Seven years. I just, I keep looking at the timeline
we have laid out here and that number just jumps
out. Seven. It doesn't seem possible, does it?
It feels like a typo in the history books. It
really does. We're talking about Stevie Ray Vaughan.
He is, for all intents and purposes, a Mount
Rushmore figure for the electric guitar. Absolutely.
You can walk into any guitar store anywhere in
the world right now and I guarantee someone is
trying to play Pride and Joy. Oh, for sure. Badly,
maybe. But they're trying. Exactly. Yeah. But
his actual mainstream career, the time between
his first major album coming out and the day
he died, it was 1983 to 1990. That's it. It's
just a blink. And it's so strange because his
impact feels like it spans decades. In the grand
scheme of things, it's this incredibly condensed,
explosive period of time. Right. But in that
little glip, Stevie Ray Vaughan didn't just,
you know, play the blues. And that's really what
we want to dig into today. We're doing a deep
dive based mostly on the extensive Wikipedia
article and some well -regarded biographical
notes on Stevie Ray Vaughan. But here's the thing.
i don't want this to just be a list of his albums
and tour dates no that's the boring version i
want to get at the how yeah how does a um a shy
kid from a working class part of dallas become
yeah well that yeah how does he become an icon
that's the real question isn't it because you
can look at the lists you know Rolling Stone
ranked him number seven all time back in 03.
Then they moved him down to 20th in a later list.
But who cares about the number? Right. The point
is he's in the stratosphere. He's up there with
the gods. He is. So you have to ask, what was
the actual machinery behind that sound? How did
he build it piece by piece? And what was going
on inside his head while he was doing it? Maybe
just as importantly, what was going on with his
body? Because I was reading through this source
material, I realized his story is incredibly
physical. It's a story about calluses and heavy
gauge strings and even super glue. It's about
physical endurance and later. about near -fatal
collapse. It's a story of extreme duality. You
have this meteoric rise, right, the glamour of
playing with David Bowie, of selling out Carnegie
Hall, but simmering just beneath that surface,
you have this... brutal, almost blue -collar
grind. And this tragic irony that hangs over
everything. The timing. The timing is just cruel.
It really is. He didn't die at his lowest point,
drowning in addiction. He died after he'd already
won that war. Exactly. He had conquered it. He'd
rebuilt his entire life. He was playing with
a kind of clarity and purpose he'd never had
before. And then the fog rolled in and the helicopter
went down. So to really understand that ending
and that redemption, we have to go all the way
back to the beginning. We have to go to Oak Cliff,
Texas. Back to 1954. October 3rd, 1954. Stevie
Ray Vaughan is born in Dallas. And Oak Cliff,
it's not... it's not the ritzy part of town.
No, not at all. It's working class through and
through and the home he was born into. Let's
just say it was a complicated and often frightening
place. Yeah, the notes we have on his father,
Jimmy Levon, who everyone called Big Jim, they're
pretty stark. He was an asbestos worker, a World
War II veteran. And you have to assume he was
carrying a ton of trauma from all of that. The
sources are very clear about Big Jim. He had
a severe problem with alcohol, and he had a temper
that is described in the material with one specific
word, terrorized. Terrorized. That's a powerful
word. It's not... disciplined. It's not strict.
It's terrorized. It is. You know, we sometimes
romanticize these blues origin stories, right?
This idea that you need to have hard times to
create great music. Of course, the paying your
dues narrative. But when you actually read about
the day -to -day reality of a small, sensitive
kid living in a household like that, it's not
romantic. It's just scary. And Stevie himself
later recalled being a direct victim of his father's
violence. So you have to picture this little
boy, shy, insecure, living in a house that feels
like a could explode at any second. You're just
walking on eggshells constantly. And in that
environment, you look for an escape. You look
for a protector. And his mom, Martha Jean, she
was the one trying to hold it all together. She
was the anchor. She was the one trying to maintain
some semblance of normalcy. But for Stevie, his
real hero, his North Star, it was his big brother.
Jimmy Vaughn. Jimmy. Born in 1951, so he's three
years older. And you absolutely cannot understand
Stevie Ray Vaughan without understanding that
his entire musical journey started as him trying
to catch up to Jimmy. It was pure hero worship.
100%. Jimmy was the cool one. Jimmy was the one
who discovered the music first. Jimmy was the
pathfinder. Stevie didn't just want to play guitar.
