Like
most homes in Tarrytown, Eric Johnson’s beige stone house is dwarfed by the tall trees that
tower above it. Against their late-summer, matte-green backdrop, its worn wood
paneling, like the fence out front and the walkway to the front door, is almost
colorless. It’s a plain, one-story dwelling that would no more call your
attention than the squirrels leaping from tree to tree far above your head.
A black door with a crescent window, tucked back around the corner, opens to
find the 42-year-old Johnson looking his familiar self: thin, boyish, and
smiling. With his dirty blond hair, light-colored eyes, and second-hand-looking
attire, Johnson blends into his surroundings like any other creature that
inhabits the forest floor. To meet him on the street in this neighborhood,
walking, you’d probably pay him no mind. His greeting comes in soft tones.
Inside the house, the foyer is uncluttered. On the right, a breakfast table
butts up against a railing that looks out over the sunken living room. On the
left, a sideboard stands against the wall. Straight ahead, between the two
doorways that lead into the back of the house and kitchen respectively, sits a
small table. On it, there’s a short stack of brightly-colored CDs. Venus
Isle? No. Three-song promotional samplers that will go out to radio. He
only has advances of the new album at this point. The artwork is done, though.
Want to see it? It’s in the back.
The hallway to the back bedrooms is narrow and with its low ceiling, hardwood
floor, and white walls, feels a bit claustrophobic and somewhat sterile, like a
half way house or convalescent home. The first bedroom on the right is Anne’s,
Johnson’s girlfriend. It’s Spartan, save for several dresses draped on the made
bed. The bathroom, down the hall just before the master bedroom, is roomy and
bright thanks to a skylight that pours sunshine into the walk-in shower.
Closing that door, Johnson leans across and opens the one to his bedroom. It,
too, is Spartan — except for the unmade bed. Clean, nondescript, again, nearly
colorless. (Well, the shades are drawn. He is a musician after
all.) There’s only one thing that gives the room any life; a large lithograph
straight back on the wall opposite the door. It’s the cover artwork to Cream’s
Disraeli Gears album, and its psychedelic neon burn fairly glows in the
dark.
Off the bedroom is the fourth and final door, behind which lies Johnson’s
small rehearsal space and Anne’s computer room. Naturally, there are guitars,
but not so many that it’s obscene. Obscene, rather, is the wooden wall cabinet
full of Johnson’s personal recordings. Dig through the miles and miles of
reel-to-reel tape and audio cassettes, and you’d probably find the guitarist’s
unreleased maiden solo effort, Seven Worlds, and several different
versions of both Ah Via Musicom and Venus Isle. It’s a safe bet
as well that every show Johnson’s ever played in Austin is on those shelves.
There’s little doubt of the genius encrypted on those tapes or that the
personally modest but musically vain Johnson will ever release anything on them
to his adoring public.
Directly across from this musical wall safe are several framed pictures of
Johnson. His favorite is the one of him and Tony Bennett, whom I’ve mistaken as
Carl Perkins. He gleams just looking at it; he can die happy now. Did Bennett
know who you were? “Oh, ‘course not,” he laughs. Chet Atkins certainly knew who
Johnson was as he asked the Austin boy wonder to play on a song for his ’94
release, Read My Licks, as well as make an appearance on the TNN special
that accompanied the album. Johnson likes the picture of the two of them
together on a yacht (also in the CD booklet), but not the final mix of
“Somebody Loves Me Now.” He prefers the 10-minute version his co-producer
Richard Mullen mixed. It no doubt resides in that cabinet, now. The best photo,
however, has to be the one of Johnson, B.B. King — with whom he toured in ’93
— and Johnson’s father, David, all sitting at the bar in King’s club in
Memphis. The senior Johnson looks — to use one of Eric’s favorite expressions
— “all lathered up.”
Back in the foyer, we descend the spiral staircase into the living room. At
its foot is a mid-size black Steinway, which faces the wall of glass that looks
out into a good-sized yard. On the small, weathered deck outside, two equally
weathered wooden chairs sit side-by-side looking out at the cut grass. The
living room itself could be anyone’s, really; there’s a TV, stereo, couch, love
seat, fireplace, plants — all the normal trappings of your parent’s house.
