Walter trout
Walter Trout has known the blues, all right. He fell ill with liver disease in 2014 and nearly died, returning from the brink after fans crowdfunded an organ transplant for him. In the process, he lost his ability to play, but then made the fightback of h
You’ve been through some difficult times, to say the least. Has getting involved with Supersonic Blues Machine spurred your recuperation? “When I got the call from Lance and Fabrizio, I was just coming out of my illness, and when I got out of hospital I had to relearn the guitar. I couldn’t play any more, so I sat down for about a year and practised every day for four or five hours. After I got out, I couldn’t walk. I was determined to play again and then my wife comes in and goes, ‘I just got an email. Are you interested in playing on a record with Billy Gibbons and Eric Gales and Kenny [Aronoff, drummer]?’ – because I did two albums with Kenny. I’m like, ‘Are you kidding? Where do I have to be and when?’ It was my first time getting back into the music world to go up to LA and record with those guys. It was incredible to go and play and have them go, ‘Hey, that sounds great.’ It gave me some confidence back, because I was starting over. I was like, ‘Can I do this or not? I don’t know.’ It was a cool experience for me.” And it happened at just the right time… “The perfect time, yes.” When you were recovering, how much of your playing ability had you lost? “It was the whole thing. If you can imagine this, when I got ill I weighed 230lbs and within four months I weighed 110lbs, so I lost 120lbs, more than half my body. I had no muscles. That’s why I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t stand up. My legs would not hold me up. My bones, my arms were literally… I looked like a walking skeleton. When I was in the hospital, my son, Jon, who plays in my band now, he came to Omaha and he brought a Stratocaster. He said, ‘Dad, you need to keep playing. You need to keep in touch with who you are.’
“So, they sat me in a chair, they carried me and they put the guitar in my lap and I did not have the strength to push the string down to the fret. I could not do it. I’m pushing and pushing and the string wouldn’t move. I said, ‘Take the guitar out, I can’t look at it.’ It was a sad day. I lost it after that. Part of relearning to play was building up strength again. Also, as the strength started coming back, because I was getting physical therapy every day, I was working with weights, I was doing all this, but the signals from my brain to my fingers were not there either, so I had to get that back.
“Even when I was getting the strength I’d say, ‘Okay, I’m going to try a barre chord,’ and I’d put one finger here and I’d put this finger there and then I’d press and see if I could get it to play. It took a lot of work. I mean, I still had it up here. I knew where the notes were. I knew where to put my fingers to play an A chord, but to actually make it happen was a whole other thing.” How did the difficult road to recovery change the relationship you had with the guitar? “Well, I basically practised on an acoustic, because it’s a little more difficult. It didn’t have little skinny strings and I figured that would help build the strength quicker. The first few times I tried it, the pain in my fingers was excruciating. It reminded me of being 10 years old and picking up a guitar for the first time and trying to play and having no calluses. I remember saying to my wife, ‘This is the most painful thing I’ve ever tried to do. How did I ever do this?’ She said to me, ‘Well, you actually did that, so just keep going.’ I know it’s a cliché, but it’s the truth. You get to where your fingers bleed and then you cover them over with crazy glue and you keep going.
“A funny story, a tabloid in America, or television show, did this thing about John Mayer and they said, ‘We have to say something that we’ve learned about John Mayer. On his contract rider he wants Krazy Glue.’ They go, ‘What’s he doing with the glue?’ and they’re implying he’s sniffing it. They say, ‘He’s told us he puts it on his fingers,’ and they all go, ‘Ha, ha, ha.’ I’m like, ‘Well, yes. I don’t know a guitar player who doesn’t have a tube of Krazy Glue. I’ve got one in my guitar case.’ It’s when your fingers start to crack, you glue them together and you keep going.” Your fans actually crowdfunded the liver transplant that saved your life. That’s pretty incredible… “Well, without them I wouldn’t have gotten the operation or maybe I could have sold my house and moved my family into a little trailer in Garden Grove or something… The American healthcare system is for profit. We’re the last civilised country on the face of the earth where healthcare is for profit and when somebody sees a sick person, they see a way to make money.
