"I had a friend called Clive, and we were kind of "soul brothers"" "in terms of our mission towards finding great blues." "We got there by listening to rock and roll and white rock and roll and, you know..." "Little Richard and Chuck Berry and Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly." "They were "the big five" for me." "And then we started to research the roots of it." "There was no path to travel on, it was really going to..." "finding good jazz record stores that had a blues department, and just going through and looking at albums to see what it kind of felt like." "And that way... we discovered we went back through time." "Going back through Big Bill Broonzy, back through Muddy Waters, and there is kind of a gap somewhere between the '20s and the'40s." "But there was that shift when people went up to Chicago... there's a whole area in the middle which is kind of a little weak... but in the early days there were so few, that really, it got easier." "The further back you went, in a way it kind of was like you were getting to the thin end of the wedge." "So it was easy to know who really started all this." "We had Son House and Charley Patton," "Blind Lemon Jefferson, Leroy Carr and Robert Johnson, and I've always enjoyed listening to Robert Johnson more than anybody else." "Morning." " Morning." " How are you?" " Very good." "How are you?" " All right, all right." "Is anybody else here?" "Okay." "Where's Hiroshi?" " What's up, Bill?" " How are you doing?" "Let's do "Kindhearted Woman" in "A."" "Unlike the record version." "Stand by." "One more time." "One more?" "That's all right, man." "It gets better each time." "We'II go on." "We'II move on and we'II come back to it." " Is it "Hellhound"?" " Yeah." "Yeah, lovely." " Cool." " We'II have a break." " All right, A good one." " Wow." "How old were you when you first heard Robert Johnson?" "15." "A very arrogant kind of... moody, pseudo-intellectual." "Did that music appeal to you right away when you were 15?" "Oh yeah." "It kind of went along with my image of myself, too." "I saw myself as being cast from different material to everybody else." "I mean, the fact that I'd found this one other guy who wanted to dress like... we were into this look that was so "anti."" "Everyone in England at that time was trying to be like a Beatle or something." "We just didn't march to the same drum, so I think Robert was interesting to me because he came across as a kind of an isolated guy." "It wasn't "good-time" music, and he was singing out of despair and loneliness a lot of the time." "I was a deliberate Ioner, so I really identified with Robert Johnson." "Did you know about his life?" "I mean, about..." "Well, yes, because on the album, that first album that came out," ""The King of the Delta Blues,"" "there was everything, I think, that you can even read about him now." "There wasn't any more to learn." "Once you'd read those cover notes, you had it all." "And it had, you know, several versions of his death on that album cover, too... whether or not he was "barking like a dog," going crazy, or died from poisoning, or just disappeared." "It was like I'm reading the script for a movie, the back of this album, and he was the star, you know." " Do you need more of that?" " I need more hi-hat, actually." "Can you put more, yeah..." "more hi-hat in that?" "More?" "More." "Ready!" "Alan thinks some stuff sounds better than the record." "Yeah." "So what are we gonna do, make a new record?" " We are... well, I think this is a DVD." " Yeah?" "And what we'II do is, I talked to Hiroshi about coming maybe to Dallas for the festival, do a couple more things there, and cover what we didn't do, that's why I put "Sweet Home Chicago" in." "Maybe look at some other songs, and he wants me to do a solo one" " so we kind of cover everything." " Yeah." "Do you think there's anything we need to go at again?" "Well, if you don't mind, I want you to hear from the first lot." " Let's just check "Hellhound."" " Okay." "I think it's pretty damn good." ""Hellhound"?" "How can any musician who is true to himself keep his experience out of his music?" "I mean, it's impossible." "And that's where all true great music is, is that you hear someone's life in what they play." "So that's probably what it is about Robert that is so magnetic... is that whatever took place..." "and it is all a bit of a mystery... it was as large as anyone else's life ever, really, and he did manage to express it all." "I don't..." "I heard also that when he was live" "I heard rumors that he could be entertaining... that he was an entertainer, that he would go off the beaten track and play standards, too." "So it would be..." "I think it would be a foolish assumption to assume that he was just one kind of guy." "Well done, everybody." "Well done." " Thanks, man." " A good start... to whatever it's gonna be." "There's this interpretation out there or myth that he went to the crossroads somewhere and sold his soul to the devil, the devil came and tuned his guitar, and he became awfully good and returned thereafter..." "My interpretation is he's talking about trouble or he's talking about a woman." "That's how that song, "This morning, you knocked upon my door," "I said, "Hello, Satan, I believe it's time to go."" "I think he's talking about his girlfriend, to be honest with you." "That's my way... it's simple..." "I don't really know that I care to imagine what it would be like if it was really like voodoo." "Maybe there was." "I think it was so much a part of their daily life that kind of stuff..." "everyone dabbled in it... I'm sure he had a "mojo,"" "and I'm sure he knew people that could work spells and et cetera, et cetera." "But whether or not he made a "pact"..." "I don't know." "I don't know." "I choose to think not, because the thing that comes through about Robert's stuff... maybe this would be unaffected anyway..." "was his innocence." "It doesn't sound to me like what he did was a calculated affair to be the best in the world, do you know what I mean?" "That's what people said... he signed this deal so he could