Is it overwhelming to be constantly prodded about the past? 'Everybody's got a story, I guess,' he says with a laugh. Winter is also asked about the scene immediately after his performance earlier that evening: The people. ('He was drunk all the time!') And Woodstock. 'Mainly we just jammed a lot.' Then Jim Morrison.

'I never got to know him that well,' Winter says. 'I was real proud of the stuff we did together.'Įventually, Jimi Hendrix's name comes up. 'Of all the people I played with, I'd say Muddy impressed me the most,' he says. 'We had a lot of fun.' Later during the drive, someone from his entourage asks Winter about Muddy Waters. 'I jammed with him at a place called the Vulcan Gas Company in Austin in '68,' Winter says. Rare is a Johnny Winter response that exceeds a single sentence, but the many famous musicians with whom he's crossed paths often serve as the best catalysts for the kind of tantalizing detail that's almost agonizingly absent in his dialogue.Ī Freddie King tune comes on. 'Everybody's got a story' Back on the bus, Winter, now comfortably ensconced, lights a cigarette and begins to softly sing along to an old Son House tune. Everybody wanted to fight him, fuck him, give him a tape, or get him high. 'We'd have to find him refuge from people. 'Everybody wanted to mess with him or interact with him somehow if he tried to go anywhere,' Shurman recalls. Dick Shurman, the producer of several Winter albums, including 2004's Grammy-nominated I'm a Bluesman, remembers hanging out with Winter in Chicago in the mid Eighties. The concept of wanting a piece of Johnny Winter isn't a new thing it's always been this way. But he's like, 'How can my music do that to somebody?' He just doesn't get the enormity of it all.' He sees these people get really intense, and he hears people talk about how, when and where they saw him, or how his music changed their lives. 'They want to touch him, talk to him, grab his jewelry, whatever. 'We see this at the autograph signings at the end of every show,' explains Paul Nelson, Winter's rhythm guitarist and the man who has guided his career since late 2005. The hordes of people quickly disappeared from view, and the sudden stillness was downright eerie. 'Johnny! Saw you with Muddy Waters in '77, man! You guys played 'Hoochie Coochie Man!'' Once Winter's window was mercifully closed and the curtain drawn, the bus began to roll. Not more than two minutes later, a smiling woman took her turn: 'Um, Johnny, hi! I doubt you remember me, but one time I met you backstage at a show in New York. 'Hey Johnny! I saw you in Philadelphia, dude! 1973! You blew the fucking doors off the place…' There was the rotund, balding, 50-something man in glasses, tanked but still semi-lucid, who leaned through a window and into the bus where Winter sat, his speech slurred. Few could resist the urge to bend his ear about the past. But for most of them, simply meeting Winter wasn't enough. One by one, fans waited in line for a chance to meet their hero, many of whom remembered him not as a bluesman but as an early-Seventies arena-rock favorite. If you'd witnessed the scene immediately after the show, you could forgive the 63-year-old Texan for wanting to quietly decompress.

Music from a 20-gig iPod loaded with more than 4,500 classic blues tunes fills the air, and a pack of Marlboros and Winter's trusty black lighter sit before him, beckoning. Less than an hour ago, he was exiting a Delaware stage, having just completed a simmering 75-minute set that closed out a weekend blues festival in the city of Wilmington, and now is his time to unwind. It's sometime after midnight on a warm August weekend, and Johnny Winter sits in contemplative silence as the road passes beneath the wheels of his tour bus.

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