History of Rock: 1984
UK Magazine Featuring The Police, Strangles, Johnny Winter, Elvis Costello, Dire Straits
Guitar Player, July 1984
Half Notes by Jas Obrecht. Blues Slide In Open Tunings by Johnny Winter. One full page on slide playing technique with the master.
Kerrang! no 73 July 26-Aug.8, 1984
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JOHNNY WINTER Dingwalls, London THE LURE of the intimate club atmosphere never fades entirely, even for those bands who are familiar with the biggest venues in the world. The Stones played the 100 Club in Oxford Street in 1982, and more recently ZZ Top, Genesis and the Police have all appeared at the Marquee, though the Police's gig there was such a well-kept secretthat the road crew had to go into Wardour Street and round up passers-by to make up the numbers in the audience! This wasn't a problem that Johnny Winter suffered at Dingwalls, where surely new records were set for extremes of audience discomfort. For Dingwalls, unlike the Marquee, is a venue particularly ill-suited to staging bands. A Jong narrow room with a low ceiling divided into three distinct sections and obstructed by a line of pillars, it's actually possible to be at the back and not even realise that the band has started playing. Consequently, the crush at the front to see Johnny Winter would have given a sardine claustrophobia. There were people standing on tables, on partners, swinging from the pipes around the ceiling, and even a fair-sized contingent lounging in the toilets, conveniently located immediately at the side of one PA stack. lt wasn't the night to find yourself busting for a piss. Winter, of course, knows all aboutthe clubs. Before gigs were ever staged at Hammersmith Odeon, the Fillmores and Madison Square Garden, before rock'n'roll became a great mass-media entertainment, there were the clubs and there was the blues. Winter spent much of the Fifties and Sixties hacking his way round the Texas bars and beer-joints and it is surely a testament to both the man and the music that he is still around in 1984, playing the blues to the obvious delight of this packed house.
With longstanding cohort Jon Paris on bass and newcomer Mark Potowsky on drums, the skeletal albino, stripped to the waist to reveal the enormous demon tattoo on his chest, started with a leisurely instrumental - the kind of jam that crams every blues lick in the book into one tidy package and delivers it gift-wrapped as new. Much of the set was drawn from the recent 'Guitar Slinger' album, Winter's raucous vocals and endlessly-fluid guitar working their distinctive magic on such numbers as 'It's My Life Baby', 'Don't Take Advantage Of Me' and 'Mad Dog'. During one slow number about New York, Winter's unique combination of technique, emotion and crude power produced a near perfect reading of the blues guitar, that moment when a piece of wood, metal and electrics can make time stand still. The big crowd-pleasers, though, were the old favourites, an uptempo 'Jumpin' Jack Flash' and the perennial 'Johnny B Goode', both on his excellent 'Johnny Winter And Live' album of 1971. For an encore he chose the slow countryish 'Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye', the sad, gentle side to his otherwise aggressive guitar slinger Image. I didn't catch Winter the following night at Hammersmith Odeon - a more typical gig for him - but seeing him at Dingwalls was strangely reassuring. No matter what the ebb and flow of his commercial status, Winter will always be able to pick up his guitar and go out and work. But not in the manner of a faded star, forced into scraping round the clubs; more after the fashion of a wanderer returning from fantastic voyages to the heart of the rock'n'roll
Guitar Player, Aug 1984
Cover: Johnny Winter
Down Beat, September 1984
Article: Johnny Winter: Guitar Slinger
Musician, November 1984
Faces: Johnny Winter Tattoos, Blues & Television
Ritz Magazine 2/3 1984 (Sweden)
Swedish RITZ magazine No 2/3, 1984:
Sade cover + 2 pg
Torpedoes 2 pg
Mike Oldfield 4 pg + 1 pg ad
The Psychedelic Furs 2 pg
The Void Minimalistic 1 pg
Bruce Swedien 3 pg
Tom Verlaine 1 pg review
Elvis Costello 1 pg review
Nick Cave ½ pg review
Johnny Winter 3 pg
Bruce Foxton 2 pg
Ultravox 2 pg