Now for something completely different
3 June 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
People who have crossed my path, to greater or lesser degrees
It gets boring writing about fitness all the time 24-7-365. So every now and then I have to switch gears and write on something different. I happened to pull a CD out of my massive collection and it caused me to reminisce a tad. Roy Buchanan was the second greatest guitar player I ever saw and I saw them all with one glaring exception the best was Mahavishnu-era John McLaughlin. (I never saw Hendrix live) Roy was an underground guitar hero who was worshipped by hall of fame rockers like Jeff Beck and J.R. Robbie Robertson. Roy came up as a hired guitar gun, a technical virtuoso that enlivened and took to the next level any band he ever played with. He had a good wife and six, count em, six kids, spaced like a year apart. With a big family, going on the road was out of the question. Roy battled addictive demons but they bothered him less when he had to report home each night. Roy decided he needed a trade, something to fall back on, so he went to barber college and learned how to cut hair. This was in the late sixties. Roy ended up cutting heads in a Prince Georges county barbershop and playing music three or four nights a week fronting his own band of local musicians. I had a buddy named George who was a barber and George ended up cutting heads in the next chair over from Roy. No one at the shop had any idea who he was.
In around 1970, Tom Zito, the rock critic for the Washington Post, wrote a huge feature article on Roy called the greatest unknown guitarist in the world. Zito gathered an unending stream of superlative and laudatory comments from the best players in the world, all attesting to the fact that Buchanan was likely the premier player of the day. Yet he couldnt make a living playing music Roy was a rock and roll starving artist reduced to giving haircuts incognito in hindsight it was pathetic. Over the next few years Roy and George developed a great friendship. It was only natural when Roy played his regular Thursday night gig at the Crossroads bar and grill that Roy invite George. George would occasionally invite Marty. Id tag along. I knew who Roy was. I been hearing reverential praise heaped on him by every guitar playing buddy I had and I had a lot of them. I made it a point to see him play on numerous occasions.
Watching Roy was the musical equivalent of watching Michael Jordan on a good night. There seemed nothing he could not do with the instrument. Every Thursday hed play to about sixty people in a small club about 15-miles from my house. We made that a regular thing for quite a while. About ten years later Roy hung himself in a jail cell where hed just been booked for drunk driving his wife was on her way to bail him out and she was gonna be real pissed that hed fallen off the wagon again. Roy died at around age 45. When Brian Jones died the first guy Keith Richards asked to join the Stones was Eric Clapton. The second man he called and offered the job to was Roy Buchanan, the unknown American guitarist revered by insider heavy hitters. Roy said, thanks, but no thanks, he didnt think hed fit in personality-wise. Reportedly he neglected to consult his wife before making this snap decision. She reminded him of it thereafter and Roy had to have had second thoughts about that one as things spiraled ever downward.
Jeff Beck always made the pilgrimage to see Roy play anytime he played DC. Beck was so in awe of Roy that he dedicated one of his best-ever recorded performances, because we ended as lovers to Roy. Buchanans sonic approach caused Beck to revamp his entire musical approach. Becks association with Roy improved Jeffs playing by light-years. But Roy was contrary and weird and self-destructive and sullen and arrogant and withdrawn and quiet all at the same time it seemed as if he really didnt love music all that much but was just good as hell at making it. George said Roy never ever talked about music while they cut heads together. Strange. Robbie Robertson, no guitar slouch himself, once asked Roy while they were on the road together, How in the hell did you get so damned good Roy? Roy responded with great sincerity, Its because Im part wolf Robbie. Once in the mid-eighties, Beck arranged for a whole gaggle of superstars to gather in homage to Roy; they would all play for free on a solo album that Roy was cutting for a major label. Stanley Clark, Jeff Beck, Jan Hammer, Michael Narda Walden (who later produced Aretha) were all thereKeith Richards and Ron Wood flew in from Englandthis was a big hairy major deal.
By the end of the recording sessions, Buchanan had so alienated everyone involved that Richards reportedly peed in one of Roys endless draft beers. His contrariness dogged him all up and down the highway. I saw him play up close on lots of occasions and his facility and technique were always beyond belief. He played a beat up old telecaster with zero special effects, yet he used feedback expertly. His approach was loud as hell and sonic yet each note clear as a bell; subtle yet full. He could run the fastest riffs Id ever seen played on any instrument by anyone; hed blast off three octave arpeggio runs effortlessly, both up and down the neck. Roy would move his right had in an absolute perfect circle over the six strings and go on for minutes. His technique was spellbinding (supposedly a European duke wanted to commission Raphael for a painting and sent a courier to request a portfolio sample. Raphael took a piece of paper and grabbed a paint brush and with one motion made a perfect circle. He handed it to the messenger and said, Theres your stinking resume! He got the job) Roy moved his right hand like Raphael must have moved that paint brush. He had another lick where hed get a heavy feedback thing going and take his left hand and detune the low string peg. It sounded like a gigantic airplane coming in for a landing. Just when you thought he couldnt go any longer or lower, hed start a series of lighting fast staccato runs using the other five strings while the low note aircraft thing was still going lower. It was so intense it would push you back in your seat in a mixture of awe and exhilaration. He could play green onions by Booker T for a solid hour and never repeat a phrase a single time. He could run circles around anything his close personal friend Steve Cropper could do. I once saw Roy open for Edgar Winters White Trash band at an outdoor marina called I kid you not Funky Seaside Marina.
It was a perfect night on the Chesapeake Bay in June with only about 200 people in attendance. Beer was a dollar and people were swimming in the bay while the bands played. Nils Lofgrin (Neil Young, Crazy Horse, Bruce Springsteen) was a local and a Roy worshipper. Wed see Nils and his brother Tom at Roys gigs often. Nils was at the Funky Seaside Marina that night and was to introduce Roy. He had apparently had too many cocktails and his blurry, bleary introduction ended with him dissolving into a heap onstage, tears and sobs describing how good Roy was and what Roy had meant to his playing. Roy had had enough and cut him off mid-sentence with a staccato burst of triple-time ghost notes at hydrogen bomb volume. He played for 90-minutes straight and played maybe five songs. Edgar played for an hour and a half with a full horn section. Nice way so spend a warm summer evening. Roy was an institution we locals took for granted while he was around. As Otis Redding once sang, You dont miss your water till the well runs dry.
Check out Roys anthology Sweet Dreams at Borders.
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