Bonnie Raitt: I taught myself guitar when I was nine, looking at the fingers of the people at my summer camp. I just played by ear, mimicking what I heard on the radio and on records. I then fell in love with slide guitar, which I first heard when I was about 14.
In college, I developed my own style. I switched to a Stratocaster — I got a really good deal in the middle of the night for $120 — and then a few years later, in 1972, Lowell George [of Little Feat] showed me his MXR compressor. I'd asked him how he got the tone to last so long — whether it's a ferocious kind of dirty sound, or a beautiful clean sound on a ballad, the compressor really squishes the sound and makes it last longer. The rest of it is just imitating something that you love until you feel like you ye got it; just playing with all your heart and soul every time you pick up the guitar. I was trying to make it as close to the human voice as I could.
John Lee Hooker called you his hero. When I watch tapes of you playing together, the love and joy jumps off the screen. Could you tell us a bit about your friendship?
When we did our recording of I'm in the Mood from his 1989 album The Healer, that's when we started to get close. We had a similar sense of humour; we would just get together and talk about this recording or that by BB King or Bukka White or Fred McDowell. He found a kindred soul in me, and I did in him. He was always one of my heroes, but he became just a man, and my pal.
For the recording sessions [for I'm in the Mood], we turned the lights down. I was platonic friends with John Lee, we didn't flirt or have a romantic thing going on, but I chose that song because it was just so incredibly erotic and alluring. I gotta say it, face to face with him in the dark playing that song ... damn! I was literally out of breath and I needed a towel after the session. We all got a big kick out of that. When he aims it at you, man, there's nobody that can play that kind of lowdown stuff better than John Lee.
The Guardian Interview
Photo: Ken Friedman