He wanted to be his brother. But the guitar wasn't
his first stop, was it? I saw a note about him
starting with pots and pans. Ah. Yeah. Okay,
is that real or is that just one of those, you
know, legends they print on the back of an album
cover? He was so musical from birth. No, it seems
to be legit. He just wanted to make noise to
be part of the sound he heard his brother making.
So he starts banging on his mom's cookware trying
to be a drummer. And after the pots and pans.
He tried the saxophone. And how'd that go for
him? Horribly. He said in an interview later,
all I could get were a few squeaks. He just didn't
connect with it. So drums are out. The sax is
out. Then comes his seventh birthday, 1961. This
is the moment, the turning point. He gets a toy
guitar from a Sears catalog. And I really want
to emphasize the word toy here. This wasn't a
real instrument. It had like a cowboy painted
on it or something. Exactly. A Western motif.
It was probably plastic and cheap wood, but to
a seven -year -old Stevie, it might as well have
been a 59 Les Paul. It was his Excalibur. And
here's the part that always blows my mind. He
didn't take lessons. None. He didn't learn scales.
He didn't learn theory. He didn't go to a music
school. His ear was his teacher. He just listened.
He just listened. Yeah. Intently. He would sit
with that little toy guitar and try to mimic
the records he heard, the songs on the radio.
He got completely obsessed with a local Dallas
band called the Nightcaps. I have to admit, I
don't know them. Not many people do outside of
Texas, but they were local legends. And he committed
himself to learning their songs note for note.
Specifically two songs, Wine, Wine. wine and
thunderbird wait wine wine wine and thunderbird
that's little on the nose isn't it given what
we know happens later in this story it's chillingly
prophetic in a way just total foreshadowing but
at the time it was just the music that moved
him and he kept at it then in 1963 he finally
gets the big upgrade jimmy gives him a hand me
down A real electric guitar. The Gibson ES -125T.
And once he has that in his hands, it's pretty
much game over for a normal life. The obsession
takes root. It becomes his entire world. And
you have to remember the family context here.
Jimmy, his hero, leaves home when he's 16 to
go play music full time. Which must have been
a huge blow to Stevie. It was. But it also made
things harder for him at home. Because once Jimmy
left, his parents, especially Big Jim, they look
at Stevie and basically say, You are not going
down that path. So they didn't support his music
at all. Not even a little bit. They saw the life
of a musician as unstable, dirty, a dead end.
So you have Stevie, stuck at home, still terrified
of his dad, desperately missing his brother,
and the only refuge he has is this guitar. Which
brings us to a story that, if you wrote it in
a movie, the producer would tell you to make
it more believable. I call it the grease barrel
moment. It's so good. It's the perfect I quit
story. So Stevie is a teenager now. To make some
money, he's working at a local hamburger stand.
Doing the glamour stuff, I assume. Oh, yeah.
Washing dishes, taking out the trash. He's making
70 cents an hour. 70 cents. Even for back then,
that is just grim. It's nothing. So one day,
he's carrying the trash out to the dumpster,
and he slips. And he falls headfirst into a 55
-gallon drum of used cold cooking grease. Just
completely submerged in it. Oh, that's disgusting.
He climbs out of this barrel covered in this
congealed nasty burger grease. And right there
in that moment, something inside him just snaps.
That's it. I'm done. That's it. He walks back
inside, quits on the spot, and tells himself,
I am never, ever working a normal job again.
From this day forward, my life is music. You
know, we laugh because... The image is so absurd.
But think about the courage that takes. He's
a teenager. He has zero support from his parents.
He knows that if he quits this 70 cent an hour
job to play guitar, he is truly on his own. He's
burning the boats. He really is. He's choosing
a life of total uncertainty over a life of quiet
misery. And he hits the circuit. I mean, immediately.
We're not talking about big theaters yet. We're
talking about the Texas club circuit. The band
names from this period are just fantastic. The
Shantones. Brooklyn Underground. My favorite
is the Southern Distributor. It sounds like a
company that sells plumbing supplies. It does.
And ironically, that's the band that fired him.
He got fired? How do you fire Stevie Ray Vaughan?
Well, you fire him for being Stevie Ray Vaughan.
They were basically a pop rock cover band. They
wanted to play whatever was in the top quarter.
