Joe Bonamassa has looked back on the time he shared the stage with one of his blues guitar heroes, Albert Collins.
When he was just 11 years old, Bonamassa found himself tucked under the wing of blues virtuoso Danny Gatton. Just a year later, he was trading licks with Albert Collins on stage. It was an education.
For two years on the trot, the young blues starlet was invited to play at the New York Blues Festival in Hog Rose. Having impressed at Gatton’s side, he was rewarded with another enviable slot 12 months on.
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“They convinced Albert Collins to let me sit in,” Bonamassa recalls on the No Cover Charge podcast. “He taught me the greatest lessons I’ve ever learned on stage.”
A revered Telecaster enthusiast, Collins’ cold, biting guitar tone earned him the nickname ‘Iceman’. On stage in New York, he tested a young Bonamassa’s mettle.
“At the time, I worshiped all the Ice Pickin’ and Frostbite records,” Bonamassa explains. “So I got up on stage, and I had my little USA Strat with Lace Sensors, and my Sunn Beta Lead solid state 4×12 amp.
“It was prime time Albert Collins. He had a Tele, a [Fender] Quad Reverb, and about a 150-foot cable because he would go out into the crowd.”
It was a trial by fire for a 12-year-old Bonamassa. He had to earn his place on the stage. Collins wanted him there on merit. He put Bonamassa through his paces.
“He stung a note and pointed his Tele [like it was a gun] at me,” he develops. “I’m this little kid in a cowboy hat; it was his way of saying, ‘Welcome to the big leagues, kid. I don’t care how old you are, being up here requires a certain amount of intestinal fortitude, and I’m testing you to see if you have it. So I did my best Albert impression.”
Bonamassa lived to tell the tale and became a modern blues legend in his own right, inviting next-gen guitarists to his stages in the same vein as his early guest spot alongside Collins.
In related news, Bonamassa recently took a deep-dive into an Eric Clapton classic and explained why it’s essential learning for every blues soloist in his latest Guitar World column.
But the real news reverberating around camp Bonamassa right now is his shock pivot to digital amps, and he has now revealed the one key moment that changed his mind.
