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."
Steve Dougherty, Barbara Sandler in Chicago, & Beth Austin in East
Troy.
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