Light On Dark Water

Eric Johnson

As a perenially failing guitarist, I have occasionally over the years read Guitar Player magazine. I even subscribed to it for a few years in the mid-1990s or so, though I was always a little uneasy in doing so, as if one day I might get a letter saying "Inasmuch as our magazine is called Guitar PLAYER, we are obliged to discontinue your subscription…." 

There was a period–in the '80s, I suppose–long before the Web and electronic distribution of music, and when it was still reasonable to assume that anyone interested in music owned a record player, when the magazine had an insert that was a piece of flexible black plastic which could be played on a record player. That was how they distributed samples of the music of some of the artists they wrote about. One of these was an instrumental by Eric Johnson, of whom I'd never heard, called "Cliffs of Dover." It's possible that it was this performance, (possibly an edited version, as I don't recall the intro being quite this long).

I thought it was fantastic, and managed to make a cassette copy of it. I kept an eye out for an official recording of it, but when I finally heard it, I was disappointed. It was a studio version that somehow lacked the excitement of the live performance. And that pattern has more or less continued in my acquaintance with his music. I like the live album Live from Austin, TX, which is an Austin City Limits performance, better than the two or three studio albums I've heard. The studio work is more polished–too polished, many would say–and the playing is superb, but something's missing.

Here's another live track, "S.R.V.", which I assume stands for Stevie Ray Vaughan.

Like a lot of virtuoso instrumentalists, Johnson wants to do it all, including singing, but unfortunately neither his compositions, for the most part, nor his vocals really appeal very much to me ("Cliffs of Dover" a striking but sadly rare exception). I can't help wishing he had found a place in a band with a singer and writer(s) as good in their specialties as he is. But I do love his playing. Obviously he's influenced by Hendrix (who isn't?), which he acknowledges in interviews, and he covers Hendrix tunes, but much of this performance seems so Hendrix-like as to be a homage.

Here's a link to the studio version; see if you agree that the live one is stronger.