by Alan Paul
SRV: I played drums on “Empty Arms.” Me and Tommy were in the studio by ourselves, and we like to play bass and drums together. We were just messin’ around. When we started it off, that song was real slow, slow enough where it’s hard to keep going at the same speed. Then we sped it up 13.5 percent with the Varispeed and recorded the rest of the song to it.
SHANNON: Stevie was a great drummer, if he could last through the song! On a shuffle, his arms would get tired. The two of us were in the studio early one day, and he said, “Let’s do ‘Empty Arms’ real slow!” He sat down behind the drums, and Richard [Mullen] didn’t want to turn the tape machine on. Stevie’s going, “Turn it on!” and Richard’s going, “What for?” They had a little argument, then Richard turned it on, and that’s the one we kept. Stevie knew exactly what he had in mind for that song.
Stevie behind the drums during the Soul to Soul sessions. (Courtesy Tommy Shannon)
WYNANS: What tune was it where one guy played hi-hat and snare, and another guy played the rest of the kit?
LAYTON: “Lookin’ Out the Window.” Doyle wrote the song, and instead of playing on two drum sets, he pulled up a stool and sat right next to me, and the two of us played one kit! I played the ride cymbal and the snare, and he played the hi-hat. So, there’s a 4/4 thing going on the hi-hat, but a 6/8 thing with the ride and the bass drum. We tried to sit on the same drum throne, but we kept falling off! We really just wanted to be able to say that we played the same drum set at the same time.
Vaughan took a left turn with “Life Without You,” a moving soul ballad written for and dedicated to Stevie’s close friend, guitar maker Charley Wirz, who built Stevie’s signature white Strat and who had died suddenly in February 1985. The song also reflects Vaughan’s passion for soul singers like Curtis Mayfield and Donny Hathaway.
SHANNON: He was so scared to sing “Life Without You” because it was so personal, and he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to do it right.
WYNANS: He brought it to us pretty much finished. The song had a lot of chord changes, and because Stevie wasn’t about to explain it, we had to play along with him quite a number of times to get it together. It had two different bridges, which was a little confusing.
SHANNON: He had been moving down chromatically from the A chord to an F♯. I said, “That would sound better if it was a minor chord,” so he switched it to F♯ minor. He did the walk-up from A to C♯, and then he wanted to do another walk-up from B to D, and then a walk-down from D to B. There were too many walks, so we took some of them out. For the solo, I said, “Stevie, it would sound cool if you did something like the ‘Bold as Love’ solo,” with that slow whine in the beginning.
WYNANS: The first time we ever played the song all the way through, we got to the solo section, and, all of a sudden, the song became massive.
LAYTON: Business as usual.
RAY BENSON: Reese was subbing for us in Asleep at the Wheel, and he told me that he was joining Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, and I said he might get bored playing limited changes, and he said, “Are you kidding me? Stevie tunes down a half step, and everything is in really challenging keys for me.” He was a great addition to a great band.
SHANNON: Getting the pictures done for Soul to Soul was another ordeal.
WYNANS: We were out in some pecan grove somewhere, in Podunk, Texas …
SHANNON: Bugs, mosquitoes, summertime, 180 degrees … Christ!
LAYTON: We’d done the cover shot of Stevie at Anderson Mill. There were shots of all four of us, leaning against the wall together, but they decided not to use those and wanted to do more shots.
They had an idea about a location off of 290 on the way to Houston. The three of us went out there together because Stevie was going with someone else, and he was going to meet us. But Stevie never showed up! We stood out there for three hours, slapping bugs off us, saying, “Where the fuck is Stevie?!”
WYNANS: I was sitting up in this tree with bugs all over me, sweating and miserable.
SHANNON: I finally told the photographer, “This is all you’re getting!” You can tell I’m pissed off by the look on my face in the picture they ended up using; I’m pouting like a little kid. I was bored and irritated.
LAYTON: We all look so unhappy in that picture—and that’s how we felt, too.
