The Johnny Winter Story

Tuesday, 12 February 1974: Bottom Line Club, New York

The history of the Bottom Line Club (aka Greenwich Village CLub)

Monday, 11 February 1974: Pre-opening night party with Patti Labelle

The club was officially opened the following night Tuesday, 12 February 1974 with a Jam Session featuring Dr. John, Stevie Wonder, Johnny Winter and an allstar audience including Mick Jagger, Carly Simon, Bette Midler, Charles Mingus and Janis Ian , Billy Cobham, Don Kirshner, James Darren, Rip Torn, Geraldine Page and Bobby Charles.

February 1974, The Fort Worth Convention Center

Saturday, 23 March 1974: Winterland

Johnny Winter, Brownsville Station at Winterland 1974

Sunday, 24 March 1974: Salt Lake

Johnny Winter, Brownsville Station at Salt Lake 1974

Tuesday, 26 March 1974: Denver

Johnny Winter, Brownsville Station at Denver 1974

March 29, 1974 - Long Beach Arena, Long Beach, California

Setlist:
1. Good love
2. Bad luck situation
3. Bony moronie
4. Stone county
5. Rolling 'cross the country
6. Medley: Be careful with a fool / It's my own fault (27 minutes long, with superb solos]
7. Silver train [23 minutes long! with slide jam; Johnny sings some lyrics after slide jam ]
8. Jumpin' jack flash
9. Johnny b. goode
10. Highway 61 revisited
11. It's all over now

Sunday, 3 March 1974: St. Petersburg, Florida

Setlist:
1. Good love
2. Bad luck situation
3. Bony moronie
4. Stone county
5. Rollin' cross the country [very rare]
6. Be careful with a fool [with different arrangement]
7. Silver train [with slide jam]
8. Highway 61
9. Jumpin' jack flash
10. Johnny b. goode
11. All over now

Friday, 22 March 1974: Swing Auditorium, San Bernardino

Saturday, 23 March 1974: Winterland, San Francisco

Included 'Brownsville Station' & 'Creation' as opening acts

Saturday, 30 March 1974: K.B.F.H. San Diego

Setlist:
1. Good love
2. Bad luck situation
3. Stone county
4. Silver train
5. Jumping jack flash
6. Johnny b. goode

Apr 1974: "Saints and Sinners" makes US #42

Sunday, 7 April 1974: United States Army Reserve

Nightbird and Company Cosmic Connections, together with Johnny Winter

Saturday, 1 June 1974: Madison Square Garden, opening act 10CC

New YORK: Johnny Winter Is all that the American rock fan needs for an evening's entertainment, Johnny and a pack of beer, an opportunity to shake and shout, wave arms in the end and finish the evening by throwing the empty beer cans through a window. Winter is the king of the boogie merchants; flash but not too flash, loud but not complex, intricate but never above the fans' heads. A perfect combination of talent and ability to judge what the audience wants to hear. In his way, Johnny Winter is to America what Slade are to England in this respect. Both ads are acutely aware of what to give their audience. Winter played a packed Madison Square Garden recently. The orchestra level patrons were out of their seats for the whole show and the crush at the front looked less than comfortable. It was up, up, up all the way: rock 'n' roll from start to finish punctuated only by Johnny's sorties towards the mike between songs and hoarse shouts along the lines of "Yeh wanna Rock and Roll?" Unanimous "yeahs" inevitably bounced back. Most of his material was taken from the new "Saints and Sinners " album. The last time I saw Winter, the band was just three musicians. This time he's added an extra guitar player which filled out the sound even more and, thankfully, rang the changes a little from number to number- A little variation has added considerably more colour to the band, even though the relentless boogie became a little wearying after an hour. There were times when you could walk outside for 20 minutes and return, convinced that the band was playing the same number. It must have been frustrating for the performer that this particular part of the show seemed lost on the crowd who continued to yell for more "boogles." Some fans even chucked beer cans and the like on stage causing Winter to interrupt the proceedings with a warning that any more missiles and he would end the show there and then. It stopped although it didn't stop other factions inside the Garden from chucking lighted fireworks from the upper levels of this cavernous structure. Winter's decided he's there to entertain rather than educate. The audience, which included brother Edgar sat at the side of the stage, loved every move he made. - CHRIS CHARLES-WORTH.

