Johnny Winter’s Birthday today he would have been seventy five. I only ever photographed him once in NYC. My idea was like the cover of Second Winter wind swept hair topless with his Firebird guitar in full flight. I got an old man who looked about eighty, he was sixty. Hunched over sitting on a box chain-smoking his fingers dirty and nicotine brown. Johnny refused to take his cap off or have the wind machine on. He just kept drinking pints of what I thought was water it turned out to be vodka.
In the end my photos look like a white albino blues player - exactly like the black blues players Johnny so admired.
Today is also Brad Whitford’s birthday Brad is seven years old. I remembered I have some photos of Brad with Johnny Winter’s original green Firebird which I’d taken at Download a couple of years ago.