“I’ve put my life back together, but it’s all a growing process. If you stop growing, what good is it musically?” Stevie Ray Vaughan's In Step, and the new beginning that should have been

In 1988, Stevie Ray Vaughan gave an interview to Guitarist magazine as he prepared to record the album In Step. At this time he was in recovery from alcohol and drug addiction, and with sobriety came a new sense of focus and positivity.

In a wide-ranging conversation, Stevie spoke of his early years learning to play guitar in the shadow of his big brother Jimmie, his admiration for Hendrix and Clapton, his most treasured guitars and amps, and his hopes for the future.

Sadly, In Step proved to be the last album released in his lifetime. But back in 1988, Stevie saw this album as a new beginning…

How long does it take you to record an album?

“Well, they’ve all taken different lengths of time. The first one took two days, basically – we had 28 years to get our first record together! The second one, six months. The third, six months. And the live album [Live Alive]… actually, I had wanted to bring a crowd to the studio but it made more sense to bring the studio to the crowd, and because of that we ended up doing a lot of the songs off the other records.

“Since then there have been a lot of changes going on; changes in my life as well as other people in the band, and we’re trying to take things at a more sensible pace. You know, this record will be the first one I’ve done sober, completely sober, so things are a lot different now and there’s a lot more to see and look at and be thankful for.”

Can you tell me how those changes happened? 

“Yeah, it would help me to talk about it anyway. I’m an alcoholic. I didn’t know that for a long time; I had a suspicion for a few years but I didn’t realize that that’s really what it was down to. I started drinking when I was six and through the years it ended up where I started using drink and other drugs to keep me going.

“Part of it had to do with the better bands that I got into. It seemed as if they had been subject to the same kind of myths that I had; that to play that kind of music and be successful at it, or to be creative or hip, you had to be high. The truth is that’s bullshit.

“I finally hit bottom when I collapsed in about September 1986, over in Europe. It came to a head. I got to a point where I was completely wrecked in my thinking, in my heart and physically. Most of my values were gone. I finally gave up fighting this whole deal and then it dawned on me that now I can get some help. The treatment center gave me the tools to live without using these things, and also to have more inspiration, more faith in life and in myself.”

I’d like to talk about the Texas blues scene and how it developed for you as a youngster. Your brother Jimmie was a couple of years older…

“Yeah, three-and-a-half years older – he started playing when he was in junior high, when I couldn’t have been more than eight. A friend of my father’s brought over a guitar and handed it to him and said, ‘Hey play this, it won’t hurt you!’ That’s what he said, and Jimmie started playing right away. It was amazing to watch him do it.

“He had three strings on the guitar and I went to school and came home and he’d made up three songs. I’m serious! And that’s the way his playing has been all along. With that kind of influence as a big brother it’s real easy to get into playing. I saw how much fun he was having with it, how dedicated he was to it, and it gave me a lot of inspiration.

“Eventually he got an electric guitar and I got the one that he’d had. Then he got another electric guitar and I got his hand-me-down, and soon after I was playing gigs. He started playing and within a few months he was in a band with all the hot guys around, and a few months later he was in the hottest band in Texas; I mean, boom, boom, boom!

“By the time he was 15, he was the hottest guitar player in Texas. From then on, everybody was trying to figure out how Jimmie Vaughan would do it – me too. The first week that I had an actual club gig, we played an eight-day week. That’s when I met [Double Trouble bassist] Tommy Shannon… At 14 we were playing from 10 at night until six in the morning – we were also trying to go to school and that doesn’t work real well.”

Were you playing blues music at that stage?

“Blues music and rock music. Rock ’n’ roll, rock… but all blues-influenced, some of it by the original blues guys, some of it the English blues. Some of it was influenced by Hendrix – he also took everything he heard, that excited him, and put it into his music.”

Do you practice specific licks and runs or do you simply play a lot? 

“I just play a lot, but lately not as much as I would like to. The way you have to travel now, the way that regulations have changed on planes – certainly in the States – they wouldn’t let you on with something that was longer than a certain length, so we had to take the neck off the guitar.

“So when we’d get to the next town, I’d have to give it back to Rene [Martinez, Stevie’s guitar tech] and he’d put it back together. And now that we’re doing so many gigs and everything there just isn’t time.

“I really have been wanting to sit down in my room and play, because that’s what started it, that’s like going back to square one. And it’s fun, it’s fun to sit around, even if it gets frustrating. I’m starting to remember that some of the biggest doors that have been opened in my life have sometimes been the hardest things to do.”

How did you get around those difficult things? 

“I kept listening, kept sitting in with people, kept listening to records. If I wanted to learn somebody’s stuff, like with Clapton, when I wanted to learn how he was getting some of his sounds – which were real neat – I learned how to make the sounds with my mouth and then copied that with my guitar.

“I’d get it to where I could sing it and then do it on the guitar at the same time, and if it didn’t sound like it should to me, then I’d do it again. It was kind of like scat singing or something.