Stevie, even back then, only wanted to play the
blues. He wouldn't compromise. He wouldn't. They
literally told him and... this quote is amazing,
that he would never earn a living playing blues
music. I think that prediction might go down
as one of the worst in music history. Right up
there with Decca passing on the Beatles. But
it just shows his conviction. He knew what his
sound was even then. And he was getting scary
good. I mean, even while he was still in high
school. This is the ZZ Top story. The legendary
ZZ Top story. So Stevie's high school band, a
group called Liberation, is playing a gig at
the Adolphus Hotel in Dallas. And just by chance.
ZZ Top, who are already becoming Texas rock royalty,
are in the building. Okay. They hear the band,
and during a break, Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top
gets up and starts jamming. And then this skinny
high school kid, Stevie, plugs in and starts
trading licks with him. That takes some serious
confidence. Or just blissful ignorance. And according
to his bandmates who were there, he didn't just
hang with them. He tore the house down. They
said he fit in with ZZ Top like a glove. Imagine
what that does for your self -belief. Yeah, if
you can go toe -to -toe with Billy Gibbons before
you can legally vote, you're probably on the
right track. Exactly. But while he's tearing
the house down at night, what's happening during
the day at Kimball High School? Total disaster.
An absolute train wreck. He's failing all his
classes because he's up all night playing music,
so he's sleeping at his desk. The principal is
constantly on his case about his long hair, his
clothes. It's the classic rock and roll dilemma.
It is. And he realizes he has to make a choice.
It's either the diploma or the guitar. So he
drops out and makes a run for it. He heads to
Austin. He heads to the promised land. Let's
talk about that for a second. Why Austin? What
was the difference between Dallas and Austin
in the early 1970s? It was night and day. Dallas
even then was about business. It was oil money.
It was conservative, buttoned up. Austin in the
early 70s was the epicenter of the whole cosmic
cowboy scene. Willie Nelson, hippies. Exactly.
It was hippies and rednecks and university students
and bluesmen all living in the same place, sharing
the same clubs. It was tolerant. You could be
a freak in Austin and people would not only accept
it, they'd celebrate it. So it was the perfect
incubator for him. It was the only place he could
have become who he became. So he moves there.
He's sleeping on couches in the back rooms of
clubs. He lived at a place called the Rolling
Hills Club for a while. It's a real grind. A
total grind. He's in and out of bands. Blackbird,
Cracker Jack, the Nightcrawlers with Doyle Bramhall.
But the real turning point, his graduate school
was a club called Antones. Antones. That name's
legendary. The home of the blues. It really was.
The owner, Clifford Antone, was this incredible
blues fanatic. And he had the respect and the
connections to bring the original masters to
his little club in Austin. We're talking Muddy
Waters, Buddy Guy, Albert King. These are the
guys who invented the language he was speaking.
They were the primary sources. And Stevie wasn't
just sitting in the audience taking notes like
everyone else. He was getting on stage with them.
He was getting on stage and jamming with them,
which, when you think about it, is just incredibly
audacious. Hey, Mr. Albert King, mind if I plug
in? You better be able to back that up. And he
could. There's a famous story from Clifford Antone,
the owner. He was watching Stevie Jam with Albert
King one night, and Clifford said watching it
almost scared him to death. Scared him. Why?
Because it was so good, it was unnatural. He
said, here's the skinny white kid from Dallas
standing next to the master, Albert King, and
he's not just copying the licks. He's answering
them. He's matching the fire, the intensity,
the soul. Clifford said it was the best he'd
ever seen anyone play. Wow. So he has the respect
of the founding fathers of the genre. He has
the chops. But he still needs his own band, his
own vehicle. He needs the right engine. He forms
a group called the Triple Threat Review with
a singer named Luann Barton that eventually morphs
into Double Trouble in 1978. Named after an Otis
Rush song. A perfect choice. And this is where
the alchemy really happens. Because Stevie Ray
Vaughan is a phenomenon on his own, but double
trouble with Chris Layton on drums and eventually
Tommy Shannon on bass. They weren't just a backup
band. They were essential. Absolutely crucial.
A guitar trio is a very naked format. There's
nowhere to hide. There's no rhythm guitar player
to cover up mistakes. If the bass and drums aren't
completely locked in, the whole thing just collapses.