STRATTON: I got to know Stevie after shooting him a few times, and he treated me like a friend and brother, and I photographed a bunch of shows. One was on a riverboat in New Orleans, and afterwards backstage, he rolled his face across a mirror, and the oil from his skin made an imprint of him looking at himself. He wanted that to be the Soul to Soul album cover and asked if I could reproduce it photographically. Of course I said yes!
A few nights later, I get a call from Lenny at about 10:00 p.m. They were all sitting around looking at Polaroids of the pictures that were shot on the porch for the cover of Soul to Soul, and no one liked them. Stevie got on the phone and asked if I could come to Dallas and do the photo we had talked about. I arrived two days later and spent a week just hanging out in the studio. Late one night, at about 3:00 a.m. after Stevie had been awake for a few days, he said, “Let’s go do that,” and we went back to the hotel room. I had him paint his face with black theater makeup, and we made some impressions on poster board, one of which he took and started finger painting Jesus from the image on the left. He said, “I’m looking at Jesus.” He left me in the room and went down the hall to show the band. Afterwards, I didn’t see him for a few days, and I never saw the board again!
Soul to Soul cover session outtake. (Brittain Hill/ Courtesy Sony Music Entertainment)
On April 9, 1985, Vaughan was invited to play the national anthem for the Houston Astros’ Opening Day, marking the twentieth anniversary of the Astrodome. Mickey Mantle, who hit the first home run in the stadium, was there, and he autographed the back of Stevie’s Number One and Lenny guitars. Vaughan’s solo slide guitar rendition of “The Star Spangled Banner” was not well received.
He had worked out the arrangement in the studio during the Soul to Soul sessions, but, as Shannon notes, he forgot it and was booed. It was a rare public performance stumble.
“The Houston paper ran a picture of him shrugging as he’s being booed,” says Layton. “That’s what happens when you stay up for four days in a row.”
The band returned to the road as a four-piece ensemble on April 21 in Dallas. “I initially thought I was just going to play on the songs I played on the record until the first show when Stevie told me I was playing on everything,” says Wynans. “He didn’t want to play rhythm all of the time so he could concentrate more on the singing. Chris, Tommy, and I focused more on the groove and forming a tight three-piece rhythm section. They were obviously a great band without me, and I just wanted to add to it.”
Stevie and the band were proud to play a tribute to John Hammond at New York’s Lincoln Center on June 25, 1985, during which George Benson sat in for “Couldn’t Stand the Weather.” The night before, Stevie played with Eric Clapton for the first time, in a jam session with Late Night with David Letterman band members Paul Shaffer and Steve Jordan.
SHAFFER: Steve and I were jamming with Clapton and [guitarist] Danny Kortchmar at Top Cat Studios. Eric didn’t have his own guitar, so we rented him one, but he couldn’t get comfortable with it.
JORDAN: He said, “I can’t get a sound out of this piece of crap.”
SHAFFER: We found out that Stevie was rehearsing in the next room. Someone invited him over, and he comes in and says hello to Clapton, who says, “Let’s play.” Stevie’s got his own guitar, and Clapton says, “I see you’ve got your baby with you. I’m having trouble with this guitar.” Stevie says, “Here, use mine. I’ll use that one.” Stevie handed Eric his Strat, and Clapton starts playing his ass off, but when Stevie came in for his solo on this rented guitar, he blew everyone away with his musicianship.
SHANNON: Stevie called at 3:00 a.m. and said, “Hey! C’mon down here!” I was in heav
en playing with Clapton!
LAYTON: I walked in rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. We were playing a standard blues tune like “Green Onions,” and I was surprised that Paul Shaffer didn’t know the changes.
WYNANS: He knew the changes! It was the same deal that happened with almost every keyboard player. Stevie played with his guitar tuned down, leading to keys that are murder on a piano player. He wanted to play a blues in A♭, which is a bad jam key for a piano player. That’s really how I got the gig; I told Stevie that I didn’t mind playing in all of those weird keys, but I was lying. I hated it! I took me months to get those keys together, and my hands were all gnarly from the weird positions!
A two-week summer tour of Europe climaxed with a triumphant return to the Montreux Jazz Festival on July 15, a show that had special resonance for the band, coming almost exactly three years to the day after their debut.
