Guitar Heroes – Stevie Ray Vaughan
I feel quite bittersweet writing about Stevie Ray Vaughan as I still remember being pretty gutted when he died so young and in such an ironic way. But lets concentrate on the legacy of truly amazing guitar playing he has left us.
When you listen to the soulful, beautiful but almost tortured notes of something like “Texas Flood ”, from the album of the same title, you are just “there”, with the words of the song. You can see the telephone lines – like the heavy gauge strings on Stevie’s guitar – coming down.
Stevie Ray Vaughan – Heavy Gauge!
It’s sometimes hard to equate his string bending, fluid style with the Dick Dale like brutality of his guitar set up. Stevie apparently used gauge 14 strings – tuned down a step to get his sound. He played an old strat, stripped of most of its paint which he used to soak in linseed oil to add even more fullness to the sound.
His amazing tremolo work was helped by a cut down whammy bar which, by dint of reversing the guitar southpaw style, was on the side of the bridge nearest his head.
You can hear a lot of Hendrix in the SRV style especially the bluesier stuff that Jimi played but Stevie added a Texas slant of his own – an infectious full tilt boogie feel. So distinctive was his signature sound that he was in demand by artists as diverse as David Bowie – who knows a good guitarist when he hears one! That’s him on “Lets dance” if you didn’t know.
Sadly Stevie Ray Vaughan was from an early age a heavy drinker and cocaine user, which very nearly killed him. He had made a recovery however not long before he was tragically killed in a helicopter accident. Like with Hendrix, who knows what he would have sounded like if he’d had more time free from his addictions.
Strat’s n Valves
SRV grew up in a time and a place full of wonderful guitarists, not least his big brother Jimmie, himself a guitar legend in Dallas and Austin. His style was born from a powerful mixture of the sounds he must’ve been absorbing from birth. The resulting fast paced, coke fuelled rocking rhythm and blues is totally uplifting as is the slower paced, more thoughtful material at which he was equally great.
Like all truly great guitarists there is something more than the strat, the vintage Fender amps and the notes he played. It’s the attitude; the hugeness of Texas, the soul and that unreachable X factor that made Stevie Ray Vaughan stand out from a million blues players. Gone but never forgotten.
So, yet another, sadly missed Strat and valve amp man who in his short career recorded a brilliant body of work and inspired millions to pick up the guitar for the first time. Required listening has to be the Texas Flood album but if you can’t get that – start anywhere – It’s all good.