And he found the right guys. He found the perfect
guys. He recruited Chris Layton and literally
sat down and taught him the specific Texas shuffle
beat that he wanted. And Tommy Shannon. Tommy
was a veteran. He played with Johnny Winter,
right? At Woodstock, even. Yeah, he was the real
deal. He was playing in another... band when
he saw Stevie play at a club in Houston called
Rockefellers. And he described seeing Stevie
that night as a revelation. He said he just knew
that's where I belong. So he quits his band and
joins up. Immediately. And once Tommy Shannon
was on board, that was it. The lineup was set.
The classic double trouble was born. So now they
are the undisputed kings of the Austin music
scene. They're selling out clubs every night.
They're local legends. But they cannot get a
record deal to save their lives. Nobody wanted
them. Not a single label. Why? I mean, they're
obviously incredible. You have to think about
the year. We're talking 1980, 1981, 82. Turn
on the radio. What are you hearing? Synths, drum
machines, new wave. Exactly. You're hearing the
Human League and a flock of seagulls. It was
the era of polished, synthesized. almost robotic
pop music. And here comes this loud, sweaty,
raw power trio from Texas playing blues. The
record labels looked at them like they were dinosaurs.
It was old music. So how do they finally break
out of Texas? It takes a giant, a man named Jerry
Wexler. The legendary producer, Aretha Franklin,
Ray Charles. The man who basically invented the
term rhythm and blues. He saw them play at a
club in Austin and was just floored. He made
a phone call and convinced the organizers of
the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland to
book them for the summer of 1982. This is it.
This is the big break. Their first time playing
in Europe in front of a sophisticated international
audience. It was supposed to be the big break.
It turned into an absolute catastrophe. OK, set
the scene for us. What happened? All right. So
you have to understand the Montreux Jazz Festival
is a jazz festival. It's prestigious. It's often
acoustic. The audience is very polite, very reserved.
They're sitting there in their seats expecting
to hear, you know. nuanced, quiet, cerebral music.
And instead, out walks this force of nature from
Texas. Out comes Stevie. He's wearing this wild
kimono -style outfit. He's got his battered 1959
Stratocaster. And behind him, he has not one,
but two Fender Super Reverb amps and two Dumble
Steel String Singer amps. A wall of sound. And
let's talk about the volume. Because this connects
back to his whole philosophy of sound, doesn't
it? He was not a turn -it -down kind of player.
Not even close. His default setting was 10. He
played loud, incredibly loud. Now, for this show,
he was trying to be respectful. He knew it was
a jazz crowd, so he actually folded four heavy
army blankets and draped them over his speakers
to try and muffle the sound. He claimed his amps
volume was only on 2. But Stevie's 2 is a normal
person's 11. It's a jet engine. So they launch
into their set, and it's just this ferocious,
high -volume, aggressive assault of Texas blues,
and the audience just hated it. They actually
booed them. Oh, yeah. They booed not everyone,
but a very vocal part of the crowd. You can hear
it on the live recording of the show. It's this
low rumble of disapproval that grows louder and
louder. People were literally covering their
ears. That is just crushing. I can't imagine.
You fly all the way across the Atlantic. You
think, this is my moment. I finally made it.
And you get booed off the stage. Stevie was completely
devastated. He walked off stage, went back to
the dressing room, and just sat there with his
head in his hands. He was convinced he had just
blown the single biggest opportunity of his entire
life. He wanted to pack up and go home. But what
he didn't know was who was sitting in that audience.
He had no idea because sitting in that crowd
of angry, booing jazz purists were two people
who were about to change his life forever. David
Bowie and Jackson Browne. That's like something
out of a movie. It's the perfect plot twist.
It's unbelievable. So David Bowie was at a creative
crossroads himself. He was looking for a new
sound for his next record. And he hears Stevie
playing this raw, visceral, authentic blues guitar
and a light bulb goes off. He thinks, that's
it. That's the sound I need. And what about Jackson
Browne? Jackson Browne saw how dejected the band
was. He found them in the artist's lounge after
the show and he just sat down and started jamming
with them until the sun came up. And then he
made them an incredible offer. He said, listen,
you guys can have my personal recording studio
in Los Angeles for three days, free of charge.
Go make a demo. Wow. Just out of the blue. Total
act of generosity. So in the span of about 24
hours, they go from the lowest low of being booed
off the stage to the highest high of being offered
a free studio and a potential gig with David
Bowie. Okay, let's follow the Bowie thread first.