Nothing seems out of place, not even the large, framed, purple-tinted picture
of Jimi Hendrix. Like the Disraeli Gears lithograph, it’s the only
splash of color in the room. Yet as Johnson settles into the large white couch
for the first of our three interviews, one thing is abundantly clear.
This is not where Eric Johnson lives.
The House
When the Chronicle last checked in with Johnson (Vol. XIII, No. 46) itwas July 1994, and already the guitarist had been at work on Venus Isle for nearly two years. At that time, the album was still titled Longpath
Meadow — a phrase that appears in a poem from the liner notes of Ah Via
Musicom — and had been recorded twice over. It had also been scrapped
twice. Still, Johnson was aiming for a 1995 release, with the album’s second
half slated for release the following year. He also talked about putting
together a blues band on the side, partly it seemed, because he was going a bit
stir-crazy in the studio.
That fall, Alien Love Child came to pass. With longtime friend and frequent
musical collaborator Bill Maddox on drums and Chris Marsh on bass, Johnson’s
trio played a handful of local gigs under the moniker, the last coming in May
of ’95 when the band opened for Jimmie Vaughan at the Austin Music Hall. This
was the last time Johnson was heard from that year.
In all, it would take Johnson six and a half years to complete the album, once
titled Travel One Hope (as the advances proclaim), before his label,
Capitol, balked on the title as being too oblique. Eighteen songs had been cut
down to 11, and plans for a second volume were shelved. But let’s not quibble.
It was done. Finally. And yet, the first question is obvious. Why did it take
so long?
“There’s a lot of reasons,” says Johnson, already used to the question. “I
just wasn’t satisfied with what was coming out and where it was. When I was
playing, it had kind of a groove that, to me, was a little too antsy. I wanted
to try and improve my groove, so it was necessary for me to be honest with
myself and go, `Hey, I’ve got to work on this. It’s not very good.’ I thought
the singing could use improvement, the songwriting too. And I fell into a trap
where I just did it over and over and over trying to get it right. But there
were other extenuating circumstances — personal and group things, and family.
There were other things involved too.”
“Extenuating circumstances” turned out to be the implosion of his longtime
partnership with bassist Kyle Brock and drummer Tommy Taylor, the former having
worked with Johnson since the mid-Seventies and the latter having come aboard a
decade later. The guitarist is reluctant to talk about the split other than to
say it came about while recording basic tracks for the new album, during which
a backlog of resentment — presumably over Johnson’s snail’s pace in the studio
— surfaced. Also figuring in on the long, protracted recording process was
Johnson’s scaling back to a mere six days a week in the studio, the declining
health of his father over the past several years (as well as his own bout with
tinnitus), and the dissolution of his relationship with girlfriend Darcie
Silver. In fact, Venus Isle is dedicated to Silver, who was murdered
earlier this year in Washington D.C., where she had moved to participate in
Whole Foods’ management program.
More than any one of these individual factors, however, there’s perhaps one
overriding reason Venus Isle took so long to make: It is one of the
music industry’s most feared beasts — the dreaded “follow-up.” Whereas his
debut, Tones — itself delayed while Johnson sat out a six-year deal
with Lone Wolf — sold a respectable 50,000 units for the then-unknown
guitarist, its follow-up, Ah Via Musicom, which took four years to make,
not only sold 800,000 copies, it also won a Grammy for “Cliffs of Dover,” and
became the first album since charting began in the late Sixties to push three
instrumentals (“Cliffs of Dover,” “Righteous,” “Trademark”) into the Top 10.
What’s that phrase — tough act to follow? And though he was trying to do just
that, at some point it dawned on Johnson that something was gumming up the
process.
“It started becoming apparent to me that certain facets of what I try to do
musically needed working on,” explains Johnson. “I needed to try to cultivate
more of a consummate package of what I’m doing, rather than just working on
guitar licks. I wanted to start thinking about the way I sing, and the lyrics
and the songwriting, and the way that the feel was of all the other musicians
as well as myself. And it started becoming apparent to me that I was going
through the natural process of trying to evolve.”
Bad timing, eh?
“Anytime in life we have to stop and grow usually comes at an inopportune
moment. It’s like you’re driving around and you need gas; it’s always at the
wrong time. It slowed everything down. There’s no question I took too long. It
would have been much better for me not to have spent so long on it. But that
metamorphosis was at least starting to begin.”
