Writer Jas Obrecht has recently posted an interview he did with Stevie Ray Vaughan in 1989. The interview was for a Jimi Hendrix cover story for Guitar Player magazine, so they discuss Hendrix as well as details about recording In Step. Here’s Stevie discussing why Jimi was becoming more popular at that time:
I think a lot of people need what he had to offer musically – there was a lot of honesty in it. Yeah, there was a lot of drugs and things, but people are looking back because they miss something that’s here. A lot of people tend to look somewhere else for something that they want to fix them. His music, though, is wonderful. It’s full of emotion. It’s full of fire. At different points it’s full of different things. It’s full of light and heavy things, you know, feelings. By “light feelings” I mean uplifting feelings, and “heavy” – well, you know what “heavy” means! It could mean anything from one day to the next, really. But I think a lot of people miss what his music was doing for them. A lot of new people are coming around to going, “What’s this?!” In very few instances has anybody surpassed what he did. And it should be popular! It’s a damn shame that he’s dead and gone, and now is when people are listening. But, at the same time, I’m glad they’re listening!
With SRV’s passing just a short year after the interview, I think much of what he said can now apply to his music.
Read the full interview here.