by Alan Paul
JIMMIE VAUGHAN: You’ve never seen four guys ignore a click so good! Total disregard for the click! We said, “Hey, take that shit off!”
SRV: Nobody even heard it!
BRAMHALL: It was very obvious how happy Jimmie and Stevie were to be doing this album together. The atmosphere was just great. This was the first time I was around both of them for a considerable amount of time in twenty years, since they were kids. They really hadn’t been hanging together a lot for a long time. There was a lot of hugging around, and everyone was really happy.
SHANNON: Stevie said cutting that album and spending so much time with his brother was like coming home.
DR. JOHN: You know what’s interesting? Jimmie Vaughan was the least affected by Stevie of all the blues guitarists. How many guys you know whose little brothers are excelling in their own field?
BERRY: They really kind of submitted to each other. Their tremendous respect for one another was incredibly humbling, and it maintained an almost spiritual vibe. It was like being invited to a master class of how to express yourself. You could see how much Jimmie respected Stevie, but you could see so much more how much Stevie respected Jimmie. It wasn’t an easy path for either of them, but they had arrived in this great spot.
DR. JOHN: Stevie started out early doing a lot of Jimmie’s thing. But Jimmie went one way while his brother went as far the other way as you could go, while still playing blues. Then you put a real funk cat like Nile Rodgers into the picture. Add his funk contribution on top of these two different schools of blues guitar, and you’ve got something real, real special.
BERRY: Jimmie is a very funky dude, and a lot of people underestimate him. He’s got groove and melody and that bluesy, funky dirt. When he showed me the idea for “Mama Said,” I was like, “Oh my God,” and started playing this Bootsy Collins / James Brown–inspired bass line, and he loved it.
FREEMAN: I love that record, and one reason is it’s really not what we do. The album popped and cracked. It was a fun album with great songs.
ABERMAN: After Nile came back to New York from Dallas, me and Al hung out with him, and he played us a cassette of rough mixes in his Toyota 4Runner. He was so excited and kept saying, “This is a hit!” We all felt really good about what we had done, and Al and I were of the understanding that we would be going on the road as the rhythm section for the Vaughan Brothers Band.
After completing the album, Jimmie joined Stevie and Double Trouble for a set at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival on May 6, 1990.
GLAUB: Every time I saw Stevie, he was warm and gracious and played incredibly, but the ’90 Jazz Fest was one of the best sets I ever saw him do. It had almost the same impact on me as the very first time I saw him at Montreux.
RODNEY CRAIG: I saw him for the first time in a few years at the Jazz Fest, and I was so happy to see him play such a terrific concert. He had beaten drugs and alcohol and was feeling great. He was so excited about being clean and had a whole new outlook on his career. We had a wonderful visit.
GLAUB: I went into their trailer to say hi and told him about Eddie’s, a nearby restaurant that I loved, and he said, “Oh, I’ll be there tonight!” I go in there, and he’s entertaining a table of fifteen, with his manager, crew, and friends. I also told him that I spent a few days traveling the bayou and had picked up some amps and guitars he might want to see. At 1:00 in the morning, he was knocking on my hotel door with Alex Hodges wanting to see the stuff. We sat on my bed and played some blues for a while.
In June 1990, months after finishing Family Style, Jimmie left the Fabulous Thunderbirds after fifteen years. His last show was June 16, 1990.
“Stevie loved the road and the whole idea of going from clubs to theaters to arenas. He wanted the legacy of stepping onto the Madison Square Garden stage, but Jimmie just didn’t care about that,” says Proct. “Jimmie loved the playing but wished he could beam himself to the gig, then go home. After all those years of being on the bus, he had lost his love of the road. Leaving the T-Birds wasn’t even a thought before ‘Tuff Enuff’ hit, then we were so busy promoting it for eighteen months. When that finally slowed down, he wanted to stay home and work on his hot rods and write and play music.”
25
THE SKY IS CRYING
After Jazz Fest, Double Trouble took about a month’s break, during which Stevie and Janna rented an apartment in New York, partly to make it easier for her to pursue a modeling career. They planned to split their time between Dallas and Manhattan. On June 8, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble kicked off the co-headlining Power and the Passion tour with Joe Cocker at California’s Shoreline Amphitheatre. It ran until July 25 in Fairbanks, Alaska.