Metamorphosis. Yes. With Ah Via Musicom, Johnson had finally reached a
critical plateau. After promoting it with nearly three years of road work, he’d
reaped its rewards and watched the accolades and cash pour in. Yet after the
dust had cleared, Johnson suddenly found himself standing on the summit of 20
years worth of work. All those years spent toiling in smoky clubs, all those
years spent waiting for the right record deal, all those years spent toiling in
studios — all those years reaching for the success that finally came. The
dream had come true. Now, the question was `What next’?
“Oh yeah, definitely,” asserts Johnson. “I always had a vision of how I wanted
this record to sound. I always kinda heard it a certain way. That seemed to be
pretty clear to me. But I knew I wanted to shift gears a little bit in what I
was doing, and I couldn’t see a clear picture of that. I’m still trying to see
a clear picture of that. I can see it clearer now — I’m starting to get
glimpses of it.”
What he was glimpsing, however, was not necessarily a “Guitar Album.” As an
avowed fan of classical music, someone who had taken piano lessons starting at
age 5, as well as a connoisseur of world music — African rhythms, Bulgarian
voice music, Flamenco guitar — Johnson was suddenly dreading more and more
overdubs.
“I think that’s what was at the real heart of some of my frustration — the
guitar,” admits Johnson. “I’m frustrated with the way it sounds. I’m trying
really hard to at least refine the sound, if not change it a bit. If I stay in
my own personal status quo with my sound — especially from the past — it’s
like building a house with a hatchet: You can do it, but it’s frustrating and
you might dream of some Frank Lloyd Wright thing and you need special tools.
It’s true the tools aren’t the important facet, but if you get the right tools
it’ll facilitate your work. A lot of my unclarity about exactly what I want to
do is stemming from being a little frustrated with where the electric guitar is
now.”
Ever wanted to move beyond just being a guitarist?
“If I’m totally honest with myself, yes. I don’t mind it. I thank my lucky
stars I have a record deal. There’s tons of great guitarists and a lot of them
don’t have deals. So, I definitely appreciate that. But it’s kind of bugged me
a little bit over the years; it’s like people always differentiate. Somebody
came up to me once and said, `I hear you’re selling a lot of guitar records.’
What a strange thing to say. That’s happened a lot. You know, it’s always that
instrumental guitar thing; let’s go crazy, play as many licks as possible.
“Actually, every time I see an unedited version of a TV show we did or a live
show, I think, `You know, I really should chill out — economize just a little
bit.’ Still blow up and go crazy, but just economize just a little bit, bring a
little more into the palette so that the other will actually shine more. And
ironically enough, that’s the way I feel, but when I go onstage, I don’t do
that. Really, a portion of that perception of me as only a guitarist, I’ve kind
of done to myself. In all honesty, I’m not a real huge fan of [shredding
guitar]. That’s not really my vision as a musician.”
This is where Eric Johnson lives — in that vision. But what that vision is,
exactly, is hard to describe. Hard to describe, and even harder to get on
tape.
The Rehearsal Space
For any artist, working within any medium — music, film, theatre, literature,sculpture, painting — there exists a gap between the vision in their head and
what comes out on whichever canvas they choose. For some, the distance between
vision and reality is not far; Alfred Hitchcock used to say he had every frame
of his films shot in his head before he actually started a film’s
pre-production. Shoots, then, for the most part were quick and easy — and he
churned out one film after another, most of them uniformly excellent.
For others — notably, musicians like Lucinda Williams, Kate Bush, Peter
Gabriel — the distance between artistic vision and actual output can be a
chasm — as wide as the years between their releases. The vision in their head
may be clear, but translating that onto tape is a process more tortuous than
even they can describe. Artists such as these are labeled perfectionists,
consummate nitpickers who will not send their work out into the world until
it’s perfect. And yet, because perfection does not exist in the real world, is
their belief that they can capture it belie a certain vanity? A vanity that
they can create perfection — even if it’s only their own personal idea
of perfection?
“That’s a really interesting question,” says Johnson sitting up straight. “In
that light, yeah, I think there is a real vanity to me about my music. But I
don’t know if that’s the complete description of what it is, because you try
and do the best you can. I don’t know. That’s real baffling. I think if it was
only vanity, then not only would I want to get it perfect, but then I’d want to
sit around and listen to it forever. To me, once I finish my records I never
listen to them. I’m not very attached to them. I’m not sure what the driving
force is to get ’em as good as I can.”
