It’s no secret, I’m a huge Stevie Ray Vaughan fan and I’m proud to say that it dates back a bit to my senior year in high school, 1985. Stevie Ray Vaughan had already made a name for himself by then, his first record, Texas Flood came out in 1983, and he had been playing for 15 years, but for a guy like me from a small south Texas town, seeing him live was something I’ll never forget and a life changing event for me. This was also my very first real rock concert.
I was on spring break that year down at South Padre Island Texas, my friends and I had rented a huge townhouse that slept about 10 of us and about 10 girls from our high school had rented the unit next to ours so needless to say, we were having a blast. One of my roommates kept talking about this guy, Stevie Ray Vaughan, that was playing that afternoon down at the jetties, which is at the southern tip of the island, we all decided to go down and check it out.
Now, I had been playing a little guitar and bass for about 2 years and believe me when I say that things were never quite the same after I saw Stevie Ray play his guitar. I had experienced a life changing event that I will never forget. The date was March 11, 1985 and this picture is from that show..I was right in front!
So..we get down to the jetties, where the concert is being held, and this other buddy of mine, Wade, knew a guy whose old man worked for the beer distributors that were sponsoring the concert. This guy had a backstage pass that he passed to Wade through the chain link fence so he could get in…we then proceeded to sneak that pass to each one of us and before long we were all backstage hanging with the bands and drinking King size cans of Lite Beer. On the side of the stage was huge inflatable gorilla, King Kong pitching King Can beers!
Anyway, I didn’t really know what Stevie Ray looked like but I saw a few dudes that just had to be in his band. There was one guy all dressed in black, with a long sleeve blue wind breaker, and wearing this hat with a huge scarf around it. Keep in mind, it was probably 100 degrees that afternoon. I would later learn that this was Tommy Shannon, one half of and the bass player in SRV’s band Double Trouble, soon to be a huge influence on me and the first bass player that I would really study and learn from. Chris Layton, SRV’s drummer, the other half of the equation, was lingering around too..talking to some friends. I noticed, he too was wearing some cool threads, tapered black pants, pointed boots, silver coined belt, and a red muscle shirt. These guys stood out big time, among the bathing suits, beer logoed painters caps, and flip flops, and totally looked the part.
I caught my first glimpse of Stevie Ray Vaughan as he came out of a trailer in the backstage area..this guy was a site to see, pale as a ghost all dressed up in this crushed black velvet suit, with long sleeves, complete with a red hat, drink in one hand, smoking one of those cigar cigarettes in the other, walking quickly through the crowd and sprinting up the ramp to the stage.
We lined the stairs leading to the stage as Stevie Ray, Tommy and Chris walked passed us giving us high fives along the way. Then I rushed around to the front part of the stage that and planted myself right in front of SRV as he launched into a tune called Scuttle Buttin’ then into Soul to Soul from there…wow, I was simply blown away. I don’t really know what I was expecting but it certainly was not that. I think I stood there the rest of the time with my mouth hanging wide open as SRV continued to tear it up. The concert ended with him trashing his guitar and leaving the stage as feedback filled the air.
After more than 30 years, a friend of mine found a video that shows this exact moment in time. Someone was filming, probably a foot or so away from me. The perspective you see in this video is exactly the same from where I was standing back in 1985. After more than 30 years of this moment living in my memory, it’s a bit spooky watching the video, like traveling in a time machine…I think you can even hear my voice on the video at the :17 mark you can hear me say, “Unreal!”. I was maybe 17 years old at the time. It certainly was “unreal” and life changing event that I’ll never forget.
That was it, I was hooked forever. Come to find out that SRV was probably bottoming out around that time on drugs and alcohol, but I must say it didn’t really affect his performance that afternoon.
I went on to see SRV many more times, probably 6 or 7 times while I was going to UT Texas in Austin. He always played concerts at the Palmer Auditorium or Austin Opera House.
The last time I saw him was in 1989 the year before he died. He played a concert at the Austin Opera House and my good friend, Avrel, and I decided to go check it out. We brought our records along with us thinking we’d get to maybe see him after the show and get a few autographs, what were we thinking!
Well after the show was over we went back to the car to get our LPs and as we walked back into the concert hall, we walked right passed the crew and security. Nobody was stopping us so we just kept on going. We ran into Tommy Shannon, SRV’s bass player, in this hallway backstage, he was very cool, signed our albums and pointed us in the right direction to find Stevie.
Well we continued through the backstage area and ended up in a bar in the back and sure enough, there sat SRV at the bar, talking with some friends. We nervously approached him and said something stupid like, “We love your music and play guitar ourselves”. He was very polite and told us to keep it up and keep practicing. He also signed our album covers, my buddy brought his Texas Flood LP and I brought my Live Alive double LP. He even signed mine twice once for me on the front cover and once for my girlfriend.
One thing that is embedded in my brain though is, while shaking Stevie’s hand, I noticed how soft and how big his hands were. His hand felt like a large soft well worn leather glove that is broken in after years of playing ball. I came to discover later in my musician’s life, that a guitar player’s hands are a critical factor in the way they play and the way they sound. I feel fortunate to not only have talked to Stevie but shaking his hand was like touching the source of his sound. Very personal and something I’ll never forget. Pretty wild…anyway, after a few more handshakes and some small chat, we were on our way in total disbelief and with a story to tell for the rest of our lives.
I’ll never forget that night…the LP cover is a bit faded these days, almost 30 years old but still very cool to look at. He signed the inside cover to Carla, who was my girlfriend at the time…since it was on the inside, it held up well, no sunlight to fade the purple sharpie.