Steedy flies to Switzerland to record on the
album that would become Let's Dance. Which, of
course, becomes one of the biggest, most successful
albums of the entire decade. Absolutely. The
title track, Let's Dance China Girl. If you go
back and listen to the solo on Let's Dance Now,
knowing it's him, it's... So obviously Stevie.
It's unmistakable. And it was such a genius move
by Bowie. You have this incredibly slick, funky
Nile Rodgers disco pop production. And then slicing
right through the middle of it is this raw Albert
King style blues lick. It was a sound no one
had ever heard before. And it introduced Stevie
to millions and millions of people. who would
never have listened to a blues record. It put
him on the global map overnight. And Bowie, seeing
what a talent he had, immediately asked him to
be the lead guitarist for the upcoming world
tour, the Sirius Moonlight tour. This was the
golden ticket. This was everything they had been
working for. Stadiums, private jets, life -changing
money. It was the big time. And Stevie said yes
at first, but then the reality of the situation
started to set in. What went wrong? A couple
of things. There was a dispute over pay, which
was part of it. But the real deal breaker was
that Bowie's management told Stevie, during this
tour, you are not allowed to give interviews
about your own band or your own album. So he
would just be a sideman, a hired gun. A very
well -paid hired gun, but a hired gun nonetheless.
And you have to remember, while all this is happening,
Stevie had just taken Jackson Brown up on his
offer. He'd gone to L .A. and recorded the demos
that would become Texas Flood. And he knew he
had something special. He knew it was the best
thing he'd ever done. He wasn't willing to put
his own dream on the back burner, not even for
David Bowie. So he quits. He quits literally
days before the tour is set to launch. The tour
buses are practically waiting for him, and he
just walks away. Everyone in the music industry
must have told him he was insane. You just don't
say no to David Bowie in 1983. Everyone thought
it was career suicide. But in a strange way,
it turned out to be a brilliant strategic move.
The story, who is this unknown guitarist who
turned down David Bowie, generated a massive
amount of press. It created a myth around him
before his first album was even out. Precisely.
And it freed him up to focus on his own career
and release Texas Flood. Let's talk about that
album, Texas Flood, released in June of 1983.
This is the one. Pride and joy. Lenny, Love Struck
Baby. It landed like a meteor. In the middle
of all that synth pop, this record comes out
and it's just raw and real and powerful. And
this is where I want to pause and really do that
deep dive on his gear. Because when you listen
to Texas Flood, the first thing that hits you
is the sound of the guitar. It's so thick. It's
heavy. Why did it sound so different from everything
else? Well, it's a combination of things, but
it all starts with the strings, the physics of
the strings. Okay. So most rock guitarists at
that time, especially the 80s hair metal guys,
they were all using incredibly light strings.
We call them nines or even eights. They feel
like spider webs on the guitar neck. And that
makes it easier to play fast, right? Exactly.
Less tension, easy to bend, perfect for all that
flashy shredding. Stevie went in the complete
opposite direction. He used what we call 13s.
His lightest string was a .013 gauge. His heaviest
was a .058. Okay, for the non -guitar players
listening, translate that for us. What does it
actually feel like to play on strings that heavy?
Okay, here's an analogy. A normal electric guitar
string is like a thick rubber band. You can bend
it pretty easily with one finger. A set of Stevie
strings. It's like trying to bend a wire coat
hanger with your fingertips. You're kidding.
I'm not. The amount of tension on the neck is
immense. Just to bend a note, a full step requires
incredible hand and finger strength. But the
tradeoff, the reason he did it, was for the tone.
How does that work? The thicker string has more
mass. When it vibrates over the magnetic pickups,
it creates a bigger, fatter electrical signal.
It has more fundamental, more low end. That's
why his guitar never sounded thin or tinny. It
sounded like a grand piano. It had this huge
percussive thump to every note. But playing like
that, so aggressively on strings that heavy.
There had to be a physical price to pay for that
sound. Oh, a brutal price. And this brings us
to the most infamous part of his gear legend,
the superglue. This is the part that just makes
me physically cringe every time I read it. As
it should. Because the strings were so thick
and he attacked them with so much force, he would
literally tear his calluses off his fingertips.