Stevie met Jimmie at Skyway Studios in New York on July 29 to do a video interview as part of preparing a press kit for Family Style. While there, Rodgers played them some mixes, and everyone was thrilled for the progress and excited for a fall release.
The next day, Double Trouble played in Saint Paul, Minnesota, then took a twenty-four-day break, during which Stevie and Janna vacationed in Hawaii and visited her family in New Zealand.
The band reconvened August 24 in Kalamazoo, Michigan, for a single warm-up show before two nights that they had all been looking forward to: opening for Eric Clapton, along with the Robert Cray Band at Alpine Valley, the giant amphitheater in East Troy, Wisconsin. Both shows were sold out, and Stevie made sure that Jimmie could fly up to join them for a closing jam on the second night, August 26, which would also feature Buddy Guy. Everyone involved was excited for the music and reunion of old friends and kindred spirits.
Stevie and Janna on vacation in Maui, HI, 1990. (Courtesy Janna Lapidus)
WYNANS: We were looking forward to these shows for weeks. I felt like we had hit our absolute peak, that we were playing as great as we ever played and that Stevie was absolutely in his prime. It felt like we had found who we were as a band. When you get to a big day, sometimes people can clam up and it doesn’t come across as wonderful as you want it to be. This was just the opposite; it felt like everything was extra terrific.
RAITT: The first night at Alpine Valley, I was there just to watch, and it was great to see everyone. I really think that Stevie was perhaps the greatest guitarist ever, and he showed it that night. He was more magical than I’d ever seen him.
“I play hard with both hands.” (Tracy Anne Hart)
LAYTON: The entire air of those two days was very inspired. The shows were big, and we had all of those great people who had tremendous respect for one another together. It was just a great happening. Beyond that, it really felt like things with Double Trouble were finally opening up again, that we were at the beginning of the next, really inspired phase of our career. As a band and an organization, we had never been as together as right then.
BERT HOLMAN, Allman Brothers Band manager: Alpine Valley is a great venue that bands really enjoy playing, but getting out of there is a nightmare and everyone knows it, because there’s only one two-lane road in and out. You roll in easily in the afternoon, but after the show, the acts are stuck with the departing crowd, so the ninety-mile drive to Chicago can take five hours. Some bands would do a runner, jump offstage, and, with a police escort, fight through the traffic immediately. Some acts chose to use helicopters to avoid that. My guys, especially Gregg [Allman] and Dickey [Betts], refused to fly in helicopters, so we always turned that option down. We waited about ninety minutes and just kept driving west or north instead of trying to spend the night in Chicago.
RICKERT: When you have thirty-five thousand people there and a one-lane access road, getting out after the show is brutal. You might get to Chicago at 6:00 in the morning. I contacted Omni Flights, who informed me that Eric had already contracted them, but I could use two copters if it didn’t impact Eric. I would have to get Stevie up to Alpine Valley early enough for the helicopters to return to Chicago and get the Eric Clapton entourage. After the show, I had to wait for the helicopters to return after taking the Clapton ca
mp back to Chicago. I got a quote that was agreeable to Stevie, and it turned out that the promoter graciously offered to pay for that. Perfect! It felt like a sweet deal. We don’t have to take buses or dip into our money. The first night was no issue. Stevie didn’t jam, and we all left after he played, and the copters came back for Eric and his group.
HODGES: I represented Otis Redding and was deeply impacted by his death in a plane crash, so I had a rule of staying on the ground. I’ve always felt that musicians travel so much that it’s a constant danger we should do everything to lessen. Flying commercial is safe, and if you can’t do that, stay on the ground. A Learjet when absolutely necessary is one thing, but helicopters are dangerous, and private planes can be as well. I met up with them at Alpine Valley and showed them the Family Style promo video and they were both excited. We had meetings about the next run of dates, about taking time off, and about doing some shows with his brother.
