| SRV 1990 Interview by Diane Jennings
Stevie Ray Vaughan is sipping club soda at Good Eats Cafe and talking about what first attracted him to the blues, when a waiter interrupts. "I hate to bother you, but can I get you to sign this?' he asks, nervously pushing a piece of paper at the renowned guitarist. "I really appreciate it.' As Stevie scribbles his name, the waiter apologizes profusely. "I'm sorry -- I'm a real big fan of yours. "I've seen this guy in concert about 20 times . . . ,' he explains to a listener. "My girlfriend really likes him too, and we make love to (his music) all the time. It has a real sensual quality to it, sort of real powerful.' " Across the table Stevie, who is home for a few days between concerts, slowly turns red with embarrassment. The waiter leaves, only to be followed by another employee armed with a felt-tip pen. He wants Stevie to sign the restaurant mural, which includes an almost life-sized picture of the musician. A few minutes later, the waiter returns, camera in hand, for a quick picture. "I have to remember that these people just like what we do," Stevie says as the flurry of attention subsides. For years he could retain his privacy by leaving his trademark black hat at home, but after several gold records and two Grammy Awards, including one this year, "that doesn't work anymore." He is grateful for the attention, Stevie says, and he understands it, because he used to do the same thing. The younger brother of Jimmie Vaughan of The Fabulous Thunderbirds fame became starstruck at an early age. When he was 13, he hung around with the same awestruck look on his face at the Losers Club, to ask blues great B.B. King for his autograph. Next week Stevie and Mr. King meet in Dallas again. This time however they'll be headlining the Benson & Hedges Blues festival. Stevie is pleased to be sharing the stage with a childhood hero, but not surprised. "I don't mean this to sound big-headed or anything," he says, "but I always knew I was going to be doing something with the talents that I was given. I always knew that." The sight of a clear-eyed, lucid Stevie Ray Vaughan sitting in a restaurant at midday is inspiring not just to music fans but to anti-drug crusaders as well. Five years ago when Stevie did an in-depth interview, he had trouble focusing on questions, rarely answered with more than a syllable or two, and frequently excused himself, only to return considerably more animated than when he left. "I was high everywhere," he says now. Stevie had been using drugs since childhood. By his early 30s he was drinking himself to sleep and snorting something to wake up, he says. He was "throwing up, and falling down, and running into walls, and thinking people were after me," he says. "And running from other people, people that cared about me." "It was getting real destructive, real sick," says bass player and running buddy Tommy Shannon. "It was (an) unnatural, unreal, untruthful way of living. Just a dead-end street. If we hadn't quit we'd either end up in a hospital or dead." Stevie's music didn't appear to suffer much, but "it got to where I didn't want to do anything but just stay in my room and go completely berserk," he says. When he did play, he was thinking about "getting high." Stevie sobered up more than 3 1/2 years ago, and he talks about his experience with the gratitude of a survivor. "I'm a lot happier now than I've ever been," he says. Life hasn't gotten easier, he notes, but he's better able to cope. When he performs, Stevie talks briefly about staying clean, trying to negate his former party-hearty image. "I had the attitude that if I was higher than you, I was cooler than you, and you didn't know what you were missing," he explains. "That's what I thought for a long time. And I learned that, you know -- I didn't come up with the idea. That was part of the '60s code, part of rock 'n' roll myth. And I believed it, so I passed it on for a lot of years." Today Stevie sends the message that "you can still be cool (and) you can still be clean and sober," says Michelle Suggs, a clinical social worker at Yale Psychiatric Institute. He corresponds with some of her clients, and occasionally meets with them after concerts. Stevie says he worries sometimes that his speeches are simply attempts to pat himself on the back, but after almost every show fans thank him for helping them break their addiction. "If even one person gets something out of it, great," he says. "It's worth doing it." He began drinking alcohol at age 6, sneaking sips from his father's glass. Through the years he worked his way up to "whatever was around -- different psychedelics, pot, speed, diet pills, pain pills, sniffing glue, drinking. Then later I found out about cocaine." As Stevie and Double Trouble became better known, he began using stronger drugs, until it was "a hassle to do anything except go in my room and get loaded." He tried to quit twice, but each time started using again. "When I quit for three months, I decided that I was such a jerk sober I might as well drink and have fun," he says. Then in 1986, "I nearly died," he remembers, "and it got my attention." Stevie collapsed during an engagement in London. He was throwing up copious amounts of blood and suffering from deep depression, and felt he was losing his mind. When a doctor explained his condition, Stevie checked into a hospital. Deciding he would rather live sober than die high, he called his widowed mother and his girlfriend, who both joined him immediately. Then he boarded a plane for a treatment center in Georgia. Stevie expected the treatment center "to be kind of like Club Med," he says. But he quickly found out "you have to start digging around and find out what's going on inside." This time, because he was no longer "white knuckling" it alone, the program worked. He left the center after only four weeks, and hit the road again. Today he continues to work with a program daily. To make recovery easier, Stevie also took several practical steps. His mother and friends went through the family counseling program, and Stevie keeps in close touch with Tommy Shannon, who underwent treatment himself. "We've helped each other out," Mr. Shannon says. In addition, Stevie left Austin for Dallas. An early marriage was ending, and though he had once sworn never to return to Dallas, Stevie needed to "change my playground." He likes being close to his mother, friends note, and his longtime girlfriend, a model, lives here. He's considering buying a house, Stevie says, but today he rents one on the edge of Highland Park. He recently took a place in New York as well, but wherever he travels, Stevie still calls Texas home. "I go other places and they're real neat for a few days or a month," he says, "and then I miss it so bad it's like I can't wait to get back." More next week | 
