Bonnie Raitt: I’m just one more kid who learned how to play the blues from being a fan." It is a modest statement for the first woman to have a Fender guitar launched in her honour.
“My gameplan was just to follow my blues and jazz exemplars. Stay true to your art, do the best shows you can, keep going, don’t worry about commercial success, and when you’re 70 years old people will still want to come and see you,” she says.“Thank goodness I come from the generation of Elvis, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, where they performed other people’s songs and did it in their own way,” Raitt says. Her unquestionable gift is the way she can interpret and reimagine music intuitively, motivated by a desire to find stories. Searching for the right song is what motivates Raitt, she says. It can make her sleep less, too. “One moment, you’re listening to some obscure Charles Brown recording from the 1949 sessions that you’ve never heard before; the next thing you know, it’s four hours later and you haven’t brushed your teeth,” she says, laughing.
Source: Kat Lister / The Guardian
Photo: Ken Sax
Bonnie Raitt - Burning Down The House (Road Tested)
