ERIC JOHNSON
ANAHEIM

Basic fact: Eric Johnson is one of popular music’s most respected and renowned guitarists. Further fact sometimes overshadowed by the brilliance of Johnson’s playing: The reason why he stands both out and above the rest in a world peopled with many “guitar gods” is that, for Johnson, it’s as much about the music and the song as it playing his guitar.

“He's an extraordinary guitar player accessible to ordinary music fans,” notes the Memphis Commercial Appeal. That’s because Eric Johnson plays music and not just the guitar. And as found on his Vanguard live DVD release, Anaheim, he is also a gifted player of the piano (his first instrument) as well as songwriter, singer and song interpreter. Or more succinctly, Eric Johnson is a diverse, versatile and fully realized musical creator who plays guitar like no one else.

Johnson’s gift for composing and playing songs that evoke vivid imagery and tell palpable stories even without words can be witnessed on his Anaheim performances of the aptly-named “Trademark” and his signature song “Cliffs of Dover,” which won Johnson a Grammy in 1991 for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. The effervescent 2006 live performance at The Grove in Anaheim includes “S.R.V.,” Johnson’s stirring salute to the late Stevie Ray Vaughan, who rose to fame alongside Johnson from the Austin, Texas music scene, and his only recorded performance of “Manic Depression” by Jimi Hendrix, a seminal inspiration to whom Johnson has often been compared.

Anaheim also showcases the range of Johnson’s stylistic versatility with the sizzling country twang of “On The Way To Love,” a high-wattage take on the Neil Diamond-penned #2 pop hit by The Monkees, “Little Bit Me Little Bit You,” and Bob Dylan’s “My Back Pages” (which he recorded on his most recent studio album, 2005’s Bloom). The DVD is augmented with three performances from his 2004 acoustic guitar and piano tour (including Johnson’s piano reinterpretation of Hendrix’s “Wind Cries Mary”) and rounded out by a candid interview with Johnson in his recording studio that provides a glimpse into his creative process.
A Grammy-winning musical artist who is a member of Guitar Player’s Gallery of Greats and was named one of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of the 20th Century by Musician magazine, Johnson “plays guitar the way Michelangelo painted ceilings: with a colorful vibrancy that's more real than life," raves The New Age Music Guide. Similarly, as his friend and fellow guitarist Steve Vai observes, "Eric has more colorful tone in his fingers than Van Gogh had on his palette."

Born and raised in Austin, Texas — where he has been voted Best Electric Guitarist and Best Acoustic Guitarist multiple times as well as Musician of the Year in the annual Austin Music Awards — Johnson took to music from an early age, studying piano for seven years as a youngster. But with the arrival of The Beatles on American shores in 1964 as well as hearing his older brother’s rock band rehearse, his fate was sealed. “I think I knew the moment I heard the sound of the electric guitar," Johnson recalls.

By age 12 he was playing with his first band, and at 16, Johnson was making waves on the Austin music scene playing guitar in the psychedelic rock group Mariani, sharing bills with bands like ZZ Top and Bloodrock. By the mid-1970s, Johnson began touring and sparking a buzz about his astonishing talents in the jazz-rock outfit Electromagnets, whose recordings and a live TV performance from that era were released in the mid-1990s to critical acclaim. As Vintage Guitar notes, “Our six-string landscape could have been drastically different if, instead of being considered an ‘80s and ‘90s guitarist, Eric had been rubbing shoulders with the great fusioneers of the late ‘70s, such as Al Di Meola and Allan Holdsworth.”

In 1976, Johnson hit the studio to record his first solo album, Seven Worlds, which didn’t see release until 1998 due to managerial and contractual complications. Once again, his stunning abilities were evident on a recording that, as All Music Guide notes, “showcases all of Johnson's awesome talent — not only as a guitar virtuoso, but as a talented pop/rock songwriter… A classy false start to a great career.”

Undaunted, Johnson continued to burnish his growing reputation as a stunning musical artist through live performances and recording sessions for Cat Stevens, Christopher Cross and Carole King. A 1984 “Austin City Limits” segment featuring the still-unsigned guitarist was seen by Prince, who urged his recorded label to listen to Johnson. Fellow Warner Bros. artist Cross, who knew Johnson well from their days on the Austin club scene in the 1970s, had also been talking him up to the company, which offered Johnson the recording deal that has so long eluded him.