Sitting in his cramped rehearsal space somewhere off North Loop, Johnson is
clearly intrigued by a discussion about the inherent difficulties of
translating artistic vision into something concrete. He stares a moment at the
tape recorder on the music stand between us. It is quiet. In the next room,
stacks and stacks of black equipment cases, stenciled with the initials “E.J.”
sit silently by the loading bay door. Outside a steady drizzle continues. In
this room, a rather dingy, oblong space where Johnson spends much of his time
practicing by himself, is a clutter of shelves, empty amp cabinets, and a
series of tall sound partitions so that one might escape the roar from the
Marshals that sit behind Johnson. There’s a giant effects board at his feet —
as well as the dirty brown rug that covers the floor — and other than the
chair he sits on and the stool on which I’m perched, there’s little else —
except another framed picture of James Marshall Hendrix half hidden in the
corner. Though faded, it provides a familiar spark to the dim surroundings.
And spark is precisely what the subject of vanity and artistic vision have
done to Johnson, who is now “all lathered up.”
“I think it was growing up on a lot of classical music, and just hearing the
expertise that a lot of those musicians have,” he begins. “And somehow or
another, I’ve gotten into this fantasia thing of wanting to try to put as much
as I can into whatever kind of music I’m doing. So, I’m having to always reach
for something that I can’t quite do. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do
it. It’s a bit of a swimming upstream.
“There are people like [classical pianist] Glenn Gould. They go into the
studio, and their level of expertise and what they can do in one night is
nothing short of amazing. And I marvel at that kind of thing, thinking `Well,
how can I put that in my music?’ But in the translation of me putting it into
my music, instead of taking a day, it takes forever. All I can do is say, `God,
these guys! Not only are they really, really talented, but they’re just so
focused.’ There’s not unnecessary filters between what they’re executing and
that flow. And those filters can be ego, vanity — too many other things going
on in life. Whatever.
“This might be arguable, but, typically, I think pop music breeds more of
those liabilities than other styles of music, because in the many faces of pop,
the percentile of the art seems to be less than the percentile of the art
comprised in the many faces of other music. Like in classical or jazz, a large
piece of that percentile is music, and less of it seems to be getting promo
pictures right or the make-up right, or getting to the TV station on time. But
in pop music, the percentile of music to everything else is dwarfed. So you
have all these other factors that come into play. Given that equation, it’s
just more complicated.
“I think this can potentially cause a psychic erosion on artists eventually,
so they have to devise their own ways of weather-proofing against that. One
protection for me is to listen to musicians I really admire, like Glenn Gould,
and go, `Well, no matter how much I practice my whole life, I’ll just still
be…” He pauses a moment.
“It’s just a reality check no matter how good you think you might get.”
But has being a guitar icon caused your artistic vision to erode?
“If I’m honest with myself, it has some. If you have a record that is a little
successful. Then it’s like, `Well, what am I gonna do now? Will this next one
be good? What do I do? Is this right? Am I getting the right sound? Are the
songs okay? I’m coming to a place in myself where it doesn’t feel like erosion
to me. I feel there are issues I have to deal with, but I don’t really feel
taken off balance by them. To me, it’s more of a question of trying to stay
true to my vision.”
But can the vision in your head ever match what gets put down on tape?
“I don’t think so. It’s like there’ll never be a copy of a picture that’s as
good as the picture. Or maybe there will, I don’t know. I guess a copy will
always be a copy and that absolute vision — when you put it in earth terms or
whatever — I don’t think can ever be [captured]. It’s probably best that it
isn’t, ’cause if it ever was then you’d go `Well, I finally did it. Okay, I can
stop now.’
The Studio
Not only did royalty checks from Ah Via Musicom enable Johnson to buy ahouse in his hometown, they also made it possible for the guitarist to craft
something even more beholden to his standards of perfection: a studio. And like
his recording process, building this studio has been slow, methodical, and has
taken years. Nearly four, to be exact. “Every time I get some more money, I put
it into the studio,” explains Johnson. Today, his dollars are hard at work.