CRAY: What I remember most about these shows is sitting around a table with Jimmie, Stevie, and Eric, talking about life and our careers and laughing about where we had been and where we were. It was just fun. Eric presented a great opportunity for all of us to be together. Jimmie and Stevie were excited about what they called the “brothers” album—Family Style. Stevie was saying how good it was to be clean and sober and how happy he now was.
SHANNON: This felt like the culmination of all the good times we’d been having for the last year or two. And as good as we had been playing, those two shows were just unreal.
BUDDY GUY: Eric called and invited me up for the second show and to jam at the end. I don’t think I’d ever flown in a chopper before, but I got on and flew up.
CONNIE VAUGHAN: I had never been in a helicopter before, and I was terrified on the way up to the show. Stevie held my hand and told me it was fine and was pointing out things down below, just to distract and comfort me.
HODGES: I flew up there with Stevie, Jimmie, and Connie on the second day. Getting off the helicopter, Stevie said, “Maybe we should think about going back on the ground.” I wish I had an explanation for why we violated the rule.
JIMMIE VAUGHAN: On the second show, Stevie was unreal. He just smoked—he was on another plane, and we all knew it. It was one of those gigs where you can’t believe what you’re hearing from a performer. They were all just wailing and happy, making it happen, raising it another notch.
CONNIE VAUGHAN: Stevie was onstage playing, and I saw a rainbow-like aura around him and thought, “How weird.” I went to the other side of the stage to see if it was just how the lights were, and it was the same. Then I went to the audience and saw it. I thought, “Damn, what is going on?” He played better than I probably ever heard him play that night. It was like he was plugged into something. He was just so on. I had never seen anything like that, and I’m not the kind of person who talks like this!
LAYTON: People have said things like they saw a huge halo around Stevie when he was playing that night, that he was surrounded with an orange-blue aura. Like it was some sort of a premonition.
GUY: Man, first of all, Stevie was one of the best ever. Period. But those nights, he was just something else. And I remember standing with him and Robert Cray on the side of the stage while Eric was playing, and we were talking and he was sort of playing air guitar, fingering along with what Eric played. Him standing there playing phantom notes is something I’ve never stopped thinking about.
LAYTON: After the show, Stevie and I sat and talked for about a half hour about how good these two shows had been and about his excitement for the future. He said that the record with Jimmie was something that he’d wanted to do for years and considered a necessary part of his life’s progression. He said, “I needed to make that record with my brother, and we’ll play a bunch of shows, but I can’t wait to get to our next record. I’ve got some ideas, and I hope they don’t sound weird: strings, big horn sections … We’re gonna bust it wide open.” I said, “Hell, that sounds exciting.” In Step was the fledgling step of putting some twists on our roots, and he was looking forward to taking things to a whole new place on the next record.
At the end of Clapton’s set the second night, he stepped to the microphone and said, “I’d like to bring out to join me, in truth, the best guitar players in the entire world: Buddy Guy, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robert Cray, Jimmie Vaughan.” All four walked out to a wash of cheers from the crowd of forty thousand and set off on an extended jam of “Sweet Home Chicago,” trading off vocals, red-hot guitar licks, and smiles.
LAYTON: I was standing on the stage when they came out, and Stevie played this one note that sounded so big …
SHANNON: God, yeah! That one note was bigger than the whole place! People went nuts when Stevie hit that note.
LAYTON: I’d been with the guy for thirteen years, and I still thought, “That sounds huge!” Not just loud, but big. The same kind of “tone” thing as the first time I ever saw him at the Soap Creek.
WYNANS: I went out front to watch the jam, and it was beautiful. Stevie’s playing was just soaring through the air. He was in his element, playing as good as I had ever heard him.
CRAY: Stevie and Eric were both blistering. We finished with this great “Sweet Home Chicago” jam, and everyone walked off the stage very happy. We were all going our own ways. Eric and Stevie were walking back to Eric’s dressing room, and I was trailing them and could hear them both saying to each other, “You were great.” Everyone was so happy.