be the best." "That's not what comes across to me, because he's not a show-off." "None of his music is flashy." "It's just perfect." "It's often really understated." "And that wouldn't go along with someone who wanted to be recognized on a grand scale." "You think a more realistic interpretation is that he returned to his hometown and perhaps he practiced very, very hard and he came back an extremely good musician?" "I guess..."shedding wood," is that the term?" "Yeah..."woodshedding."" "And what was it like for you?" "I read you went to John Mayall's..." "I did the same thing." "And I think there was just a level of commitment in that I wanted..." "I was suddenly moving... into an area where the musicians were a little older and a bit more serious." "I had been with the Yardbirds when I was about 19, 18, 19 at that time, and we were having fun." "We were making good music, and we were having fun." "These guys were serious musicians too." "But when I left that band," "I recognized that there was a level of expectation that I was stepping into that I had better be ready for." "And so..." "I had at my disposal one of the biggest blues record collections in the world, I imagine, in John's house." "And I would listen all day and play along and imitate and learn and study." "Half the day, every day, I would put on a record and play along with it." "That was "woodshedding," and I probably did that for two years while I was there." "There's a similarity in that to what Robert did." "I think it comes from..." "it may have come from the same place, that I just wanted to be as good as I could be." "But not to anybody else's standards, just mine." "Let's have a little break." "For me this is a luxury..." "a labor of love to do this, because I can move to another genre of music quite easily." "L'II go back to rock and roll, or play electric blues, or even reggae and jazz to a certain extent." "But Robert, we have to think about this was all he did." "And so when he went into the studio to do those things, he was playing them every day, every night." "I wonder, because some of those alternative takes are so different, if he didn't have many different versions of each song and which one he decided to do on the day." "So we were allowed a tiny little window into his world." "I can't even imagine what it was like to have been there in that day, what that place was like, what he was like and who else was there." "The fact that we went there was the best thing we could do to get in touch with it, but God, it's so far away." " The stairs look the same." " Yeah." "Probably hasn't been painted since." " Oh, this is cool." " It's amazing." "That's it?" "He doesn't ever do that." "No, he doesn't do that!" "He does..." "it's like this flamenco song." "It sounds like he's doing that." " How does he do it?" " I don't know." " Oh right." "Like this?" " It almost sounds like" "It's almost like notes being picked but it can't be because it's too fast." "It's like..." " Something like "ba-da-da-da dum..."" " Yeah." " Oh, there." " Because I do that..." "I go..." ""Mmmm..." I hum..." "# You hear me when I moan... #" " The last verse." " No, the one before the last verse." "Oh, okay." "But it doesn't matter." "If you remember, great," " if you don't..." " Okay." " Are we ready?" " Yeah." " Should we do one?" " Yes." "Let's just do it for real then." "Okay." "Whew." "It's so tough on the fingers, this one." "Because it's "da, da-da da-da," it's not just one... it's "da, da-da"..." "So crazy." "But that was pretty good." "Ready?" ""Me and the Devil"?" " Which leaves?" " "From Four Till Late."" ""From Four Till Late" and then "Terraplane" or "Hellhound."" ""Terraplane" again was the one we were gonna do." " "Love in Vain."" " Oh, "Love in Vain," yeah." "Ready?" "Dead right." "Right first time." "John Mayall was aware that Robert Johnson was my main man." "From the day we met, that's probably what we talked about." "It was his instigation that made me do "Rambling."" "We just went into the studio for a day, literally, and played the songs that we did onstage with a couple of songs that John had written specially for the occasion, but there was very little rehearsal and when we got to the end of it," "he said, "You ought to do Rambling." I said, "l've never done it."" "I knew the song from listening to it, but we did a version of that and that was the first time I ever did a Robert Johnson song." "Was that also the first time you ever sang and recorded your voice?" "No, it wasn't, It was the first time I sang solo." "I sang with..." "I sang with the Yardbirds, and it was in background." "I didn't really sing lead stuff too much." "How did you feel about doing lead stuff for the first time?" "I didn't think I was any..." "I mean, I still don't..." "I don't really think of myself as a singer." "I have to work really hard to pitch properly." "I heard that when you recorded "Rambling"" "you were concerned about your voice." " Yeah." " There was nobody else in the studio and it was an overdub and you wanted to try it alone?" "I think that's right, yeah." "I think they all had to go and they had to turn all the lights out, all of that usual stuff." "I saw you at the Hollywood Bowl the other day, singing in front of thousands of people." "How does that happen?" "What is that?" "That's about a 30-year period of adjustment." "It took a long time." "From John Mayall I went to Cream, and I went to Cream with the assumption that I was gonna be the lead singer." "But when the chips were down," "I wasn't a singer really." "I still wasn't a singer." "It took me about another four years to really commit to the idea that I had to start singing, and that if I was gonna be free to be a musician, I needed to start singing." "But then, funnily enough, in contradiction to all this, when I started playing the guitar in purely social occasions... like in a pub..." "like this, with an acoustic guitar..." "I would sing." "And I didn't really have..." "I wasn't really self-conscious about it, because in pubs and places like that, people ignore you anyway." "If you start to sing, they'II