Besides producer Mullen, and manager Joe Priesnitz, contractor Brian
Hernandez, and acoustic engineer Ken Dickensheets are at the site today (“Just
say that it’s somewhere in South Travis County,” says Priesnitz.) Everyone
seems to be happy with the acoustics in the cathedral-like main room of the
studio, but there are questions about the air-conditioning ducts — the number,
their locations, and their role in the acoustic alchemy that makes up the room
where Johnson will do the bulk of his future recording. Dickensheets, who’s
responsible for the crystalline sound in the University of Texas’ Bass Concert
Hall and the P.A. in Texas Stadium, assures Johnson everything will be fine.
But Johnson hedges.
What about the lights? And the rug? How will they affect the acoustics?
Priesnitz looks a little worried, but Dickensheets answers each one of
Johnson’s questions with confidence and ease. By now he’s used to the
musician’s attention to even the most minute details. He looks up at the
ceiling, and smiles. Everything will be fine. Now, Johnson looks worried.
Though soft-spoken and mild-mannered, he’s also persistent. For every answer,
there are two more queries, and each one seems to test a different law of
physics.
Next, it’s Hernandez’s turn. What about a cabinet for all of the guitarist’s
gear? Will it be inside or out? Wood or metal? And the alarm system? What’s the
response time from the police out here? The group moves towards the heavily
sound-proofed drum booth just off the main room, discussing 100 different
things that have to be taken care of by September 1, the day Johnson would like
to move in for band rehearsals. The G3 tour, featuring Johnson, Joe Satriani,
and Steve Vai, kicks off October 11, leaving just six weeks of rehearsal time
for a new band and a guitarist who has not played out in over a year.
Mullen, meanwhile, sits on the long work table in the middle of the room,
dangling his feet and looking up at the two large scaffolds on which sit
acoustic tiles that still need to be imbedded into the ceiling. “I’m still
wondering whether they’re gonna put a window in the console room, so I can see
what Eric’s doing,” he says motioning towards the back wall, which separates
this room from what will ostensibly be his room. That room is in more disarray
than the main room, and as for the living quarters that will be in the back of
this self-contained building, they haven’t even started building the second
floor. That’s going to have to wait until royalty checks from Venus Isle need cashing. The question is, how large will those checks be?
Venus Isle, besides being only his third album in 11 years, is also
Johnson’s most challenging. More ethereal (some will say `New Agey’) than Ah
Via Musicom, it’s actually closer to Tones in feel, reaching for
some gossamer vision of beauty that will undoubtable challenge the AOR air
guitarists who pushed Johnson’s last album to its near platinum status.
Clearly, Johnson is concerned about this, but what’s done is done.
“Obviously, this record’s not sincere in the fact that I overdubbed — well, I
won’t say `not sincere.’ It’s not spontaneous in the fact that I really worked
at it for several years,” says Johnson, now sitting cross-legged on the work
table. “There’s no question about that. But musically, I feel it’s one of the
most sincere records I’ve made, ’cause it’s more of what I really feel. Maybe
me trying to get in touch with myself, and what I really felt was what was hard
for me to do and took me so long. But a lot of what I really want to do is not
just be funneled into that guitar thing.”
In fact, guitars are what Johnson spent the least amount of time
working on for the new album.
“On Musicom, I spent a long time doing the leads — over and
over, trying to get them just right. On this record, one of the shortest things
on the whole record was the lead guitars. I just ran out of time,” he says
laughing. “I ran out of time, and the record company said, `Look, you’ve got to
turn it in on this day or else.’ So I just did all the leads. So, I guess I
could do a record quicker, but as long they’ll let you, why not take five
years?”
He bursts out laughing again. “No. Just kidding.”
Despite their apparently getting short-shrifted in the studio, however,
guitars are still the dominating force on Venus Isle — particularly on
the instrumental numbers such as the album’s first single, “Pavilion,” or
“Manhattan,” and “Camel’s Night Out.” And the best of the lot is perhaps the
simplest, “SRV,” the one that pays homage to another guitarist, Stevie Ray
Vaughan.
“I think I started working on that really soon after Stevie died,” says
Johnson. “I was just thinking about him — just kind of paying a tribute to
him.” When I suggest that the tune’s simplicity and lyric melody might well
transform “SRV” into one of his signature songs, a la “Cliffs of Dover,”
Johnson, as always, searches for the truth in his answer.
