An Interview with Johnny Winter And Rick Derringer
The very idea of Johnny Winter playing with the old McCoys is a little unnerving. All trite considerations (i.e., “Two guitarists?”, “Rock and roll?”) aside, the essential question remained: What the hell kind of music could they make?
It turned out they could produce the most super-eclectic music in Amerika; like the Rolling Stones, they’re not afraid to attempt anything and, on record at least, they generally pull it off admirably. (Which is not so much to invite the obvious comparison between the two bands as it is to make it.)
Johnny Winter And, the name of the album and the name of the group, is the style of every prominent musical mainstream in rock fully assimilated and readily accessible.
Having heard the album somewhat prior to its recent release, it was only natural that we weathered two Winter weekends - Ann Arbor Blues/Gooselake and the Winter And performances at Detroit’s Eastown -to get this story.
Concisely, it went something like this:
Johnny and Steve Paul drift in for a couple of days of festing, bringing with them the first radio station copies of the album, which they decided to break a few days early in Detroit, on the “hip” stations, WKNR-FM, WABX, WXYZ-FM.