“But the fans, I’m in their debt and my gratitude is huge for them. What my wife always says is, ‘All those people bought stock in your liver. The way you pay the dividends on the stock is you better go out there and play your ass off, because that’s what they want. That’s why they did it’. Those fans want to still be able to come and see me play and I had better play for them and not bullshit them. So, I better mean it when I play.”
You’ve worked with Lance Lopez before. How do you rate him as a player? “Lance is a great man. He’s an incredible guitar player. I mean, he’s intimidating at times on the guitar, because he’s got so much technique and so much passion. He has a lot to say. He’s been down the road I’ve been down – going through some severe addictions and actually examining himself, looking in the mirror and saying, ‘This is not what I want out of life,’ and then changing his life and getting serious about being alive and about being a musician and having a good life. Then he falls in love and now he’s a father. He has all this to say in his music. There are certain young players out there who are very proficient and very technically gifted, but I feel like they don’t have enough life experience to put authority into their music. When Lance plays, he’s making a statement. He’s a great player.
“We did one gig with The Blues Machine already in Holland and I watched Lance front that band. I watched him command a room with 10,000 people in it. He’s one of the greats, I think. I think he has a huge future. He’s just really getting going.” Do you think life experience is important to play blues well? “Yeah, it is to me. It doesn’t have to be to everybody – there are plenty of people out there who just want to go and hear a guy and they want to be really impressed with his technical wonder. For me, I want to hear something that has substance to it and that has something to say. That’s why, for instance – and, again, it’s a cliché – but BB King could play one note and rip your guts out. That doesn’t mean you have to do it with one note. You can rip people’s guts out with one note or 10,000 notes – there are no rules here, I don’t think. But I like the authority and the statements that guys can make musically when they have a lot to put into it.” What do you think the essence of all the best blues guitar playing is? When do you feel you’ve done a good job? “To me, when I put music on, I want it to immediately affect me emotionally. I’m not looking to be impressed. I’m looking to be moved. I mean like Blind Willie Johnson, Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground, put that on. If you’re not a mess of quivering jelly at the end of that song, there’s something wrong. He’s not a technical wizard, but there is so much soul and heart and feeling and life expression in there.
“To me, I think the reason that any sort of art was invented, was thought up, came into being, was people trying to express something they could not express in words, trying to express feelings and emotions and beliefs. In the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, when you walk in there’s a big quote on the wall from Vincent Van Gogh as to why he became a painter. It says, ‘To express a sincere human emotion.’ That’s what I look for in music. That’s what I look for in art. That’s what I look for in drama or movies, but that’s just me, as I say. There’s room for everything, but I have a certain thing I look for and that is some sort of – this is going to be a little cosmic here – but I’m looking for something that is attempting to express some sort of human universal truth, maybe not always being able to do that, but the attempt to express that is what I’m interested in. Sorry, that was a really longwinded answer to your question…” That’s a good answer! “I’ve just had two double espressos, so I’m going here.” What’s next for you and guitar? “Man, it was taken from me and given back to me and I want to keep going as long as I can. I want to give it my best attempt at expressing that truth. I want to do that as long as I can, it’s the thing that gave me purpose when I was a kid, and it still does. Now, I have a wife and children and they give me the ultimate purpose in my life, but without the music, I wouldn’t be me. That’s what my wife knew. That’s why she pushed when I got back and I said, ‘This hurts. I can’t do this,’ and she said, ‘No, you can do this.’ She’d say, ‘Come here and watch this video of yourself. You used to do this. That’s you, it’s not the guy sitting on the couch who can’t walk and is trying to relearn how to speak and shit.’ She said, ‘That’s your essence. You’re a musician, work at it, get it back.’ It’s back and I want to enjoy it. I want to try to communicate with people and I want to try to connect with people.”
“The guitar was taken from me and given back to me, and I want to keep going as long as I can. I want to give it my best attempt at expressing that truth”