When Johnson finally debuted on Reprise in 1986 with Tones, he leapt to the cover of Guitar Player magazine, which hailed the album as "a majestic debut, its collage of guitar sounds ranging from purest-of-pure Strat to Hendrix-heavy psychedelia, from delicate koto chimes to magnificent violin textures.” The track “Zap” scored a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Instrumental Performance, but sluggish sales led to Johnson being dropped by the label.

He nonetheless rebounded to eventually sign with Capitol Records and release his breakthrough recording, Ah Via Musicom, in 1990. It vaulted Johnson into the pantheon of great modern guitar players and yielded a record three Top 10 instrumental tracks from a single album: The Grammy winning “Cliffs Of Dover” as well as “Trademark” and “Righteous.” Hailed as a “recording [that] has reached near-classic proportions within the guitar community” by All Music Guide, it showcased Johnson’s gifts and agility as a player and songwriter in a vast swath from styles ranging from rock to blues, jazz, pop and country.

Johnson’s versatility springs from his diverse musical tastes and influences. “I like a lot of different styles because I like a lot of different music, artists and guitarists,” he explains. Trained in classical and coming of age with the classic pop and rock of the 1960s, his seminal guitar touchstones were Hendrix, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck. Clapton’s work on the first album by John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers led Johnson back to blues icons like the three Kings — B.B., Freddie and Albert — all of whom he was able to see live, along with many other musical greats, at Austin venues like the legendary Armadillo World Headquarters. 

Among his many other inspirations are country players like Jerry Reed (paying homage with his song “Tribute to Jerry Reed” on Bloom) and Chet Atkins (whose Read My Licks album and subsequent TV special Johnson played on) as well as such jazz guitar innovators as Django Reinhardt, John McLaughlin, Les Paul and Wes Montgomery (who Johnson saluted in his Ah Via Musicom song “East Wes”), to name some but hardly all.

After three years of relentless touring in the wake of Ah Via Musicom’s success, Johnson returned to the studio to cut Venus Isle, released in 1996, and earned him another Grammy nomination. While making the album, he kept his live chops sharp playing Texas club gigs with his blues side project, Alien Love Child, whose in-concert set Live and Beyond was issued in 2000 and garnered Johnson yet another instrumental Grammy nomination for “Rain.” His limited-release 2002 collection Souvenir featured a dozen demos, outtakes and live tracks from throughout Johnson’s career. Bloom, his most recent studio album, was a 16-track tour de force divided into three segments based on the style and vibe of the songs that hit the streets in 2005. The album won Johnson his fifth Grammy nomination. That same year also saw the release on DVD and CD of Live From Austin, TX, a 1988 Johnson “Austin City Limits” performance.

Widely admired by his fellow guitarists, Johnson is an avid collaborator with other players. His 1996 G3 tour with fellow guitarists Joe Satriani and Steve Vai yielded a best selling album and platinum DVD, G3: Live in Concert, and Johnson was also tapped by Eric Clapton to appear at the 2004 Crossroads Guitar Festival. "Cliffs of Dover" is featured in the video game Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, and Johnson boasts both a signature Fender Stratocaster electric and Martin MC-40 acoustic guitar. He recently appeared on the Experience Hendrix Tour with former Hendrix sidemen Billy Cox and the late Mitch Mitchell.

“Very few musical artists achieve a true signature style — one which makes comparisons to other musicians impossible,” notes All Music Guide. “But Texas guitarist Eric Johnson arguably comes as close to this echelon as any musician from the past quarter-century.” The reason why is Johnson’s love for the music itself, the breadth of his tastes, and his focus on writing and playing songs rather than hot licks and riffs and six-string gymnastics and pyrotechnics.

“It really boils down to the music and the song at the end of the day,” he explains. “If it doesn’t have that it gets boring for me. That got drilled into me growing up on The Beatles.

“Even as a guitar player, when I listen to Hendrix, it feels to me like the guitar within the whole sonic thing is almost secondary. Not in its importance or its beauty or its contribution, but in the big picture where you’re enjoying the music and being emotionally moved by the lyrics and songs,” he notes.

As Johnson readies his next studio album for a planned 2009 release, his musical goals continue to be breaking new artistic ground as a player, composer, performer and recording artist. “I want to open up and dilate and be the best I can be,” he stresses. “The most important thing for me is to grow musically and make a more expansive and meaningful artistic statement.