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BIOGRAPHY
HE PERFORMED AS HE ALWAYS HAD, as if the song of the moment
would be his last. During the blistering, 20-minute rendition
of "Sweet Home Chicago" that closed the show at the
Alpine Valley Music Theater near East Troy, Wisconsin, guitarist
Stevie Ray Vaughan was onstage with fellow bluesmen Eric Clapton,
Buddy Guy, Robert Cray and Vaughan's older brother, Jimmie. Said
Guy later: "It was one of the most incredible sets I ever
heard Stevie play. I had goose bumps."
>Shortly afterward, at 12:15 A.M. on Aug. 27, the exhilarated
musicians left the stage through a rear exit. Vaughan, 35, had
planned to make the two-hour drive back to his Chicago hotel with
his brother and sister-in-law, Connie, but at the last minute
he chose to board a Bell 206B Jet Ranger, one of four helicopters
waiting nearby. According to his New York City publicist, Charles
Comer, Vaughan had learned from Clapton's manager that there were
seats enough to accommodate all three in his party. When he found
only one place was actually available, Vaughan said to Connie
and Jimmie, "Do you mind if I take the seat? I really need
to get back."
The helicopter took off in fog around 12:40 A.M. with Vaughan
and four others aboard. Sweet Chicago would never be reached.
Moments later the chopper's remains lay spread across more than
200 feet of a man-made ski slope in a field dotted with bittersweet
and Queen Anne's lace. All on board were killed instantly in what
National Transportation Safety Board investigator William Bruce
later described as "a high-energy, high-velocity impact at
a shallow angle."
Fans leaving the noisy concert site did not hear the crash,
which occurred on the far side of the nearby hill. In fact a search
for the lost copter wasn't begun until 5 A.M. -- more than four
hours later -- after an orbiting search-and-rescue satellite picked
up the craft's emergency-locator transmitter signal. At 7 A.M.
searchers found the bodies of Vaughan; Bobby Brooks, Clapton's
Hollywood agent; pilot Jeff Brown (who may have been unfamiliar
with the hilly site's tricky take-off procedures); Clapton's assistant
tour manager, Colin Smythe; and Clapton's bodyguard, Nigel Browne.
Later that morning Clapton and Jimmie Vaughan were summoned by
the Walworth County coroner to identify the bodies.
The crash stilled the music of a man that many had considered
on the lip of true stardom. Vaughan's last album, In Step, had
gone gold and won a Grammy, and a new LP had already been recorded
for release later this month. The latter, titled Family Style,
was a pet project of Vaughan and brother Jimmie, 38, who had quit
his job as lead guitarist with the Fabulous Thunderbirds to work
on the LP.
A promising guitar player by the time he was 8, Stevie Ray
grew up in Dallas, the son of an asbestos plant worker and a secretary
at a ready-mix cement factory. He abandoned high school at 17
and, with his brother, began haunting the all-night blues clubs
of Austin, where his trademark bandito hat, tar-paper voice and
potent playing became as familiar as the clubs' watered-down drinks.
A videotape of one performance, sent to Mick Jagger, led to a
New York City nightclub appearance at Jagger's request, but it
was Vaughan's stunning set at the 1982 Montreux Jazz Festival
that brought him both a record contract and the wider recognition
he deserved.
Vaughan had been plagued for years by severe alcohol and drug
dependency, and he chronicled his successful struggle to kick
the twin sins with his album In Step. "He just went straight
in the last four years," says a friend. "Since then
he wouldn't even drink tea with caffeine. It's such a shame. He
was such a sweet man."
Five albums, countless tours and guest appearances -- live
and in the studio -- with a pantheon of blues and rock performers
like B.B. King and David Bowie had established the goateed musician
as one of the reigning kings of his genre. "He did a lot
for us blues players, keeping the blues happening," says
guitarist Albert Collins, who remembers seeing Vaughan play in
Austin's bars when the latter was still a teenager. "He was
attractive to younger kids, and he always had this fire in him.
He made the blues a young and old thing to listen to." Grammy-winning
blues singer Koko Taylor echoes Collins's view. "People didn't
pay attention to the blues," says Taylor. "Vaughan was
one of the musicians who changed that."
Vaughan had bought a home in the Highland Park section of
Dallas about nine months ago; killed four years to the day after
the death of his father, he will now be buried nearby. His death
is a sad new addition to a series of similar air-crash tragedies
that over the years have claimed such stars as Patsy Cline, Buddy
Holly, Otis Redding, Jim Croce, Rick Nelson and others. But to
Vaughan's friends and fans, the latest loss is far more than a
sad statistic.
Last summer Vaughan had come to Chicago on another mission,
to help Buddy Guy, whom he had known for a decade, open his new
South Side nightclub. Hours before the crash the pair teamed up
again for the last song Vaughan would ever perform. "Stevie
is the best friend I've ever had, the best guitarist I ever heard
and the best person anyone will ever want to know," a choked-up
Guy said the day after his friend's death. "He will be missed
a lot."
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