listen for a minute and then they're gonna carry on their conversation." "So you can get by doing that stuff in those kind of situations without being criticized or noticed too much." "It was actually easy." "So in a way..." "I had already "laid out my stall" from day one." "When I got into professional situations," "I would shrink from it, you know." " You getting there?" " Yeah." " Okay, are you ready?" "Okay." " Yes." "How technically proficient was Robert Johnson?" "When I first heard him" "I think Keith Richards said this too... we all thought that he was being accompanied by someone." "It sounded like..." "it wasn't unusual in those days." "You often had a piano player and a guitar player, or two guitar players... and it wasn't until later that I realized you could do it, what he does, but you have to really..." "I mean, I've had to work really hard in the last few days to try and do some of the things that I needed to do to play alone." "And my take on Robert Johnson so far is that it needs two people to play what he plays and sing at the same time." "And on top of what I'm describing he had a completely freestyle approach to any kind of structure too, so that given it was a 12-bar structure he was working in on one verse it may be 13 or 14." "He would just extend parts or shorten them according to how he felt or what he needed to do next." "And that makes it really difficult to impersonate, because if you're gonna emulate this stuff, you kind of reach a point where you think," ""Well, shall I do an "approximation"" "or is it necessary to really sit down and completely copy it?"" "And I think to do that would be a life's work." "I mean, seriously it would be a life's work for any musician." "There's really one thing..." "the thing that he does, there's a style that he plays where he plays in a sort of "cross tempo."" "And when he goes to the "B" section... the second part of the song, given that it's a 12-bar... he plays something underneath his voice which is sort of independent in time." "What it is, say the song is..." ""B" section is now..." "And over the top of that he sings a line in a different time." "I mean, to do those things at the same time... and I still can't do it completely right," "I can kind of get an approximation... but it's almost one of those things when you listen to it it just sounds so relaxed and yet when you come to try it and do it you find out how almost virtually impossible it is." "And I've had to work on this every morning and every night for the last week to try and just do one song like that." "So that's pretty difficult." "Ready?" "Okay." "We'II move on." "Have a little break and change guitars." " Yeah." " Okay, change guitars." "That's standard?" "Okay." "Let me just try this, see if it's ready to go." " Are you ready?" " Are we loaded?" "All set?" "I think that was okay." "So we're done..." "musicwise?" "Incredible fingers." "Look how long that joint is there." "What does it feel like to you when you're playing?" " Good question." " What does it feel like when you're going off on a riff or something?" "Well, it's the closest thing to being truly in the moment" "I can experience, really." "I think if I'm... if I'm just in a social situation and we're having a meal, part of me is there..." "a good deal of it, maybe 75%." "But part of my brain is off somewhere thinking about what I'm going to do tomorrow..." ""Have I got everything I need to make the journey I'm gonna make,"" "et cetera, et cetera, "Did I forget something about what we were supposed to do yesterday?"" "But doing that kind of work, especially the stuff that we're doing with just me and the acoustic, requires such concentration that I think this is as close as I get to being really in the moment." "Then time just sort of stands still." "At the same time, it seems to go by very quickly." "It's all like a kind of..." "it's like being in an accident." "It's just a blur." "But I love it." "I love that kind of... when it feels like it's really going well and I'm just in tune and in harmony with time, it's a great feeling." "You were talking a bit about being "in service" the other day." "Because I'd imagine you've been quite successful." "It's not financially necessary for you to keep playing and touring and stuff." "What is it that drives you at this point to continue?" "The experience of making music, really is the most... professionally, and even... just in an amateur way, too." "The joy of making music is what I was put here for, I believe." "And I kind of knew..." "I knew right away once I'd started to kind of get it right in my teens, once I'd started to experience the joy of getting a result from practice, that this was my "destiny," I suppose." "And I always thank God I intuitively knew that the music was the most important part of it." "It wasn't what I could get from music, it was what I could give to it." "When you asked me that question, "What is it like?"" "I wish people could experience what it's like to be really focused on doing something musical and have it work and be in tune and harmony." "That can only come, I believe, if I'm "in service," if I'm serving music rather than trying to manipulate it to my ends, you know." "There he is." " Cameras everywhere." " How are you doing?" "Well, give me a hug, man." "Eric, what are we doing today again?" "I have "When You Got a Good Friend," "Milkcow"..." ""When You Got a Good Friend"..." "are you writing it down?" "This is what I confirmed with you the other day." "What does that say?" "Yeah, that's exactly it, except maybe not that way "round"." "I think... I'd like to get the way I've got it here which is probably the way I'm gonna do it onstage... is to get "Tamales" after "Kindhearted Woman."" ""Cause then it kinda gets it out of the way." "Okay." "Our man on the video board." "All the camera angles, hi-definition TV, widescreen, future format... we're going to capture everything..." "Shoot it real time." "That's the time of the day right now, all the cameras are gonna be synched to the time of day." " Right." " So it's "Reality TV."" "Fantastic."