The strings would get under his fingernail and
separate the nail from the nail bed, from the
quick. Oh, my God. That's just body horror. It's
gruesome. Now, a normal person's solution would
be to, you know, use lighter strings. Right.
Or take a night off. Not Stevie. His solution
was to take a bottle of industrial superglue
cyanoacrylate and squeeze it onto the raw, bleeding
flesh of his fingertip. Then he would press his
fingernail back down onto it, hold it until the
glue set, and go back out on stage to play the
next set. That reframes everything for me. It's
not just talent or feel. It's a commitment to
suffering for the sound. He's literally using
glue to hold his body together so he can keep
playing. It was a combat sport for him. He was
at war with the instrument every single night.
And that struggle, that tension, that's what
you're hearing on the grooves of Texas Flood.
And the way they recorded that album was just
as raw, right? It wasn't some polished month
-long studio session. Not at all. It was basically
a live album recorded in a studio. They went
into Jackson Browne's place, set up their gear
like they would for a gig, and just played. They
knocked the whole thing out in three days. And
that frantic, we have to get this right now energy
is baked into the tape. And it worked. The album
was a huge success. It was a game changer. It
almost single -handedly revived the blues for
a mainstream audience. Suddenly, kids who were
listening to Duran Duran were going out and buying
Fender Stratocasters. Which leads them to the
follow -up, Couldn't Stand the Weather in 1984.
And on that album, there's a track that has become
legendary among audiophiles, Tin Pan Alley. Yes,
the story behind that track is just, it's magical.
It's one of those lightning in a bottle moments.
What happened? So the band is in the studio in
New York. The engineer is getting everything
set up. He gets on the intercom and says, hey
guys, just play something for a minute so I can
get the microphone levels. So this isn't an official
take. They're just warming up. They're just noodling.
Yeah. And they launch into this slow, dark, atmospheric
version of Tin Pan Alley. They play it all the
way through for nine minutes. When they finish,
the legendary producer John Hammond gets on the
talkback and says one thing. That's the best
that song will ever sound. We're done. Did they
try to record it again? They did. They tried
multiple times later to do a proper take. But
they could never recapture the spontaneous, moody
magic of that first soundcheck. So the version
you hear on the phone. final album, that's the
warm -up. One take. That's incredible. It just
goes to show that when he was really locked in,
he was just channeling something. He was a conduit
for it. So 1984 is a massive year for him. The
album is a huge hit. And then he gets the call
to play Carnegie Hall. October 4th, 1984. The
day after his 30th birthday. Talk about a birthday
present. I mean, Carnegie Hall is not a rock
club. It's hallowed ground. You're supposed to
wear a tuxedo to Carnegie Hall. And Stevie did.
In his own way. He had a custom Mexican tuxedo
made. It was this incredible mariachi style suit,
black with elaborate silver embroidery. Only
Stevie Ray Vaughan. He was, by all accounts,
incredibly nervous that night. He understood
the history of that room. He felt the weight
of it. To make it even bigger, he brought in
a full horn section, the great Dr. John on piano
and his brother Jimmy on guitar. It was a huge
production. It was. And he was so amped up, so
overexcited that for the first two or three songs,
he was actually rushing the tempo. He was playing
too fast. He just couldn't calm down. But he
eventually found his groove. He did. He settled
in. And by the end of the night, that very proper,
polite New York City audience had turned Carnegie
Hall into a stomping, cheering Texas roadhouse.
People were dancing. So here we are. It's late
1984, early 85. He has gold records. He's conquered
the most prestigious venue in America. He's the
undisputed guitar hero of the decade. But there's
a shadow growing. A very dark one. The dissent.
We talked about his dad's drinking earlier. But
Stevie's own battle with substances. It started
much earlier than his fame, didn't it? Frighteningly
early. He admitted in interviews after he got
sober that he started stealing his father's drinks
when he was just six years old. He was basically
self -medicating the anxiety and the fear from
his childhood. So by the time he becomes a full
blown rock star in the mid 80s, with all the
access and money that comes with it, his tolerance
for drugs and alcohol was almost. superhuman.
I read the reported numbers of his daily consumption
from that period, and I honestly don't understand
the biology. I don't know how a human being can
function. It's medically astounding that he was
alive, let alone performing. By 1985, 1986, he
was reportedly drinking an entire quart of Crown
Royal whiskey every single day. A full quart.
And of course, the whiskey would make him drowsy.
