Music / Stevie Ray Vaughan

Money's tight, nothin' free
Won't somebody come and rescue me?
I am stranded, caught in the crossfire
— "Crossfire", Vaughan's first #1 single

Stephen "Stevie" Ray Vaughan (October 3, 1954 – August 27, 1990) was a Blues Rock singer and guitarist from Dallas, Texas. He dropped out of high school and moved to Austin to start a music career, forming the band Double Trouble. A visit to the Montreaux Jazz Festival brought him to the attention of David Bowie, who brought him in for the Let's Dance album, and Jackson Browne, who let the band borrow his recording studio.

The band received a record contract with Epic Records shortly thereafter, recording as "Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble". The album recorded at Jackson Browne's studio, Texas Flood, went double-platinum and was nominated for two Grammys. More albums followed, although success caused its own issues. Vaughan had had alcohol and drug problems since he was young, and went through rehab to deal with them. There was also a delay between albums caused by issues with his divorce.

Despite his concerns that he couldn't perform as well sober, the band's fourth studio album, In Step, also went double-platinum, gave them their first #1 single, "Crossfire", and won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Performance.

The band had just performed with Eric Clapton at Wisconsin's Alpine Valley Resort in August 1990 when tragedy struck. A helicopter carrying Vaughan and three members of Clapton's tour entourage flew into a hillside after takeoff, killing all aboard. The cause of the accident was ultimately determined to be pilot error.

Family Style, a collaboration with his brother Jimmie, was already in the pipeline and got released a month after his death. It won the same Grammy the next year.

A posthumous album, The Sky is Crying, was assembled by his brother after his death, also winning the Grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Performance. In all, he was nominated for 12 Grammys, winning 6. He also won 10 Austin Music Awards and 5 W. C. Handy Awards.

A tribute concert featuring Clapton, Bonnie Raitt, B.B. King, and more was released on CD and video.

Double Trouble split up for a bit before reforming off-and-on, recording a few more records but never reaching the same level of success.

Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2015.

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"The tropes are crying...":

