Stevie Ray Vaughan 1954-1990
Having won a Grammy for Best
Contemporary Blues Recording earlier this year and recently finished
an album with his brother Jimmie, Stevie Ray Vaughan was on the verge
of a fresh start when he was killed in a helicopter crash on Aug. 27
near East Troy, Wis. Vaughan had just left the Alpine Valley Music
Theater — where he, Eric Clapton, and Robert Cray had performed — when
the fatal accident occurred; it also took the lives of the pilot and
three members of Clapton's entourage, tour manager Colin Smythe,
bodyguard Nigel Browne, and agent Bobby Brooks. Stevie Ray, a Texas
guitar hero who almost single-handedly revived interest in blues in
the '80s, made his recording debut in 1983 on David Bowie's Let's
Dance and released his first album later that year. In 1986, the
guitarist began a recuperation from drug and alcohol addiction. ''I
nearly died, and it got my attention,'' he told the Dallas Morning
News. His Grammy-winning album, In Step, detailed his recovery in its
most compelling song, ''Wall of Denial.''
''When we got through the negative stuff, drinking, we said all we wanted to do is grow together and do our best in life,'' Stevie Ray's girlfriend, Janna Lapidus, 21, said two days before he was killed. The blues will carry on as they always have, but now the music has cause to sound even sadder.
Star-Spangled Ban
America's national anthem can't seem to get much
respect. Always hard to sing, ''The Star Spangled Banner'' was recently
mangled by Roseanne Barr and now has been rejected completely by
Sinead O'Connor. The Irish singer demanded that the song not be
played before her Aug. 24 show at the Garden State Arts Center in
Holmdel, N.J. (where the anthem is broadcast before every concert).
O'Connor says she intended no disrespect: ''I have a policy of not
having any national anthems played before my concerts in any country,
not even my own, because they have nothing to do with music in
general.'' Afterward, she was banned from the venue; radio stations in
New York and New Jersey stopped playing her records; and Frank
Sinatra told an audience at the Arts Center the following night that
she ''should not have been permitted to go on.'' ''I'm furious,'' says
her spokeswoman. ''The people waving the flag are the most
self-serving publicity hounds I've ever seen.''