So to counteract that, he was using a tremendous
amount of cocaine. But not just snorting it.
He had a ritual where he would drop the cocaine
into his glass of whiskey and stir it up. A cocaine
-laced cocktail. He was consuming, by some estimates,
up to a quarter ounce of cocaine every day. That's
a dosage that would be lethal for most people.
He was redlining his body's engine 24 -7. And
people around him saw what was happening. The
great muddy water saw it. That is maybe the most
haunting quote in this entire story. Muddy Waters,
one of his idols, watched him play and said to
someone, Stevie could perhaps be the greatest
guitar player that ever lived, but he won't live
to get 40 years old if he doesn't leave that
white powder alone. And he was right. He called
it. He saw the writing on the wall. He knew exactly
where that train was headed. And the train finally
derailed in 1986. This is during the tour for
the Live Alive album. An album that Stevie himself
later said he couldn't even listen to. that it
sounded like the work of half -dead people. The
whole band was in chaos. And then they go to
Europe, to Germany. September 1986, a town called
Ludwigshof in Germany, they finish a show, and
Stevie collapses. On stage. Backstage, after
the show. He fell down and he couldn't get back
up. He was rushed to a local hospital. The diagnosis
was severe near -death dehydration. His stomach
lining was basically shredded from all the alcohol.
He was flown to London to see a specialist, a
Dr. Victor Bloom. And the doctor gave him the
ultimatum. He looked at Stevie's charts at the
state of his body and told him, point blank,
you are not just sick. You are about a month
away from death. That's the rock bottom moment.
The wake up call. That was the sound of the alarm
bell he couldn't ignore anymore. The denial was
finally broken. He realized that the music, the
one thing he loved, couldn't save him if he was
in a coffin. So he cancels the rest of the tour
and goes to rehab. He checks into Peach Court
Hospital in Atlanta and then a rehab center back
in Austin. And this is where he faced the biggest
fear for. Any artist who is also an addict. The
fear that the creativity is tied to the substance?
Can I still play if I'm sober? Exactly. Is the
magic in the whiskey bottle? Is the fire fueled
by the cocaine? He was genuinely terrified that
if he got clean, he'd lose his gift. That the
mojo would disappear. And what did he do to recover?
He moved back home. Back into his mother's house
in Dallas. the very same house he grew up in.
He had to completely tear his life down to the
studs and rebuild it from scratch. But he did
it. He did it. He got sober. Through 1987 and
1988, he worked the program, he toured cautiously,
and he discovered something incredible. He could
still play. Could still play. And not just that.
He could play better, he was more focused, he
was more present. For the first time in years,
he wasn't just surviving the gig, he was actually
experiencing it. Which all culminates in his
final studio album. in step released in 1989
and the title says it all doesn't it finally
in step with life in step with myself yeah it's
not subtle no it's a declaration this alum is
his victory lap he won a grammy it was his most
commercially successful record But more than
that, you have to look at the lyrics. They're
different. Completely different. He's not just
singing the standard blues tropes about his baby
leaving him anymore. He's writing songs like
Crossfire and Wall of Denial. He's singing about
addiction, about recovery, about the struggle
to be a better human being. And there's that
line he wrote in the album's liner notes that
always gets me. Thank God the elevator's broken.
It's a direct reference to Alcoholics Anonymous,
isn't it? It is. It's about the 12 steps. You
have to take the steps one at a time. You can't
just take the elevator to the top. There are
no shortcuts in recovery. It was him telling
the world, I did the work. So we're in 1990 now.
This is the peak of the redemption arc. He's
sober. He's healthy. He's playing with more power
and clarity than ever before. He finally records
an album with his brother Jimmy, family style.
Which was a lifelong dream for him. He finally
felt like he wasn't just Jimmy's little brother
anymore. He was his peer. And then comes the
night of August 26, 1990, a place called Alpine
Valley Music Theater in Wisconsin. It was a huge
outdoor amphitheater show, a massive crowd, 30
,000, 40 ,000 people. And the lineup was just
a blues fan's fantasy. It was Eric Clapton, Buddy
Guy, Robert Cray, Jimmy Vaughn, and Stevie. And
at the end of the night, they all came out on
stage together for the encore. The encore was
Sweet Home Chicago. Can you just picture that?
