Steve Winwood

[7/4]

May 7, 2008

Steve Winwood - A '60s Rock 'N' Roller Turning 60

By REUTERS

Filed at 1:46 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Turning 60, Steve Winwood is starting to believe rock 'n' roll may be a younger man's game. Maybe.

"I think to be a musician (at 60) is fine, but to be a rock 'n' roller at a ripe old age is maybe slightly questionable," said the singer, guitarist and organist who played with 1960s rock legends the Spencer Davis Group, Traffic and Blind Faith.

"If rock 'n' roll is, indeed, what I play, I'm not sure whether it is, as I try and combine bits of folk and jazz.

"The music I write, I feel, is not the kind of music for a 25-year-old," Winwood acknowledged in an interview.

Half a lifetime ago, Winwood was aware of the contradiction of an aging musician playing essentially youthful music. "'Cause my rock 'n' roll is putting on weight/ and the beat it goes on," he sang on his 1980 album, "Arc of a Diver."

Winwood has been performing for 45 years -- as long as the Rolling Stones, who are still playing well into their 60s.

Whatever the definition of his music, Winwood has played his share of genres, from backing blues greats like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf, performing with Eric Clapton, arranging English folk with Traffic and recording artfully produced 1980s hits like "Higher Love" in the early years of MTV. His new solo album, "Nine Lives," just came out.

Asked how he felt about turning 60 on May 12, the youthful-looking Englishman was philosophical. "I'm OK, I'm lucky to still be doing what I love to do.

"I might slow down a little bit after 60 but I'm going out on a long tour this summer with Tom Petty and I still enjoy playing live. So as long as people want to come and hear me or buy the record, I shall keep going, I think."

Winwood, whose father was a dance band musician, burst onto the scene in 1965, with his older brother "Muff," in the Spencer Davis Group. They had hits with "I'm a Man" and "Gimme Some Lovin"' featuring Winwood's driving organ and distinctive voice.

While still at high school, Winwood was playing and singing in church and also clubs in Birmingham, even playing with U.S. blues and R&B greats when they toured Britain.

It was his love of the blues that he shared with fellow Britons Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Clapton, Robert Plant and Jeff Beck, that got him kicked out of a music school.

"It's an often-asked question, 'Why did all these spotty white English boys suddenly start playing blues in the '60s?'

"It was recognized as this kind of vibrant music and when I first started playing in a blues band I just wanted to bring it to a wider public who hadn't really heard it," said Winwood.

Jazz and blues were not readily accepted in 1960s England. "I got thrown out of music school for even listening to Fats Domino and Ray Charles," said Winwood.

"I was asked, 'What kind of music do you like to listen to?' and I said, 'Well, I do like Paul Hindemith and Igor Stravinsky but I also like Fats Domino and Ray Charles and they literally said, 'Either forget about that or leave.'

"I was doing a few gigs around town so I said, 'Thank you very much,' and I was gone."

Reuters/Nielsen

[7/4]

February 27, 2008

Music Review

Finding Their Way Home, or at Least to the Garden

By JON PARELES, NYTimes

Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton performing during the concert Monday night.

Back in the 1960s some of the most promising British musicians aspired only to sound as good as their collections of American blues and R & B records, or perhaps some Saturday-night gig along the old chitlin’ circuit.

The careers of Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood would go on to full-tilt jamming, psychedelic fusions, pop hits, rootsy rock and middle-aged soft-rock. But when they got together at Madison Square Garden on Monday night — for the first of three shows there that, Mr. Clapton hinted, may lead them to “do a bit more” — they still paid homage to their cherished old Americana. Half the set was American songs, from old blues to J. J. Cale’s “After Midnight” and an extended version of Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Chile.”

Mr. Clapton and Mr. Winwood did play four of the six songs from the studio album that came out of their last collaboration: Blind Faith, the supergroup (with Cream’s drummer, Ginger Baker, and the bassist Rick Grech) that existed for only part of 1969, including a chaotic show at Madison Square Garden.

Monday’s set started with “Had to Cry Today,” which declares in its first words, “It’s already written that today will be one to remember.” Yet Mr. Clapton and Mr. Winwood carried themselves modestly, without bravado: just a couple of musicians doing their job.

They were looking for the mysterious spark that transforms capable, proficient blues or rock into something startling and exalted. It wasn’t always there. Old blues songs still came across as the work of skilled, dutiful students, chugging steadily through “Crossroads” or easing back for Mr. Clapton’s near-homages to B. B. King, Albert King and Buddy Guy in “Double Trouble.”

Mr. Clapton and Mr. Winwood were serious about songs like “Sleeping in the Ground,” which Blind Faith performed in 1969, with raspy vocals, splashy barrelhouse piano from Mr. Winwood and a stinging, Chicago-style lead from Mr. Clapton. But it was musicianship, not alchemy.

Fitfully, they found it: in a slow, aching version of “Georgia on My Mind” by Mr. Winwood alone at a Hammond organ; in Mr. Clapton’s Blind Faith song, “Presence of the Lord,” with two very different vocal approaches from Mr. Clapton and Mr Winwood; in the Traffic instrumental “Glad” topped by a frenetic raga-tinged solo from Mr. Clapton; and in Traffic’s “Dear Mr. Fantasy,” which built to a searing guitar solo by Mr. Winwood. If anything, it was Mr. Winwood’s night; his Blind Faith song “Can’t Find My Way Home” held both anguish and camaraderie as he and Mr. Clapton let their guitar picking entwine.

Whatever broke up Blind Faith 39 years ago seemed well behind them; Mr. Clapton also sits in on Mr. Winwood’s forthcoming album, “Nine Lives.” They shared many songs, trading off vocals on verses and sometimes playing simultaneous, overlapping lead guitars. The band was Mr. Clapton’s, with Willie Weeks on bass, Ian Thomas on drums and Chris Stainton on keyboards. It kept the songs earthy, helping Mr. Clapton put a bluesy bite into Mr. Winwood’s old Traffic song “Pearly Queen” and making Hendrix’s “Little Wing” sound as if it could have been a song by the Band — until Mr. Clapton’s guitar solo, spiraling skyward with wailing melodic lines and bursts of speedy filigree.

It was, despite all the musicians’ experience, the first full-length set together in decades for Mr. Clapton and Mr. Winwood. Understandably, they sometimes fell back on reflexes. The chitlin’ circuit toned up bands through steady work, something the Clapton-Winwood band could try for itself.

[BeBop]

So how's the B3 work on his new album?

[BeBop]

So how's the B3 work on his new album?

And no, I'm not expecting "greasy".

[BFrank]

So how's the B3 work on his new album?

That's what I was wondering.

[GA Russell]

Tempus fugit. I remember when he was 17, and "Stevie". The collection of his songs with Spencer Davis is in my Your Music queue.

[Jim Alfredson]

His last CD, "About Time" is a great record with some really nice playing. B3, guitar, drums, and percussion. I read on his website a few years ago that he was going to do another record in the same general vein, but I don't know if the new one follows that or not.

[Harold_Z]

His last CD, "About Time" is a great record with some really nice playing. B3, guitar, drums, and percussion.

I'll second that. Winwood can play and he can get down.

[sidewinder]

Last time I saw the Good Doctor live, was hanging out in front of the B-3 and Winwood was stood right next groovin' to it.