Warren Haynes has looked back on his earliest exchanges with B.B. King – revealing that he passed up the first opportunity he got to play with the legendary bluesman.
With the release of Joe Bonamassa’s Blues Summit 100 B.B. King tribute album – and Guitarist magazine celebrating what would be the King’s 100th birthday – players from all corners of the guitar world are paying tribute to the blues great’s life and legacy.
And, in the new issue of Guitarist, Haynes – one of the many guest guitarists on Bonamassa’s star-studded tribute – explains how he walked away from his first B.B. King gig with the ultimate memento.
“I saw B.B. for the first time aged 19,” Haynes recalls. “He gave me a guitar pick that I carried in my pants pocket for years until it eventually got lost.”
Haynes would cross paths with King again years later as a member of the Allman Brothers, who ended up sharing the stage with B.B. in Texas. However, though King opened the stage up and invited players to join him, Haynes just couldn’t bring himself to trade licks with his hero. Fear took hold.
“When I joined the Allman Brothers, we played with him in Texas,” Haynes continues.
“During the show, B.B. invited Gregg to sit in, and he went up to the mic and asked, ‘Anyone else want to join me?’ More than anything, I wanted to go, but I’d never [properly] met B.B. and thought he’d look at me like, ‘Who the hell are you?’ So I just froze.”
Fortunately, Haynes wasn’t left to regret missing the chance to play with King for the rest of his life. Later on in his career, the opportunity came back around – and he seized it.
“It was years later that I finally got another opportunity to play with BB,” he says. “And I have to say that was an extremely proud moment.”
Elsewhere in the new issue of Guitarist, Billy Gibbons reveals the game-changing advice that B.B. King gave him about guitar strings – and it changed his approach to playing forever.
Visit Magazines Direct to pick up a copy of Guitarist issue 534.
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