CREEM ONLINE: Johnny Winter

CREEM—Dec. 1969
by Deday LaRene

Johnny Winter
Second Winter
Columbia

Johnny Winter
Second Winter [Legacy Edition]
Columbia/Legacy

Recorded live in London at the Royal Albert Hall in 1970 on the heels of Second Winter, this rates right up there with the later Live... Johnny Winter And, but at the same time exceeds it. Live... may have been that band at the peak of their powers, but this line-up of Johnny, bassist Tommy Shannon, drummer "Uncle" John Turner along with brother Edgar Winter on keyboards, sax, vocals and drums, smokes it. "It's My Own Fault," "Black Cat Bone," and "Mean Town Blues," all put it away, then for the next 20 minutes, Edgar steals the show with future classics of his own, "Tobacco Road" and "Frankenstein." Dark, voodoo scat ridden and far removed from the Nashville Teens version, "Tobacco Road" later became a concert show stopper with Edgar's band White Trash (a nod to Jerry LaCouix) and in 1972, the glammed out "Frankenstein" hit and became the Top10/FM staple it is today. But on this version brother Johnny does the freaked out synth parts on geetar, with Edgar doubling up on the drum solo with "Uncle" John. There is no doubt left why the brothers didn't stay together, there wasn't room enough for both of them for long, divide and conquer, they did. Had Live... Johnny Winter With been released in 1970, it would still be looked upon today as a classic.

—Dr. Robert
November 2004

It snowed last night and now it's winter again. Taken back to its essentials the old planet is still really beautiful. All the places of green mystery are transformed into glowing wonders open and bare. Winter is a perfect time to explore the simpler structures before the welter of growth takes over again to dazzle you with complexity.

Winter the musician is nothing like that except in that he's white and he glows. His music is overlay and convolution and sweep and glide and a maze of tunnels. Electric in a way that winter the season isn't And always pushing. More like fall. And I can't push this too far now can I?

Anyway, we now have Second Winter, which is like and unlike the first Columbia album. The same ferocious many fingered attack and raw power and where it breaks down it's because it's just overwhelming and you just can't absorb all that information. It gets too busy and he can sustain it a lot longer than you can. A simple matter of not being able to keep up with him.

But the failures are minimal. And what you have here is Winter in even greater more self-assured control. Emerging with a greater sense of personal and musical irony that's directly relatable to the phenomenon of Johnny Winter the superfreak superstar superguitarperson superhype who's completely real. "I don't wanna wreck nobody's soul/I just wanna rock and roll." Winter didn't write that or "Johnny B. Goode" or "Highway 61 Revisited" either but he sings them with a consciousness of their sense that is unmistakably full.

He did write "I Hate Everybody." "People may laugh but that don't bother me / I'm makin' lots of money baby, happy as I can be." And "Hustled Down in Texas," "Hustled down in Texas / Been down to Chicago too / There wouldn't nobody let me / Do what I wanted to do." But of course he's doing it now. And gettin ' on fine. Steve Paul said that the first album was the stuff that Winter loved, most and the second would be stuff that Winter thought the people would like the best. All part of the plan y'understand and all stuff that he wants to do.

And you can't press this lyrical stuff too far either because Winter is a whole thing who mostly makes music not poetry. (Never mind.)

Blues has always been thought of by the people closest to it as devil music. Music of Possession. Listen to "Fast Life Rider" and see Lucifer himself appear before your very mind's eye. Watch him move across the stage and you can tell where that energy comes from. Listen to Edgar (who's a bitch). Believe it.

I'll give it an 83 for the hell of it. "Want to tell you people / Try to understand / You know you can't tell good from evil / So just do the best you can." Johnny Winter said that. I can dig it. I said that.

Photo by Sandy Speiser, Cover of CREEM Dec. 1969 by Todd Weinstein