He is "authentic whenever he wants to be so, but in other cases he easily goes beyond the bounds of what is already well known to him to create his own eclecticism." I found this quote in the article you sent to me. What struck me was, that this is the way I would explain Campbell's divergences from classic delta style blues.
..."He was authentic when he wanted to be"...and it was perfectly valid when he felt like being experimental, BECAUSE HE WAS AUTHENTIC. This is how I would answer his critics.
John was not trying to preserve the Blues by EMBALMING them, he was living them in 1993...and of course we wanted to reach a larger (rock, if you will) audience; Geez, Robert Johnson wanted to reach a larger audience, too.Those critics of John's always seemed to feel that the Blues was some sort of strictly defined formulaic sound and if you diverged from that then you were selling out or something. I never understood that. What we were attempting to do was to NOT be a museum artifact. That was the challenge, not just faithfully recreating someone else's sound, but making it relevant to as many people as we could. The Kids in Europe got it. The Critics in America didn't; and for the bottomline, I'll take the Kids over the Critics every time.
Here is one of my favorite stories about John:
We were in Stockholm, Sweden in ' 92 I think. We played at the Jazz Festival there and we were introduced to a Ukranian guitarist named Enver Izmailov. This cat was incredible. He was staying at the same hotel we were and after the gig we all went back there and Enver proceeded to blow our minds, playing for us in the lobby for hours! He was truly one of the most amazing instrumentalists I'd ever heard....playing this mix of jazz and Balkan worldbeat music.
Well, Campbell finally went and grabbed his axe and the result was astounding! This East meets Blues summit at this funky little hotel in Sweden. Their styles were so different that it was difficult for them to find much common ground but it was still just amazing. (Anyhow it gets better)
We had just come from Paris and there was a guitar maker there named James Trussart who had presented John with a beautiful custom made axe. It was gorgeous, made out of polished aluminum with a graphite neck, styled after a telecaster. John was just blown away by it and the guy just gives it to him. John had been trying to incorporate it into our shows, with not much success. It was just too pristine sounding. Now, Enver was wandering around Europe just blowing people away playing on an old Japanese guitar and during their session at the hotel, Campbell had shown the Trussart guitar to him and his jaw just dropped. I mean I had played all over the States and Europe and I had never seen such a beautiful axe in my life, and I can imagine some cat from the Ukraine seeing this as something out of a fairytale.
Well, the next day we are at the Stockholm airport to go to our next stop on the tour and there is Enver in the departure lounge waiting to go back to Kiev or someplace. John walks over and bids him farewell and right at the last minute he grabs the Trussart Guitar off of the luggage cart and opens it up. Enver is looking at it lovingly and Campbell hands it to him. He takes it, plays a few licks and starts to give it back to John. John just holds up both hands and says "no, you keep it, you deserve it." Enver has this unbelieving look on his face. Campbell tells him again," I want you to have it". Enver starts to literally weep with joy. This axe would have fetched $5000 (at least) In New York. We never saw Enver or the guitar again, but I will never forget that little scene at the Stockholm Airport or Campbell's beautiful gesture to a guy he hardly knew.
Contributed by Jimmy Pettit - 1-27-03
Used with Permission. Copyright © 2003 Jimmy Pettit