The Rolling Stone interviews - Jann Wenner [102]
From hanging around in coffee bars and so on, I met a certain crowd of people, some of whom played guitar. One was Long John Baldry, who was then playing a twelve-string, doing folk and blues. Every Friday night, there would be a meeting at someone’s house, and people would turn up with the latest imported records from the States. And shortly, someone showed up with that Chess album, The Best of Muddy Waters, and something by Howlin’ Wolf. And that was it for me. Then I sort of took a step back, discovered Robert Johnson and made the connection to Muddy. For me, it was very serious, what I heard. And I began to realize that I could only listen to this music with people who were equally serious about it.
Did getting involved with this music send you back to the guitar?
Yeah, Baldry and these other people would just sit in a corner, playing folk and blues while everyone else was drinking and getting stoned. And I saw that it was possible to actually, if you like, get on with it—to just sit in the corner playing and not have everyone looking at you. I saw that it wasn’t something to be frightened of or shy in doing. So I started doing it myself.
Playing what, folk blues?
Yeah, things by Big Bill Broonzy and Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, “Railroad Bill,” “Cocaine.” But then I was drawn more and more toward electric blues, along with a few friends, a select few people. And, of course, then we had to be purists and seriously dislike other things.
When I was about seventeen, I got booted out of art school, and I did manual labor for about a year for pocket money. And during that time, I met up with a guy, Tom McGuinness, who was going to get involved with a band, and I knew just about enough to be able to play and keep up that end of it. So I got involved in that band, the Roosters, and that was a good feeling.
What kind of music did the Roosters play?
We did “Boom Boom” and a couple of other John Lee Hooker things, “Hoochie Coochie Man” and some others by Muddy, I think. We did whatever we could get on records, really, on up to rock & roll things like “Slow Down” by Larry Williams, because you had to have the odd rock & roll number in there.
Then Tom McGuinness brought in “Hideaway” by Freddie King, and the B side was “I Love the Woman,” which is still one of the greatest. And that’s the first time I heard that electric-lead-guitar style, with the bent notes—T-Bone Walker, B.B. and Freddie King, that style of playing. Hearing that Freddie King single was what started me on my path.
According to rock historian Pete Frame’s family tree of your various bands, the Roosters only lasted from January to August 1963.
Yeah, some of the people had day jobs that were more important to them than the band. Practical considerations brought the band down. But by that time, I had no other interests at all. I practiced a lot.
After the Roosters, I got a job with Tom McGuinness in another band, Casey Jones and the Engineers. That folded pretty soon, too, and then I heard the Yardbirds had started up.
The Stones had been playing at the Crawdaddy Club, and when they moved on, the next band in was the Yardbirds. I had met two guys from the Yardbirds at some bohemian parties, and at that time they were playing music by Django Reinhardt, “Nuages” and so on. We became friends. I went down to hear them at the Crawdaddy and was fairly critical of them, especially the guitarist they had. And I don’t really remember how it came about, but I replaced him. I was watching one week and playing the next.
Were you really listening to nothing but the blues?
No, I listened to some modern jazz. I would put on a John Coltrane album after a John Lee Hooker album. I don’t think