Thursday, 6 June 1974: FAIRGROUNDS COLISEUM

Thursday, 11 July 1974: Jahrhunderthalle, Frankfurt (or Offenbach?), West Germany. This date of 11 July 1974 is incorrect, and is actually 7 November 1974

Thursday, 18 July 1974: Blues Summit in Chicago

Blues summit in Chicago, together with Muddy Waters, Willie Dixon, Junior Wells

Sunday, 18 August 1974: US Marine Corps Broadcast

Broadcast by the US Marine Corps starting the week of 18 Aug 1974 of "Boney Moronie", released on vinyl by Spectrum USA / Dialogue '74

Tuesday, 22 October 1974: BBC TV studio, London, England

The TV session was for "The Old Grey Whistle Test" program (2 songs broadcast). The song "Jumpin' Jack Flash" has been released on the "DVD Old Grey Whistle Test Volume 3" l The photos below originated from this event.

Johnny, Floyd and Hughes, Copyright 1998 Caesar Glebbeek - Used by permission. All rights reserved. E-mail: univibes@indigo.ie WWW: http://www.univibes.com

Johnny, Floyd and Hughes, Copyright 1998 Caesar Glebbeek - Used by permission. All rights reserved. E-mail: univibes@indigo.ie WWW: http://www.univibes.com

Taken during a break, and Johnny playing some solo blues stuff. Copyright 1998 Caesar Glebbeek - Used by permission. All rights reserved. E-mail: univibes@indigo.ie WWW: http://www.univibes.com

Friday, 25 October 1974: Mind Over Matter

On 25 October 1974 was the official release date of Johnny Winter's single: "Mind Over Matter" in the UK

Saturday, 26 October 1974: New Victoria Theatre, London

This Johnny Winter concert at the New Victoria Theatre has been issued on a bootleg recorded CD.

The setlist of Johnny Winter at New Victoria London 1974 included:

Setlist:
1. Good love
2. Boney maronie
3. Roll with me
4. Stone county
5. Golden olden days of rock'n'roll [great!]
6. Mean mistreater
7. Black cat bone
8. Silver train
9. Slide jam [with bits of "leavin' blues" and "rollin' & tumblin'"]
10. Silver train reprise

See also: Books and magazines Oct 1974.

Randy Hobbs, Richard Hughes, Floyd Radford. Floyd joined the band only a weeks ago, and this London concert marks his first appearance with Winter. "We'd been playing as a trio for some time"; explains Winter. "and I really wanted somebody else to help me with my writing. I was looking for another guitarist all the time I was finishing off my record, and it looked as if we were gonna come over here (London) as a trio. Then Floyd came up from California, I'd know him for four or five years and I'd jam with him before a few times and it luckily worked out perfectly. We've had only four rehearsals, but it all fell together. We just got up and play.

Winter in an interview with Allan Jones (probable 1974)
Well I've always wanted to be accepted for whatever I do well, I don't really want to change direction at all, I want to go in any direction I feel like following. It's strange because when I was playing clubs down in Texas, variety was the main thing that people expected to hear from you. Anything else they didn't wanna know. What I've been doing ever since I nade it is to get myself out of the kind of categories that people were trying to place me in.
It's a very difficult process. Audiences always want to hear something they know. If you play them a song, they've never heard, they usually don't wanna know, however well you play. I usually try to compromise and play half what the audience wanna hear and half what I wanna play. If I played just what they wanted and I didn't like it, then people would be able to tell. Because I'm not a very good actor, and it would come across. And by the same token, if I played just for myself, then I should be doing that in my bedroom or somewhere. YOu have to remember that people have paid to see you and they're gonna be pretty disappointed if they don't hear certain songs.
You tend to feel obligated then, even if you've play a song a half a milliion times and have vowed never to do it again.

