Happy 78th birthday to Steve Winwood!
“The great influences were people like B.B. and Freddie King, T-Bone Walker – then ‘Little Hubert,’ Hubert Sumlin,” says Winwood. “Also Buddy Guy and Otis Rush, and we were discovering people like Louisiana Red in the early ’60s. There was a certain camaraderie with everyone who played it. In fact, when I was 16 years old and left school and left home, I went to London, and Eric Clapton, who was three years older than me, kind of took me under his wing – a bit like an older brother. We listened to a lot of stuff; he played me a lot of stuff, I played him some stuff. There were fewer people playing guitar like that then. There was a big excitement about that music. My brother had a band, and in his band he had some guys who were at art college. A lot of the guys at art college were big blues enthusiasts. They used to bring me records to hear all the time, just because they knew I was interested. It was a bit of a clique.”
“Of course, the music business got much more corporate and much more focused on marketing since the late ’60s,” Winwood feels. “Record companies became big business. In the earlier ’60s, you had the main record companies, but the companies who were putting out the more interesting stuff were more like what we’d call boutique labels today – with people who were kind of like playboy mavericks who were music lovers. I think you could even go back to Atlantic Records and Ahmet Ertegun, which were also in the same ilk. It was much more about the music than the marketing and promotion.”
Interview By Dan Forte / Vintage Guitar
Photo: Fin Costello