“It was a chance to redeem not ourselves but a situation,” says Layton. “We had two successful records and lots of touring under our belts. We were going to have fun and receive some kind of closure.”
Adds Shannon, “It’s not quite like Stevie felt a vendetta, but…”
The band flew Johnny Copeland, the Houston native known as the Texas Twister and one of Stevie’s favorite blues musicians, to Montreux as a special guest for four songs. That fall, Copeland, who died in 1997, and his band opened up a run of shows in the Midwest.
Stevie and Tommy with bluesman Johnny Clyde Copeland, the Texas Twister. (Courtesy Tommy Shannon)
SHANNON: Stevie loved Johnny Copeland and gave him his highest compliment: that he “was real.” When he said that, you knew exactly what he was talking about.
MIKE MERRITT, bassist for Johnny Copeland: Stevie told everyone in the band and the crew, “This is Johnny Copeland and his band. You treat them like you treat us.” Needless to say, this is not how opening bands are normally treated. Stevie really respected and revered Johnny. One show in Missouri, we finished our opening set and were relaxing in the dressing room, and someone from Stevie’s crew came running in looking for me and told me to come with him. Tommy had gotten sick and had to leave the stage. They were in the middle of a slow blues, and I’m suddenly playing Tommy’s bass; I couldn’t play mine because Stevie tuned down to E♭, and it took me a couple of seconds to catch that, during which Stevie turned around and gave me this “You got my back?” look. I nodded back, like, “I got it.” And from then on it was a fantastic moment. Most nights I would go sit in the audience and watch them, and that’s when I fully locked in on what a massive guitar player this guy was and what an influence guys like Johnny and Albert [Collins] were on him.
Stevie’s birthday happened on that tour, on an off day in Iowa, and they were having a big celebration dinner with his band and crew, and they invited us all to join them—again, not normal for an opening band!
18
DROWNING ON DRY LAND
Soul to Soul, the band’s third studio album in just over two years, was released on September 30, 1985. Of the album’s ten originally released tracks, Vaughan composed four: the simmering, sultry slow blues “Ain’t Gone ’n’ Give Up on Love”; the somewhat discombobulated “Empty Arms,” on which he plays drums as well as guitar; the deeply heartfelt closer “Life Without You”; and the mostly instrumental “Say What!” with its group vocal chant, “Soul to soul.” It also included Bramhall’s “Lookin’ Out the Window” and “Change It,” R&B star Hank Ballard’s “Look at Little Sister,” the Willie Dixon–penned Howlin’ Wolf tune “You’ll Be Mine,” and New Orleans bluesman Earl King’s “Come On (Part III),” which Jimi Hendrix had recorded on Electric Ladyland. Vaughan was also oddly credited with the swinging Eddie Harris instrumental “Gone Home.”
The album reached #34 on the Billboard 200 chart, with the music video for “Change It” receiving heavy rotation on MTV. Stevie Ray Vaughan was a mainstream artist, but Soul to Soul would peter out, selling fewer copies than the first two albums had. His record label grew concerned with the drop-off, but more pressing problems were arising with Stevie and the band.
Stevie would introduce the new quartet by saying, “They’re no longer Double Trouble; now they’re Serious Trouble!” Whether or not he was making a sly joke, Vaughan was expressing a deeper truth than most fans realized. The drinking and drugging were out of control; Crown Royal and cocaine were the preferred substances, and Stevie and Tommy were the most serious abusers. The band’s performances were becoming increasingly frenetic and chaotic. Stevie’s relationship with Chesley Millikin was also growing more strained. Despite growing performance fees, the band’s expenses were also rising, and they began to feel like they were on a hamster’s wheel, increasingly working just to keep working.
LAYTON: We were spending too much money, and no one cared. It was, “This will be a great hotel.” And I’d go, “Well, how much is it?” For years, it was me asking the questions, because Stevie thought the better we play and the more badass we are, the more things will fall in line, which was bullshit. We struggled over that because I wanted to see the bottom line and know how we were doing, and Chesley would say, “Chris is causing trouble over here.” Stevie didn’t like trouble, so he’d ask me what I was doing, and I’d say we needed to pay more attention to the business. He existed under the delusion that if what you do becomes more and more wonderful, then everything will fall in line and work out.
