I had a
Stevie Ray Vaughan phase in my life. There was a one or two year
period in my twenties where I bought all his studio albums, as well
as a handful of bootlegs. The speed, the energy, the passion, the
talent—all fed me like a drug. Putting “Lovestruck Baby” on
the stereo and cranking up the volume as loud as I could stand it put
the hairs on my arm on end, Stevie's actually crackling in the
background. And while I haven’t done that in a while (kids, middle
age, yada yada), when I saw Alan Paul and Andy Aledort’s biography
Texas Flood,
I took a peek. When I saw that it was essentially a string of
excerpts of interviews taken during and after Vaughan’s life, glued
together by Paul and Aledort’s adroit editing, I splashed the cash.
And after turning the last page, with Stevie’s uplifting, dark,
uplifting, dramatic, human story fresh in my mind, I found the book’s
value.
Texas
Flood proves the old adage ‘You
gotta live the blues to sing the blues’ both right and wrong.
Vaughan subject to his own demons, the demons of a rough childhood,
and the demons of fame and fortune, until ultimately killing the
demons, Texas Flood
details the life of a man born to play the guitar through the highest
peaks and lowest valleys of life. The lives of the people around him
told in live stereo, it is their words, as well as Stevie’s own,
which comprise the overwhelming majority of the book. From
bandmates, past and further past, to producers, friends, colleagues,
fellow guitarists, and a number of people from within the industry,
all chime in to comment upon the major milestones and lesser known
details of Vaughan’s career and personal life.
Perhaps the
most engaging and interesting aspect of this approach to the
biography is the differing views. Multiple eye-witness accounts to
the same event doesn’t always paint the same picture, rather a
broader, more conflicting yet colorful and informative picture. In
Texas Flood,
such is the result. And while the readers get a broader view to
Vaughan’s life, a secondary effect is to get a view into the lives
of people around the guitarist who informed and were informed by his
life, even as the larger picture takes on more nuance.
While much
media may tend to focus on the tragic manner of Vaughan’s passing,
the most dramatic moment of Vaughan’s life actually happened five
years prior. My mother was a social worker, and she once estimated
to me that only about 15% of people with personal problems ever rise
from the mud permanently. Most either get stuck deeper, or just
trudge through the same sludge, day in and day out. Vaughan was part
of the 15%. As the reader has the details of Vaughan’s childhood
and growing up in hand, it makes the man’s turnaround all the more
powerful and inspiring. I sometimes think that willpower is the
hardest aspect of being alive to govern, and Vaughan’s life proves
that indeed it is difficult, but not insurmountable—all despite the
sudden manner of his death.
While Steve
Ray Vaughan’s life is more naturally the material of celebrity
biography given all he did and went through, Texas
Flood is anything but an expose.
With the multitude of voices of people who knew, liked, and loved
him, it is a heartfelt book that gives readers a view behind the
scenes into the flashy Texan we most often saw onstage, and the
blood, sweat, and tears that kept him alive. The style of the
biography something I wish more writers went in for, the fact that
the people who really knew Stevie tell the majority of the story
lends an air of authenticity and humanity that more academic
biographies have trouble matching. And even if you don’t like
blues-rock, or Stevie’s specific brand of music, his story is still
something special for the way in which he purged his demons. I don’t
have the stereo I once did, nevertheless I did put on “Lovestruck
Baby” as loud as I could upon completing Texas
Flood. The magic is still
there. Thanks, Stevie.
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