“I don’t know. It’s hard for me to say. From feedback I’ve gotten on the
record, some people have gone, `Yeah, I like that, it’s pretty nice.’ Other
people are like, `Yeah, that’s my favorite track.’ I wish that it turned out a
little bit better than it did. To me, it didn’t quite turn out the way I wanted
it to. I mean, I think it turned out fine, but to me, it didn’t turn out as
strong as, say, `Manhattan.’ For some reason, it was kind of slippery to hold
on to — getting it to turn out the way I wanted. Finally, I just did the best
I could.”
Not quite as slippery was Jimmie Vaughan, who contributed some licks to “SRV”
even though Johnson hadn’t planned it that way. “That was never the planned
intention — `We’ll get Jimmie on “SRV,”‘” explains Johnson. “It just kind of
worked out that way. Initially, it was a completely separate idea. It was just,
`I’d like Jimmie to come in, ’cause I admire his playing…’ He’s a fine
player. His inflections in his signature style of how he plays the blues is
very admirable. More than that, he’s such a great pocket player — rhythm
player. He really knows how to set a groove. That’s a lot easier said than
done.”
Johnson may soon find this out for himself as he plans to do a “spontaneous”
recording of his own blues project, Alien Love Child, as soon as he gets off
the road. It will be the first project in his new studio, and the beginning of
what the guitarist hopes will be a whole new approach to his standard
operational recording procedures.
“Ever since I was a kid, it was a dream of mine to have a studio to work in. I
think one nice thing about getting in a recording environment where I can stay
is that when I want, I can just go and record a song or two. It won’t be that
fatigue of, `Okay, let’s all of a sudden come up with 15 songs.’ For me, it’ll
be better. I’m hoping to have things set up here to where I can look forward to
recording, because I’m only going to do one or two songs. Then after that, when
I’m tired of doing that, I can go on the road or take a break. It won’t be that
inundated feeling of carrying the U.S.S. Nimitz on my back.”
A Slight Return
Three weeks later, Johnson’s studio no longer resembles a construction warzone — not the main studio anyway, which has been transformed into rehearsal
space for the guitarist’s new road band. Even the faded picture of Hendrix from
his previous rehearsal digs has made the trip and sits in the corner.
Gathered around Johnson are bassist Roscoe Beck, keyboardist Steve Barber,
both associated with the guitarist since the mid-Seventies and the
Electromagnets, and drummer Brannen Temple. The four are conferring on one of
four or five new songs that will get their debut on the G3 tour. After a few
minutes, consensus is reached and each musician takes his chart and a place in
a semi-circle around Johnson, who sits in a chair with his red Gibson. The new
tune is a languid, Wes Montgomery-type piece with odd, yet lulling, rhythms.
They run through it several times until Johnson is satisfied.
“Wanna try `Soulful’? asks Barber, referring to “Soulful Terrain,” the first
cut from Tones. Nods of agreement. Johnson plays a few quick bars of
“Communication Breakdown,” as the band settles itself, and Temple clicks off
into the start of the song. The band erupts into a controlled roar, but by the
end of the tune Barber has lost his way. Let’s try it again. Take two. Barber
is still having trouble. “You want power chords in that middle section?” he
asks. The guitarist confers for a moment with his keyboardist, this time
dashing off a quick flash of “Crossroads,” and the band runs through the song
again. No good. Barber can’t quite nail it.
Finally, Johnson steps over to Barber and starts describing what he wants, and
it’s then that a line from one of our previous interviews echoes back: “Certain
notes have certain colors.” I can’t hear what Johnson is saying, but I’m
certain that in his head there’s a rainbow of colors he’s trying to put into
words — a rainbow of colors that are in direct contrast to the rest of his
world. Are those bright neons on the Disraeli Gears lithograph the
colors in Johnson’s head?
Now, I’m hearing Jack Bruce: “Many fantastic colors makes me feel so good.
You’ve got that pure feel, such good responses, got that rainbow feel, but the
rainbow has a beard.” A beard? What the hell — artistic vision is unique. We
will never know what any artist’s true vision is, leaving us, perhaps, with a
line from Butch Cassidy & the Sundance Kid: “I got vision and the
rest of the world wears bifocals.” n The G3 tour arrives at the Austin Music Hall October 17.
This article appears in September 27 • 1996 and September 27 • 1996 (Cover).