celebrities, and never view or relate to them as real people. It makes most encounters very one-sided.
“You didn’t get a chance to know anybody because they wanted to know about you,” says Johnny. “They wanted to just deal with me and what was going on with me at the time; you didn’t really feel like you could be friends with anybody. They say, ʹHow long you been playing guitar?’ ‘How’d you like playinʹ here?’ ‘How’d you like playinʹ there?ʹ Just bullshit. It’s hard to have real friends when you’re famous because people don’t really get to know you. They think they know you real good, but they don’t. It’s hard to convince them that you’re not what they think you are. Sometimes you don’t care, but sometimes it’s important.”
For many fans, an opportunity to meet Johnny backstage after a concert was a memorable event, so they came bearing gifts.
“People gave me presents,” says Johnny. ʺOh, hell, all kind of presents—religious statues, guitar straps, tee shirts, flowers. I liked that. But if they met you at a festival when you met one hundred people, they’d think you should remember them the next time they see you. ‘I’d say, ʹI don’t remember you.’ ‘Well, you met me down at this certain festival.’ ‘Well, I met one hundred people at that festival—I don’t really remember you.’ Sometimes it would bother them but I couldnʹt help it.”
Johnny’s celebrity attracted scores of women who wanted to bed a rock star, no matter who he was. The anonymous nature of those encounters didn’t faze him.
“That didn’t bother me,” he says with a laugh. “I figured we were both gettin’ what we wanted out of the deal. I got plenty of women wantin’ to go to bed with me, and I liked that. It wasn’t any big deal. I always liked a lot of girls. That probably had something to do with me getting into music; it made people like me. Most of the people I went with weren’t groupies. I’ve been out with a few groupies, but not many. I was afraid of gettin’ the clap. I had the clap so many times; I tried to stay away from people who were all over the place.”
Johnny was living with Carol Roma while enjoying the sexual perks of stardom, but their relationship was never a deterrent. “I was lucky enough that I was living with people when I was goin’ with groupies too,” he says. “Carol knew I was goin’ with other people and it was just one of those things. I told her I couldn’t stand being married again. She had to put up with it or go away. I think she minded but there wasn’t anything she could do about it. She could have done the same thing to me, but I would have broken up with her.”
 
Drugs have always been an integral part of the music scene, but in the ’60s and ’70s, marijuana and psychedelic drugs made their way into popular culture. Tim Leary told America to “Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out”; and the rock musical
Hair
celebrated pot, hashish, opium, and LSD. Cheech and Chong built a career on drug humor, and head-shop owners made a fortune selling drug paraphernalia—from roach clips to bongs, hash pipes to flavored rolling papers—in cities across the country. Sharing drugs created instant camaraderie, even with strangers.
“Lots of people would offer me drugs, and I’d take them,” says Johnny. “It was the only way they could show me they liked me. Back in the ’60s and early ’70s, everybody was doin’ drugs—psychedelics mostly. LSD and mescaline; I did everything. With acid, you never knew what it was and it got to be more speed than anything else. I hated speed. I liked mescaline and psilocybin mushrooms; they give you a nice high without makin’ you nervous or jittery like speed did. Mescaline was more under control than acid, not as intense. Mushrooms were the smoothest. I did ’em a couple times a week. We would take mushrooms up at our house in Staatsburg with friends, at the clubs, and our shows. There were a lot of people around those places and they always had drugs.”
At a press party in L.A., an anonymous stranger upped the ante by giving Johnny his first bag of heroin. It marked the beginning of a phase of escalating drug use that almost destroyed him and his career.
“Somebody out of the crowd asked me what drugs I liked and if I ever tried heroin,” recalls Johnny. “I said, ‘No,’ and he said, ʹHereʹs some if you ever feel like tryin’ it.’ I carried it around with me for several months before we did it. I waited because I wasnʹt sure about it—it wasn’t something I wanted to do.”
Johnny snorted his first hit of heroin before a gig in New Jersey. The band’s equipment hadn’t arrived and he was worried about not being able to play.
“Once I did it, I wasnʹt worried anymore and I felt good,” Johnny says. “At first, I did it just to get high. I snorted it—maybe every week—for a long time. It cost ten or twenty bucks for a hit and you stayed high for a couple of hours. Sometimes you got sick and threw up afterward. I got it from a lot of different people. Some people gave it to me but not too many. They gave it to you free to get you hooked. After you got to where they knew you wanted it pretty bad, they upped the price on it. I snorted it for about a year before I started shooting it. I had no problem getting needles; you could buy needles in Texas at the drugstore. Red and Tommy started taking it same time I did. They pretty much did it whenever I did it. Both of them got to be addicts too.”

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