Former David Bowie electric guitar player Earl Slick has recalled the moment blues legend Buddy Guy walked in while he was jamming with Edgar Winter and was floored by Slick’s playing.
Throughout his storied career, Bowie collaborated with some of the greatest guitarists in the game. From his early tandem with Mick Ronson to the avant-garde flair of Robert Fripp and Stevie Ray Vaughan’s blazing guitar solos on Let’s Dance and beyond, he sure knew how to pick them.
Slick, who arrived in Ronson’s wake, quickly earned his place among them. Chatting about his life, career, and unexpected friendships with blues greats with Mary Spender, he says he crossed paths with Guy after succumbing to peer pressure.
“I love Buddy Guy,” he says. “I’ve always been a fan. So they had the Bowie exhibit going on in Chicago, [David Bowie Is at the Contemporary Art Chicago]. A friend of mine in Chicago wanted to go, and he wanted me to go with him. I get an email: there’s a plane ticket in it. So, I have to go.”
Arriving in the Windy City, the pair agreed to visit Buddy Guy’s Legends, the club owned by the veteran bluesman.
“I said, ‘Maybe he’ll be there,’” Slick continues, “He said, ‘No, he’s out of town.’”
However, Edgar Winter, who had played sax on Slick’s 1991 track Slow Down Slick (from In Your Face), was in town.
“So, Ed invited me to jam, and during the show, I’m standing on stage, and from the stage, you could see the door entrance. In walks Buddy. I was like, ‘Holy shit! He showed up.’
“I meet Buddy, and he says something irreverent but funny at the same time. He loved how I played, he said, ‘From now on, anytime you want, and I’m playing, you just jump on stage.’ I was blown away.”
A month later, Slick put his words to the test. It was January 2015, and Guy was playing a residency at his club. When Slick showed up, he was more than inviting. Slick, however, felt the effects of trading licks with his hero.
“After the first night I sat in with him, it was 1:00 in the morning and 20 degrees below zero. I’m bundling up. I had to go for a walk,” he recalls. “My brain got so exploded and wired by being on stage with Buddy Guy!
“I love the blues, and I looked at him as an original dude,” he explains. “All I kept thinking was, ‘He thinks I'm good enough to be on stage. I'm actually good!’ I had to walk it off. I was out there for two hours.
“That was the [biggest] highlight I’ve had in a long time. It was like this out-of-body experience!”
Slick’s career has been peppered with standout moments. He adds that sharing a stage with Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison for Blue Suede Shoes: A Rockabilly Session, a televised concert in 1985 was “fucking crazy”.
“Around ’85, I was kind of in-between things,” he reveals. “I drove my wife crazy. She goes, ‘Dude, go to NAMM, get outta here.’ So I went to NAMM and ran into the Stray Cats’ tour manager. He goes, ‘I’ve got Slim Jim and Lee Rocker here, and they’re looking for a guitar player.’”
Though he felt the gig “was a little out of the box”, he agreed to the project, and Phantom, Rocker & Slick’s self-titled album was out by November. At that time, HBO was putting together a big-budget special to honor rockabilly legend Carl Perkins, and, because of his new bandmates’ association with him, the group were invited to participate.
“We rehearsed for four or five days. It was a big production,” Slick recalls. “So I'm standing there and I’m looking around like, ‘There’s Eric Clapton, George Harrison… Did someone drop me out of a spaceship?’ These are the guys I grew up watching, and I'm on stage with them. It was mind-blowing.”
Guy, meanwhile, has opened up on how he played a key role in the soundtrack of the blockbuster new horror film, Sinners.
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