![]() ![]() His career – not to mention his health – suffered mightily. Spiralling out of control, Winter spent most of his waking hours high as a kite. A recovering heroin addict, he acknowledges that he began taking anti-depressants that, when combined with his ongoing methadone (a heroin substitute) treatments (and a penchant for straight vodka), made a bad situation worse. Winter’s ‘lost years’ began way back in the early 1990s. ![]() But Johnny’s alleged missing millions tell only part of the story. The pending legal action accuses Slatus of, among other things, breach of contract and violation of fiduciary duties. (Slatus took a fatal, drunken plunge down a flight of stairs on November 3, 2005.) (“Faxed over at the stroke of noon, just like in a spaghetti western,” Nelson quips.) Slatus’s handling of Winter’s career and finances is now at the centre of a multi-million dollar claim that the guitarist’s lawyers – barring some kind of settlement – were preparing in late 2006 against his former manager’s estate. Slatus managed Winter for more than two decades before Winter fired him in a letter dated August 25, 2005. But for all of his career ups and downs, perhaps nothing rivals the level of exploitation he endured at the hands of his former manager, Theodore ‘Teddy’ Slatus. “But some of those people can get a little crazy sometimes.”įor better or for worse – often for worse – many aspects of Johnny Winter’s life have been about such extremes: his albinism his prodigious guitar virtuosity the mammoth six-figure deal he signed with Columbia Records following the publication of a 1968 Rolling Stone story the critical acclaim given to his seminal albums like Johnny Winter, Second Winter and The Progressive Blues Experiment, and the depths of his noted bouts with heroin, pills and alcohol (move over, Keith Richards).Īs a general rule, there’s little about Winter that rests in the middle things are either magic or tragic, and rarely in-between. Does he find it overwhelming to be constantly prodded about the past? “Everybody’s got a story, I guess,” he says with a laugh. Crowded, too.”) He is also asked about the scene immediately after his performance earlier that evening: the people the things they say the stories they tell. (“He was drunk all the time!”) And Woodstock. “Mainly we just jammed a lot.” Then Jim Morrison. “I never got to know him that well,” Winter says. “I was real proud of the stuff we did together.” “Of all the people I played with, I’d say Muddy impressed me the most,” Johnny says. ![]() “We had a lot of fun.” During the drive, someone from his entourage asks him about Muddy Waters. “I jammed with him at a place called the Vulcan Gas Company in Austin in 68,” Winter says. Rare is a Johnny Winter response that exceeds a single sentence, but the many famous musicians with whom he has crossed paths often serve as the best catalysts for the kind of tantalising detail that is almost agonisingly absent in his dialogue.Ī Freddie King tune comes on. Anything except leave him alone.”īack on the bus, Winter, now comfortably ensconced, lights a cigarette and begins to sing along softly to an old Son House tune. Everybody wanted to fight him, fuck him, give him a tape or get him high. “We’d have to find him refuge from people. “Everybody wanted to mess with him or interact with him somehow if he tried to go anywhere,” Shurman recalls. Dick Shurman, the producer of several of Winter’s albums including his latest, 2004’s Grammy- nominated I’m A Bluesman, remembers hanging out with Winter in Chicago in the mid-80s. The concept of wanting a piece of Johnny Winter isn’t a new thing it’s always been this way. ![]()
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