EDI JOHNSON: Stevie didn’t care about or respect money, which was both a strength and a weakness. It was impossible to get him focused on that. Chris maybe didn’t understand where the money was coming from or going to, but every dollar they earned was put into the band account, and we only took 10 percent, not the 15 percent of most managers. Stevie didn’t file taxes for years before he was with us, and we knew it was going to be a problem when all the 1099s started coming in after Texas Flood.
WYNANS: Once I joined up and went on the road, I was shocked by what was going on with them business-wise—or not going on! It was so ramshackle. They were so successful as a band, I assumed that their business was in order, but they didn’t even know how much money they had. They were all just getting weekly draws, and no one knew what was coming in or going out, if they had a lot of money or were bankrupt. Chesley would come by and hand out hundred-dollar bills, which was old-school Muddy Waters–Chess Records stuff. “Take a few hundred bucks and move along.” I didn’t think that was the way to do things in the ’80s.
LAYTON: We were not dealing with a crook but someone who thought, “We’re going to have fun and figure out a way to pay for it.” I was saying, “No. We need to see how we’re looking.” Every successful business asks what something means and how it projects before they just do it. It’s just nuts-and-bolts business. People often work under the illusion, “We’re in the music business, man. We’re just gonna groove and everything’s gonna work out.” No, it won’t. Somebody has to keep their eye on the ball.
WYNANS: I started saying, “We need to get separate accounting about what comes in from the gigs, the merchandise, the recordings…” You can’t throw it all in one pile because the percentages are different. My meddling was not appreciated, and Chesley certainly let me know that I was the new guy, he was the boss, and I needed to toe the line. It just didn’t make any sense to me that a band of their stature was in the dark about their money. I was really looking out for my friends, not protecting myself. I didn’t even expect to have a long-term gig with the band.
Even as these problems were percolating and building to a boil, Stevie was enjoying the perks of stardom. He realized a lifelong dream when he was asked to record with James Brown, adding a solo to “Living in America.”
“I was in the back room at Antone’s when Stevie came back from the James Brown sessions and proudly put a cassette of the song on,” says David Grissom. “He had this huge smile on his face. It was James Brown! Stevie had that youthful, infectious enthusiasm and couldn’t wait to play it for everybody.”
At the end of 1985, Double Trouble was in New York to do press for Soul to Soul and collect platinum records for Couldn’t Stand the Weather. Stevie was scheduled to meet at the Mayflower Hotel with Peter Afterman, the music coordinator for the Ron Howard movie Gung Ho. Fabulous Thunderbirds manager Mark Proct was sitting in. The T-Birds’ album Tuff Enuff was scheduled to come out in January 1986 on Epic, their first release after a three-year label-less hiatus. No one was more excited about this than Stevie, who told the coordinator he had to hear his brother’s record and urged Proct to go get a copy. He ran to his room and returned with a cassette tape. Afterman featured “Tuff Enuff” in the movie, helping turn it into a hit and relaunch the Fabulous Thunderbirds’ career.
Jimmie and the T-Birds would join Stevie Ray and Double Trouble for many of the shows throughout 1986. Stevie jumped at the chance to appear on national television to an audience of millions when they were asked to perform on Saturday Night Live on February 15. They had to go to extenuating lengths to follow through on this commitment, but it afforded them the chance to reconnect with their old friend and supporter from the early days, Mick Jagger.
LAYTON: We had a six-night stand at the Royal Oak Music Theatre near Detroit, Michigan, three shows one week and three the next [February 12–14; February 20–22]. After the first of the six shows, we flew to New York to rehearse for Saturday Night Live, then flew right back to play the next two nights.
WYNANS: That schedule was a mess—we were clearly fried.
LAYTON: The T-Birds were touring with us, so Jimmie flew back to New York and played “Change It” with us on the show.