IS JOHNNY WINTER, perchance, on remote control? Through some incredible duplicating memory process he managed quite successfully to introduce the same combination of riffs into every number he and his remarkably lacklustre band tackled -right through from the only interesting toon of the evening, a new Rick Derringer, "Roll With Me" to "Mean Mistreater" and a meti-culously pedestrian "Good Love." The band comprises former McCoy and perennial Winter sideman, bassist Randy Jo Hobbs, and former Texan Winter copyists Richard I Hughes on drums and Floyd ,Radford on guitar .Radford mimics Winter's licks with roneo accuracy, Hughes' drumming is notable only for its absence of ferocity and drive and Hobbs' bass playing is consequently unnecessarily fiddly, lacking in bite. Thus the onus lies solely with Winter and -hard to know whether his style has dated in comparison to the progress of his contemporaries, or whether he's actually got worse -he seems for the most part unable to shoulder the burden without being brought to his knees. An apparent lack of pre- publicity still assured that the house was almost full, and, de- spite the fact that it's over two years since Winter was last here anc! in the interim period he's hardly made up for his absence with any hot material, the audience still seemed willing to bust its collective lungs in wel- coming him. Their ardour, however, subsequently cooled. Johnny -if I may address hirn thus -took the stage in rebuilt denims and a kind of blouse arrangement based on the marriage of a table clothand a T -shirt, which, for much of the set, concentrated on tan-gling itself within the workings , of his Firebird. ! Radford- in lime green me- taljic trousers, silver boots and metallic jacket -shook his boyish crop out of time with the music and tried to indulge in a little fitful movement with Johnny, who, as N.K. remarked acidicly, moved about the stage like a senile Cracker scything a field. Hobbs, badass flat cap mounted at a rakish tilt, concentrated on working up a good hoodlum persona. They were awful. Other titles included "Black Cat Bone", ..Golden Olden Days Of Rock n' Roll", "Silver Train", "Bonev Maronie" & "Stone County". The highlight.of the evening arrived with Johnny's references to .moonshine whusky' in "Mean Mistreater". :-.Neeeext ... Pete Erskine.

Monday, 28 October 1974: Palais De Sport, Paris

Setlist:
1. The Good Love
2. Stone County
3. Roll With Me
4. Bony Moronie
5. Mean Mistreater
6. Black Cat Bone
7. Silver Train
8. Slide Jam
9. Rollin' & Tumblin'
10. Jumping Jack Flash
11. Johnny B Goode (encore 1)
12. Highway 61 Revisited (encore 2)
13. Rock And Roll, Hoochie Koo (encore 3)

Tuesday, 5 November 1974: Bremen TV Show

 

Wednesday, 6 November 1974: Munich Kongressaal .

 

Thursday, 7 November 1974: Jahrhunderthalle, Frankfurt/Main, Germany

Available on the bootleg album: Time

Johnny Winter has an interview with Musical Express (Germany)

Setlist:
1. The Good Love
2. Bad Luck Situation
3. Roll With Me
4. Bony Moronie
5. Mean Mistreater
6. Silver Train
7. Slide Jam (includes) Rollin' & Tumblin')
8. Silver Train
9. Jumping Jack Flash
10. Johnny B Goode (encore 1)
11. Rock And Roll, Hoochie Koo (encore 2)

Saturday, 9 November 1974: Falkoner Theater, Copenhagen (Denmark)

Setlist:
1. Intro
2. Good love
3. Bad luck situation
4. Roll with me
5. Bony moronie
6. Mean mistreater
7. Black cat bone
8. Silver train
9. Slide jam [with some bits of "leavin' blues" and "rollin' & tumblin'"]
10. Silver train [closing section]
11. Jumpin' jack flash
12. Johnny b. goode

Sunday, 10 November 1974: Stockholm (Sweden)

Monday, 25 November 1974: Capitol Theatre, Passaic, N.J.

Setlist:
1. Intro / Self destructive blues
2. Bony moronie
3. Roll with me
4. Sweet papa john
5. Pickup on my mojo
6. Silver train
7. Slide jam [with bits of "leavin' blues" and "rollin' & tumblin'"]
8. Silver train [closing section]
9. Johnny B. Goode
10. Jumpin' Jack Flash
11. Rock'n' roll, hoochie koo
12. Roll over beethoven

Monday, 9 December 1974: Civic Center, Nashville