All those legends on one stage, trading solos,
laughing, smiling. It was a celebration of the
music they all loved. It was just pure, unadulterated
joy. The show ends. It's late. It's a long drive
back to Chicago where they're all staying. And
a thick, dense fog had rolled into the valley.
Visibility was terrible. To avoid the long traffic
jams getting out of the venue, there were helicopters
waiting to shuttle the main artists and their
crews back to the city. And Stevie wasn't even
scheduled to be on that particular helicopter,
was he? That's the most tragic part of it. The
accounts say there was one open seat left on
one of the helicopters, a Bell 206B. Stevie,
wanting to get back a little earlier, asked if
he could take that seat. It's around 12 .50 in
the morning. The helicopter lifts off into the
foggy night. On board are Stevie, the pilot,
and three members of Eric Clapton's crew, his
agent, his tour manager, and one of his bodyguards.
And almost immediately after takeoff? It happened
within a minute. The pilot, Jeff Brown, was not
instrument rated for flying a helicopter in those
specific low visibility conditions. He got disoriented
in the fog. He was trying to fly by sight, but
there was nothing to see. He made a banking turn.
And flew straight into the side of the ski hill
that was right next to the venue. He never even
knew it was there. They slammed into the terrain
at over 100 miles per hour. God. The crash was
unsurvivable. Everyone on board was killed instantly.
It's just the sheer brutal suddenness of it.
One minute, he is on top of the world, sober,
happy, playing Sweet Home Chicago with Eric Clapton.
And the next minute... It's just silence and
wreckage on a dark hillside. The wreckage wasn't
even found until the next morning. No one knew
what had happened. Jimmy Vaughn had taken a different
helicopter. He was the one who had to go and
identify his brother's body. I can't even imagine.
He was so devastated by it, he said he quit playing
guitar for almost two years. He couldn't even
look at the instrument. The funeral in Dallas
was huge. Over 3 ,000 people came. Stevie Wonder,
Bonnie Raitt, ZZ Top, Jackson Browne, they were
all there. The gravestone they chose for him
has a very simple inscription. It just says,
thank you for all the love you passed our way.
That feels right. For all the fire and aggression
in his playing, it was ultimately joyful music.
It felt generous. He held nothing back. He gave
you everything he had every single night. So
we look at the legacy now. Over 15 million albums
sold in the U .S. alone. Rock and Roll Hall of
Fame induction in 2015. But I want to end on
the question that I think every fan has. The
what if? This is a question that just haunts
you, isn't it? Where was he going next? Because
he was only 35 years old. He was a baby. He had
just gotten clean. And if you want a clue as
to where his music was heading, you just have
to listen to the last track on the In Step album,
Riviera Paradise. It's so different. It's incredibly
sophisticated. It's melodic. It's got complex
chord changes. It sounds like Wes Montgomery
jamming with Jimi Hendrix. He was already starting
to move beyond the traditional 12 -bar blues
shuffle. He was exploring new textures. The 90s,
of course, saw this huge blues revival. Eric
Clapton's Unplugged was massive. You have guys
like Kenny Wayne Shepard coming up later on,
John Mayer. If Stevie had lived, he wouldn't
have just been a part of that revival. He would
have been the king of it. But I honestly think
he might have transcended the blues genre entirely.
He might have become a true fusion icon, blending
blues, rock, and jazz in a way no one had before.
We'll just never know. It brings up one final
provocative thought for me. We have this really
damaging myth in our culture, especially in music,
about the tortured artist. This idea that you
need to be... broken or drunk or high to have
soul. That the pain is what makes the art authentic.
It's a dangerous lie. And Stevie Ray Vaughan
is the ultimate proof that it is a lie. Because
his best work, his clearest, most technically
brilliant and most emotionally powerful work
came after he got sober. It came when he was
finally in step with his life. He didn't lose
the blues when he lost the booze. If anything,
he deepened his connection to them. He proved
that you can play the blues from a place of strength
and gratitude, not just from a place of weakness
and pain. He proved that the feeling doesn't
require the poison. And that, maybe more than
any guitar lick or any album, is his most profound
legacy. I agree completely. Wow. Well, this has
been a heavy one, but a really important one.
We've gone from the grease barrel in Dallas to
a foggy hillside in Wisconsin. It's a hell of
a lot of life to pack into seven short years.
Seven years. It's still hard to believe. Thanks
for joining us for this deep dive. We'll see
you on the next one.