CONNIE VAUGHAN: After the show, the fog started coming in. I went up to the pilots and said, “This looks really bad,” and three of them said, “Oh, honey, don’t worry. We were in Vietnam; we can get you out of anything.” But one pilot was standing off to the side with his arms crossed and didn’t say anything. He didn’t look very happy, and he was not talking to the other pilots.
RICKERT: I’m in the settlement room, taking care of the finances, getting cash, and a note comes letting me know that there is a seat open in one of Eric’s helicopters, a total surprise. Holy crap, there is a seat open, and Stevie wanted to get back to Chicago. Alex was there as well as Jimmie and Connie and [financial planner] Bill V., and everyone says, “Stevie can have the seat.”
CONNIE VAUGHAN: Stevie felt bad to go first and leave us all. He said, “Connie, there’s only one seat. Do you mind if I take it?” The pilot was the quiet one who didn’t seem confident.
HODGES: That seat became available, and Stevie was getting on. It all just happened very fast. Why we didn’t act on that impulse to stay on the ground, I just don’t know. There are so many decisions that could have been made differently, and I don’t think we ever get over those questions or doubts.
RICKERT: So he went off and climbed onto the helicopter, and away they go. It was foggy, but it wasn’t pea soup, and it wasn’t that different from what we had experienced up there before. We were on top of a mountain, and all the helicopter has to do is go straight up about 150 feet, and then you can see the Sears Tower in downtown Chicago. The helicopters take off, no one hears anything or thinks anything is amiss, and we’re waiting for two of them to come back and get us.
GUY: The fog had come in, and me and Eric got on the chopper with one of the guys in his band, and the pilot took his T-shirt off to wipe the windshield, and I said, “Man, what the hell is this? How is this guy gonna see a thing?”
LAPIDUS: I was on the phone with Stevie when he got the offer. He said, “I just got a chance to go back now, and I think I’ll take it. I’ll call you back later.”
Stevie’s companions in the helicopter piloted by Jeffrey Brown were all members of Clapton’s team: longtime booking agent Bobby Brooks; bodyguard Nigel Browne; and assistant tour manager Colin Smythe. The Bell 260B Jet Ranger flew about 3,000 feet, lifting about 100 feet off the ground before slamming into the side of a 150-foot ski hill at approximately 12:50 a.m. CDT. Everyone on board died on impact.
The other helicopters were on their way back to Chicago with no sense of danger or problems
afoot. No one at the venue heard anything or was otherwise aware of what had happened. Stevie Ray Vaughan died on August 27, 1990, four years to the day after his father, Big Jim, passed away. He was thirty-five years old.
CONNIE VAUGHAN: It was so foggy we didn’t even hear the crash, which was right behind the stage.
RICKERT: We were waiting for the helicopters to come back and get us, and we started getting calls that they didn’t think the copters would be able to land back at Alpine due to the increasingly foggy conditions. We were going to have to do something else, like use the production vans for the three- or four-hour drive, which would get us back to Chicago around 6:00 a.m. Then our promoter rep, Brad Warva, suggested we consider the closed Playboy Club, which was at higher elevation about thirty minutes from Alpine Valley in the opposite direction, with a runway and lights. By now, it’s 1:30 in the morning, so we might as well try that, and sure enough, we take off: me, Alex, Tommy, Chris, Reese, Connie, and Jimmie. I had the headphones on and heard discussion about a missing vehicle and people asking if it had been seen, and the answer is no, nothing, zip, but it didn’t occur to me that this had anything to do with a missing helicopter, much less our missing helicopter.
HODGES: I heard them talking on the radio, asking, “Has anybody heard from…,” but I didn’t recognize it as our issue because there was no description. They could have been talking about anything.
CONNIE VAUGHAN: We flew in to Chicago and I was looking down, and no planes were moving. Something felt eerie.
RICKERT: When we landed at Midway airport, I saw a couple of helicopters, and we’re in two, so all four seem to be accounted for. They said that there’s a vehicle waiting for us. It was a limousine, and the driver said he had been told to wait for us.
LAYTON: We all piled into the car, and the driver said, “It’s about time you got here. I was wondering what happened to you all.” It was the same limo that had been waiting for the helicopter carrying Stevie that had never arrived. It had been sitting there waiting for hours.
