SRV made his first Guitar World cover appearance with the November '85 issue. In the interview from that issue, he discusses Jimi Hendrix, Albert King and the pitfalls of fame.

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The use of the low-pitch tuning was Hendrix-inspired, in any case. "He did it a lot," Vaughan said, "and it gives you different overtones. It's an interesting sound, and I find it a lot easier to sing to." He's also acquired the wah-wah pedal that Hendrix used to record "Up From The Sky."

Vaughan talks without any self-consciousness about Hendrix, but comparisons between the two players have been made often enough. In May, Vaughan opened the Houston Astros' season with a solo version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" and, immediately, people remembered the world-weary, apocalyptic version that Hendrix played on the final day of Woodstock in 1969.

Vaughan flashed a look that clearly regarded the issue as unbelievably dumb and unnecessary. "I heard they even wrote about it in one of the music magazines," he said, "and they tried to put the two versions side by side. I hate that stuff. His version was great." Vaughan's was the first time that someone had played electric guitar to open a baseball game.

"Why do people want to make it out to be more than it is? I can't stand these comparisons." He wasn't speaking angrily, either. He hadn't even raised his voice. This seemed to be the musician in him talking, matter-of-factly, making an obvious point.

And yet, the comparison exists -- if only because Vaughan includes at least one or two (and sometimes three) Hendrix songs in each live show, because he featured a well-known Hendrix song ("Voodoo Chile") on his second album, and, perhaps most of all, because he captures the spirit of the improvisational Hendrix on stage more accurately than any other contemporary guitarist.

An affinity obviously exists. In Texas, Vaughan's regarded by his old crowd as a hot blues player with a tight band and a lot of rock and roll in his sound: the blues variations are still common in Texas clubs. His music has been refined and expanded by all the work and the opportunities that've come his way in the past two or three years, but at its core, it's still the steamy, torrid blues he was playing in the late seventies. The people outside Texas, really -- the ones less familiar with his story and the ones who know his work only from records and the hype of the last few years -- have turned Vaughan's long-standing love for Hendrix' work into a point of comparison. Vaughan himself feels it's all been overplayed.

According to one person in his organization, Vaughan labored long and hard over the decision to add "Voodoo Chile" to Couldn't Stand The Weather, and that he finally decided to include the song because he felt that the younger audience that was listening to his records hadn't heard Hendrix, and he wanted to spread the word.

"I loved his music and I feel like it's important to hear what he was doing, just like anybody else, like Albert of B.B. or any of that stuff," Vaughan remarked. "I wanted to do the song, but I didn’t 't want to mistreat it. I feel like, I try to take care of his music and it takes care of me. Treat it with respect, not as a burden- like you have to put a guy down 'cause he plays from it. That's crazy. I respect him for his life and his music."

Meanwhile, in a Dallas show in late April, Vaughan used the Wirz Strat and the '59, and a custom Hamilton occasionally when a string broke on the '59 Strat. On slow blues like "Tin Pan Alley," the white guitar had a thin, edgy, cutting sound, sweet but hard: the '59 Strat is a fuller, chunkier-sounding guitar, more of a rocker, more typical of the thick tones on Couldn't Stand The Weather, and, of course, the instrument of choice when Vaughan does his Hendrix covers.

While they weren't airing a lot of new tunes that night -- it was a free concert with Lonnie Mack in front of a hometown crowd -- Double Trouble was debuting a new keyboard player, Reese Wynans. Wynans, of course, appears also on Soul To Soul. Vaughan himself played beautifully that night: his slow blues remain gorgeous displays of phrasing and tone, and, of course, he has a growing arsenal of tricks and techniques, from his flowing, syncopated strum ("Pride And Joy") to funky, overstated string-snapping effects. In the past two years, he's learned a lot about working an audience, as well. In the clubs he often was a straightforward, stand-up player, but he's become a good showman, too.

"When we started making the album," Vaughan said, "we thought about what kids do during the summer. I was remembering the good times, how things were when we were growing up, and the good songs would come on the radio and go boom inside your head. Getting that passion- that's what I try to do."

In late April, within days of the Dallas date, the new Lonnie Mack album on the Chicago-based Alligator label, Strike Like Lightning, finally hit the stores, the first record from the legendary guitarist in some seven years. While Vaughan downplays his role as co-producer -- it's his first production effort outside Double Trouble -- it's clear enough from the handful of guitar duels included on the album that Vaughan and Mack were having a grand time, and Vaughan mostly helped contribute the spirit and enthusiasm that ultimately made for a heck of a guitar album. Vaughan, of course, has always acknowledged Mack's influence on his own playing -- "Wham!" was the first single he ever owned -- and the two hit it off wonderfully when they finally began working together. The empathy and interplay is obvious.

Vaughan remembered the first time he met Mack. It was 1978 or '79, and an earlier version of Double Trouble (with Layton) was playing in a club in Austin when Mack walked in. "I was playing the second chord of 'Wham' that night when he came through the door," Vaughan said. "We did the shit outta 'Wham! It was cookin'. And there was Lonnie Mack. At first, I didn't even recognize him. Man, it was like magic."

At the time, Mack was assembling a new road band, and he approached Vaughan about joining it. That never came to pass, of course, but the two remained friends over the years: when Alligator signed Mack in mid-1984, Mack and Alligator president Bruce Iglauer talked to Vaughan about producing the record and he agreed instantly.

"They were his tunes and I just tried to help him by doing the best I could to do what he wanted to do with the record, and that's what I think producing is," Vaughan said. "A lot of producing is just being there, and, with Lonnie, just reminding him of his influence on myself and other guitar players Most of us got a lot from him. Nobody else can play with a whammy bar like him -- he holds it while he plays and the sound sends chills up your spine. You can 't do that with a Stratocaster. I just don't want to sound like I was trying to direct the record. We were having fun and it was a great experience. It makes you think, too. This whole thing was a blessing, and it's not over yet. "

In any case, things are moving pretty fast, but there 's a feeling, at least on Vaughan 's part, that this is only the beginning. The beginning wasn't playing on David Bowie's Let's Dance, which helped showcase his work to the greater rock and roll public, or the first album, whose performance on the charts seemed to surprise just about everyone because it was atypical of the pop moods at the moment. The beginning is now -- this new attitude, the self-sustenance and self-reliance, the sense of faith in the future. What Vaughan stands to accomplish, perhaps, is an important service to the blues -- blues is widely enough recognized as the foundation of rock and roll, but Vaughan may have the opportunity to bring the blues back into the current mainstream of rock in new ways, at a new level. He may, in fact -- as Albert King has suggested -- take the color out of the blues.

"I do feel as though I have grown as a player through all this," Vaughan remarked at one point. "It's funny -- I 'm trying to get back to how I used to play years and years ago, but, at the same time, make those ideas grow, tie them into what we're doing now. I guess I'm just remembering where all these things come from. It's all pretty regular music to me, what I've heard all my life, what I grew up with the Glory tunes, Johnny G. and the G-Men -- I used to hear some of those old bands in -- Dallas, at the Heights Theater in Oak Cliff, in '62 and ‘63.

"Now, I use heavy strings, tune low, play hard, and floor it." He laughed. "Floor it." Another chuckle. "That's technical talk."

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