Ya know, I know I've mentioned a lot how it's kind of funny that a lot of my friends had older sisters and that's where I found out about a lot of music when I was a kid. Johnny Winter is not on that list of "Music I Learned About From Girls." Johnny is on the list of "Music I Learned About Hanging Around With Guys That Are Older Than Me." By the time I was in high school, I had expanded my circle of friends to where I was all of a sudden hanging around with a couple of guys that were definitely the babies of the family. In age, not attitude. I had really good friends, and I actually still see a lot of them quite regularly (I know, that's kind of weird).
Johnny Winter was the kind of guy that you'd hear hanging around in a garage, drinking beer and smoking cigarettes while taking turns trying to burn an exhaust system off an old car. Cars in Ohio see rough winters and a lot of salt, and in a few years, those muffler clamps turn into rusty blobs and wrenches are worthless. So we'd get under the car and bust knuckles and swear in turns and get that stuff off of there. It was kind of fun, but I don't miss working on cars. I kind of miss listening to things like Johnny Winter over some Frankenstereo with an old pair of Panasonic Thrusters or Zenith Allegro speakers screwed into the rafters of a detached garage with five other guys. Those guys weren't listening to Elvis Costello or The Cars. Those guys wanted to hear some wailing on guitars, and Johnny Winter was one of the kings of that.
You'd hear all kinds of stuff in a garage. Too much Led Zeppelin, for sure. That's where I heard stuff like Les Dudek and Frank Marino and Mahogany Rush for the first time. Hanging in a garage with guys was kind of fun back then. We got to work on some really cool cars, too. I had a friend with a 56 Chevy 2 door, a 62 Mercury Monterey S-55, a 67 Cougar with a 390 - that list goes on and on. You could get those cars so cheap back then. I'm not much of a car guy, but I just don't get what they're doing when they aren't working. I'm a wonderful assistant, though!
I loved hearing Johnny Winter on a nice summer evening with a cold beer and a cool car up on jack stands, or with the hood up and guys figuring out how to get an old water pump off, or get valves to quit ticking. It was a lot of fun, and hearing something like Johnny Winter giving a serious set of balls to Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited. I know, I heard it in the garage more than once; Dylan's version has plenty of balls of its own, but like I said then, "Not like Johnny's does. That's some serious badass shit, right there." I still say that. Johnny's voice just matches his muscular guitar tone so well, that he can make a song his own. Dylan shouldn't feel bad, because Johnny takes Johnny B. Goode and makes that his, too. I love the originals of both of those songs, but Johnny just puts them into his Texas Tornado of Sound and they come out so, so great.
I think those visits in garages are what makes me still so enamored of what so many upper middle aged mid western men think is what "Rock" should be all about. I can listen to a lot of those kinds of guitar slinger records and I just get it. I love the wailing. I dig the big drums and thumpin' bass. I know it's out of style and it was pretty much out of style the day it came out, but I just get it, man. I think it's cool and I never cared when old girlfriends didn't want to hear a guy like Johnny play six hundred notes when three might have done. There's something to be said for excess, but you have to do it right, or you just become a stupid wanker. I'm not exactly sure where that line is, but Johnny Winter knows exactly where it is, and he goes right up to that line and steps back just in time, every time. I think he's the guy Stevie Ray Vaughan really, truly aspired to be, but I think Stevie crossed that line now and then. He couldn't pull back consistently enough.
So my copy of Second Winter isn't one of the original 1969 copies. If I had to guess, I think I'd guess late 70's. It's in nice shape, a couple clicks here and there, but I think this one was played and loved, the same way I'd have played and loved it if I had owned it for its entire life. It's a gatefold cover with a cool inside picture and side four is blank. I always liked that they did that, because they didn't try to squeeze out one song and then squish everything onto a single lp. It's nice because it sounds really good and you don't need to crank it way up to make it sound that way. I think Second Winter is really, truly one of the great guitar albums of the 70's. Yes, I'm aware it came out in 69 but believe me, this was a staple in almost every group of guys that hung out throughout the 70's, and no one considered it an old 60's album.
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