“With Hendrix’s music I kept listening and kept trying and kept trying, and some of the things I just stumbled onto when I’d been playing and things would kind of come to me. How to describe it, I don’t know… It had to do with confidence levels and the excitement of playing, trying new things and originality.”

Did you ever get to see Hendrix live? 

“Not live. My brother opened up for him and they’d go around together, trading ideas… and wah-wah pedals! But I just kept trying it. That’s one thing that I don’t understand. I get asked a lot of times by people, how do I have enough gall to do Voodoo Chile, and my answer to that is that it seems to me all this pressure about whether it’s sacrilegious to do Hendrix’s music or not comes from other people, not him. I think he would probably hope that other people would take his music further.”

How about your guitars – are you still playing your ‘First Wife’? 

“Yeah, my First Wife is a ’59 Stratocaster, although now I have a different neck on it because every time I re-fretted it I’d have to fill in the holes.”

Is it a custom-made neck? 

“No, it’s the neck off another Stratocaster, but it’s the same size neck. I use the big necks, the ‘V’ necks, and I use bass frets, jumbo bass frets. In some ways I have a little bit of a problem with that, because, I don’t know why, but it seems to cause a bit more of a rattle.

“Of course part of that could be from tuning down to Eb as well – my action is pretty high, too. Anyway, I used mainly Stratocasters. I like a lot of different kinds of guitar, but for what I do it seems that a Stratocaster is the most versatile. I can pretty much get any sound out of it, and I use stock pickups.”

You don’t use any special wirings? 

“Not really. There’s something I’ve been trying for a while, I call it 'something extra', and I’ve got it in my First Wife. What it does is, if there’s a problem with lights and buzz, I turn it on, and sometimes it causes the buzz to go away. It’s on a push-pull switch and it changes the tone very barely, but I’ve learned to work with that tone. I can’t say what it is because we’re trying to see what we can do with it. It’s a very simple idea, too.”

Do you have any unusual guitars in your collection?

“Well there’s one that I’m carrying with me that is made by Charley Wirz, the Eb model, which is basically a Stratocaster with Danelectro lipstick pickups in it. Whether he changed the wires in those pickups I’m not sure, he never told anyone. I love that guitar, it sounds like a Stratocaster but it’s just a little bit different. Those pickups seem to work real well in a Stratocaster body – I like it a whole lot. I’ve also got a guitar that Billy Gibbons had made for me, that’s a Hamiltone model.”

How about your guitar amps? You used to use two Vibroverbs. 

“Yeah, I used to use two Fender Vibroverbs, two Super Reverbs, and a Dumble [Howard Dumble amps]. I had used Marshall amps years ago and I had a real clean one. It was a first or second series head – I’m not sure. I liked the Dumble a whole lot when I first got it, but the first one I had built, which is the best sounding one, is messed up right now – that’s the one that’s out on stage right now.

“But every one I’ve had since then have all sounded worse in different ways – I don’t know what it is. My favorite rig lately has been an old Marshall Major, the PA top with four inputs. I was looking for one, I found the head, plugged it in, turned it up and it sounded… right. I use that head with the Dumble cabinet with four EV speakers in it. Then I use my older Dumble heads with another cabinet, and run a Leslie cabinet with that, and it sounds strong and clear.

“If you bear down on the strings and hit hard it will bark at you like it’s supposed to, but it doesn’t break up. The problem with taking the amps to a shop is sometimes they come back sounding like another amp. So right now, my favorite thing is to use the old Marshall Major head and my best Dumble, with two 4x12 cabinets and a Leslie – if I can keep [the] speakers in the Leslie. A Leslie has one 10-inch or 12-inch [speaker] depending on which model it is, and running it with a 200-watt head, it’s screaming for help!“

Your band has been together a good few years now… 

“Yeah, Tommy and I have been together off and on since 1969, although he’s only been with this band since a couple of years before Texas Flood, and Chris [Layton, drums] and I have been together going on 13 years. We’ve gone through a lot together and nowadays we are coming out of it. We’re learning more between each other, it’s as if we’re about to wake up again.”

What are your goals both in the short term and long term? 

“I’ve put my life back together, but it’s all a growing process and that’s neat, too, because if you stop growing, what good is it musically? So that is what I’m looking forward to – growing. In some ways I have been in a bit of a stagnant place for a while for whatever reason.

“I felt stagnant in my life and it showed. It’s strange how it came about… It took my sobering up to see it. That’s one of the things musicians who are going through this same thing have to look forward to. It’s a challenge, it’s kind of like starting over in a way – I’ve got a bit of a boost because I learned quite a bit before having to start over.”

Do you still love playing? When you hold your guitar do you still feel good? 

“Yes. There were times when this was more apparent in the way it sounds up front, but this has always been the way. I figure there is no sense in going out there and not giving it what you’ve got, and I’ve had to do that when literally I did not feel up to par. It’s funny, because sometimes that’s when you can heal yourself, by playing you can make yourself feel better. That has happened many times.”

Well, they say music is a type of therapy… 

“Yes, well, I’m sure glad about that.”