Guitar Magazine JW article / Aug 98 Where Rock & Roll Meets the Blues: At the Crossroads with Johnny Winter. By Robert Santelli I met Johnny Winter for the first time in the mid '70's, just as he was about to make a career shift from hard blues to hard rock. I was a 2O year old, part-time rhythm guitar player in a Johnny Winter inspired blues-rock band on the New Jersey shore called Cobalt, and although I wasn't very good, the band was. Somehow, Winter heard about Cobalt. He traveled down from New York City one Sunday afternoon in autumn to hear the band rehearse. Apparently, he liked what he heard; a couple of weeks later, our lead guitarist, Doug Brockie, and our drummer, Richard Hughes, were asked to join Johnnys band. It didn't take long for the pair to accept the offer. After all, Johnny Winter was still one of the true kingpins of guitar, despite '70's pop music having distanced itself from the blues. Winter was (and is) still perfectly capable of swarming his listeners with blues-driven, apoplectic solos and Êripping power chords of enough energy and volume to sandblast the sin out of a soul and then send it to kingdom come. Johnny Winter took the best that Cobalt had to offer, and both the band and my career as budding local star were left in his wake. I didn't know it then, but he did me a big favor I took up writing music instead of playing it,which was the far more sensible path for me to follow. But it was the experience of my Cobalt colleagues that taught me the lesson. ÊBrockie and Winter never really jelled, so Doug left the band to work with Ginger Baker. Hughes stayed on, keeping a big beat for Winter on such albums as Still Alive and Saints and Sinners. But the pressure of touring and being in the spotlight, plus mounting personal problems caused Richard to crash. One day I received a phone call from a friend telling me Richard had killed himself. It was the first time I learned how costly success could be in the world of rock and roll. It was a lesson I've never forgotten. CLICK HERE to read the full article...