Joe Bonamassa: Keeping it real onstage in the age of smoke and mirrors
Joe Bonamassa recently returned to No. 1 on Billboard’s blues chart with “Live at the Hollywood Bowl,” his 28th release to do so.
That’s more times than any other artist in the history of the chart.
His latest tour is playing Arizona Financial Theatre, a 5,000-capacity room.
By any reasonable metric, at 47, Bonamassa is the most successful blues guitarist of his generation.
As to how this came to be, the man himself has no idea.
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“I’ve been thinking about it my whole career,” he says.
“I’ve been lucky. We’ve had a couple of records that have done really well, a couple of live DVDs that have done really well. Something connects, you know? I’m not sure what, but it does. And it’s worldwide. It’s not just here, you know. I’m arguably bigger overseas. I don’t know what it is. It ain’t my good looks, I’ll tell you that much.”
Joe Bonamassa cut his teeth on the blues as Led Zeppelin reimagined it
Bonamassa grew up in a musical household and started playing the guitar at 4, encouraged by a guitar-playing father who turned him onto the heroes of the British blues boom of the 1960s — Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and other Brits who cut their teeth on classic blues releases they imported from Chicago.
“I always say my journey to Chicago went through London,” Bonamassa says.
“I was enamored with Clapton, Beck and Page, Paul Kossoff, Rory Gallagher, all the great British stuff. The first version of ‘I Ain’t Superstitious’ I heard wasn’t Howlin’ Wolf. It was Jeff Beck. So my journey always went through London first.”
Those legends of the British blues scene played a huge role in shaping the guitarist he became.
“I know musicians try to turn it into a myth and say, ‘No, I was into the real stuff, blah blah blah,’” Bonamassa says.
“But if you were a suburban white kid and were at all interested in blues guitar back in the ’80s, you went to Stevie Ray Vaughn. You went through ‘The Beano Album’ with John Mayall and the Blues Breakers. You went through ‘Truth,’ ‘Beckola,’ ‘Zeppelin I,’ Fleetwood Mac, ‘Irish Tour ’74.’ All of that was extremely relevant. That’s how you got introduced to the greats. I was like, ‘Wow, this is exciting and raw!’ It had swagger. And that’s pretty much how I got here.”