• Age-Gap Romance: With Janna Lapidus, a Russian model Stevie Ray met in New Zealand while on tour. Stevie Ray was in his thirties, while Janna was seventeen. However, despite the age gap, they deeply and genuinely loved each other, with Janna being credited as the person who helped Stevie Ray recover from his Darkest Hour. Before his death, he had told friends that he hoped to one day marry her.
• Amusing Injuries:
  • The injuries he suffers at the hands of his girlfriend in the "Cold Shot" video for being fixated on guitars are ridiculous - first he gets punched hard enough to crash through a wall, then he's caught in the car door and dragged down the road after his girlfriend drives away in anger, and then he gets thrown off the top of a building. And every time, he's shown relaxing in his hospital bed looking perfectly fine and playing his guitar as if nothing happened. It's subverted towards the end when all the injuries he suffers causes him to flatline, with the doctors desperately trying to revive him... but then his girlfriend rushes in and successfully revives him at the last minute with a guitar and an amp cord, having realized the error of her ways and accepted his guitar fixation.
  • Most of the bad-luck injuries caused by the cat in the "Superstition" video qualify, including a Groin Attack, an electrocution, and a trap door opening under someone.
• Artist and the Band: Except for albums like Family Style (with Jimmie, credited to the Vaughan Brothers), his work was released as "Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble".
• Badass Cape: The album cover for In Step, as well as a few promotional photos, depicts him wearing a Western poncho. He's also considered one of the most iconic and influential blues musicians of all time, whose work revitalized the stagnant blues genre and brought it to the mainstream.
• The Band Minus the Face: As noted, Double Trouble did some albums without Vaughan, but never achieved the same level of success after his death.
• Because You Were Nice to Me: During the Live Alive tour, he met a young model named Janna Lapidus, who helped him out his Darkest Hour by supporting him while he attended rehab. This leads to Stevie Ray falling head-over-heels in love with her, to the point where he would get distracted post-rehab because he's busy trying to call Janna instead of recording music with Double Trouble. Despite the age-gap and being in different countries, they formed a working relationship and at some point, they got engaged. Before his death, Stevie Ray told friends he hoped to marry Janna one day.
• Berserk Button: Stevie Ray's girlfriend in the "Cold Shot" video is enraged by anything related to guitars because of how he ignores her for it, even complaining in the beginning that he loves his guitars more than he loves her. Though Played for Laughs, it's also deconstructed in how the girlfriend ends up seriously injuring Stevie in a rage every time he tries to make it up to her because his attempts always involve guitars. Eventually, Stevie's injuries catch up to him and he nearly dies in the hospital. But he ends up being saved at the last minute because the girlfriend realized what she had done and rushes in to revive him with a guitar and an amp chord, having come to accept his guitar fixation.
• Big Brother Worship: As a child, he deeply admired his older brother Jimmie Vaughan, so when Jimmie took up music, Stevie Ray decided to follow him, too. At first, he tried the drums and the saxophone ("I wanted to play saxophone, but all I could get were a few squeaks."), but then he settled on the guitar instead. The rest was history.
• Blues Rock: One of the leaders of the genre in the 1980s.
• Cover Version: Many of his best-known songs were cover versions, including the title tracks to Texas Flood and The Sky is Crying.
• Creator Cameo: The video for "Superstition" ends with the black cat being picked up by Stevie Wonder, who wanders away singing the chorus.
• Death by Falling Over: Subverted in the "Cold Shot" video. When Stevie's thrown off the top of a building by his girlfriend, it doesn't immediately kill him, but it is part of a series of injuries that makes him flatline on his hospital bed. Fortunately, Stevie's girlfriend arrives and revives him.
• Death by Music Video:
  • The black cat kills off the band members one by one in the video for "Superstition", except for Stevie himself, who ends up the Sole Survivor. In a tragically ironic twist, Stevie would die in a helicopter accident four years after, leaving behind his band.
  • The "Cold Shot" video has him flatlining on the hospital bed from all the injuries he suffered at the hands of his girlfriend. But his girlfriend arrives at the last minute and revives him with a guitar and an amp chord he gave to her as a gift, having realized the error of her ways.
• Epic Rocking: "Texas Flood", "Lenny", "Little Wing" are just a few examples, and perhaps the most known ones.
• Groin Attack: One of the bad-luck incidents in the "Superstition" video is a mic boom arm being swung up into somebody's crotch.
• Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: You wouldn't notice it with his hat on, but by the time he died at thirty-five, he already began the balding process. He was comfortable with this, though.
• I Call It "Vera": His guitars were generally named, starting with "Number One", his first. His favorite (custom-built) was just called "Main", and another was called "Lenny" after his wife, Lenora.
• Intergenerational Friendship: In 1985, he met and struck up a friendship with Jeff Healey, a Blind Musician from Canada who was 19 years old at the time. They would stay good friends up until Stevie Ray's tragic death in a helicopter accident in 1990.
• Ironic Last Words: Just before boarding the ill-fated helicopter, he told drummer Chris Layton, "Call me when you get back. Love ya." These are the last words he is known to have spoken.
• Jerkass Realization: Implied with Stevie Ray's girlfriend in the "Cold Shot" video. Her relationship with Stevie was on the rocks because she hated how his passion for guitars was causing him to ignore her. But every time Stevie tries patching up their relationship, she gets angry to the point of physically abusing him because his efforts always involve guitars. However, at the end of the video, she rushes to the hospital and revives Stevie with a guitar and an amp chord just as he was flatlining from his injuries, having realized that her abuse would have killed him.
• Lead Singer Plays Lead Guitar: He was the lead singer and lead guitarist of his band Double Trouble. Similarly to Hendrix, he also handled the role of rhythm guitar.
• Love Hurts: "Cold Shot" is about a couple who fell out of love for each other and have drifted apart, despite the boyfriend's attempts to rekindle their love. Similarly, the music video shows Stevie Ray in a borderline abusive relationship with a girlfriend who initially hates his guitar fixation; she eventually comes around at the end when he nearly dies from her abuse and the realization hits her.
• Never Bareheaded: He was rarely seen in public without some variation of his Signature Headgear; in fact, the number of him appearing in photos without his hat(s) can be counted with one hand. He did take off his hat on-stage at times, though, such as when he wanted to perform with his guitar behind his head.
• One-Steve Limit: Or rather, One Stevie Limit; a lampshaded aversion occurs at the end of the music video for "Superstition", when someone calls for the cat to "come to Stevie" — Stevie Wonder, that is.
• Only Known by Their Nickname: Many people today know him as Stevie Ray Vaughan, which started when his road manager, Robert "Cutter" Brandenburg, addressed him as "Stevie Ray" and convinced him to use his middle name on stage. The number of people who call him by his real first name, Stephen, can be counted with one hand.
• Rock Trio: His band, Double Trouble, was originally a five-person group before it finally became a trio consisting of Tommy Shannon (bass), Chris Layton (drums), and Vaughan himself (guitar/vocals). Reese Wynans was included as a keyboardist after Vaughan grew frustrated with his increasing lack of inspiration, turning Double Trouble into a rock quartet until Vaughan's death in a helicopter accident, after which Reese left the band.
• Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: Deconstructed Trope; Living with a violent, alcoholic father later influenced him to become an alcoholic himself, but it didn't really hit until after he became famous, with parties, alcohol, and cocaine becoming quite common. Naturally, it severely affected his guitar-playing to the point where a second guitarist was hired to pick up the slack for him. Eventually, during the Live Alive tour, he collapsed from a gangplank while in Germany and was rushed to the hospital, and was discovered to have damaged his body so badly with drugs and alcohol that doctors told he him he had maybe a month to live if he kept living the way he had been. And this happened on his birthday. For his part, he took the warning to heart, went to rehab, and was sober for the rest of his life.
• Signature Headgear: Many people know him by the black wide-brimmed hat with a plumed feather, though also common is the pageboy hat he wore in his youth.
• Superstition Episode: The music video for "Superstition", in which Stevie and the band trigger a large number of bad-luck superstitions, and it ends up taking out the entire band. A main character for the video is a black cat, who crosses the band's path on their way into the theater; other superstitions triggered include broken mirrors and walking under a ladder. The cat is heavily involved in the attacks on the band before getting picked up by the original songwriter, Stevie Wonder.
• Ugly Guy, Hot Wife: He's not ugly by any means, but he had a very toothy grin and started balding by the time he approached his mid-30s. By contrast, his ex-wife Lenny was drop-dead gorgeous, and his eventual girlfriend Janna Lapidus was pretty, too. It helped that both of them were models.
• Wild Take: While he's known for his mind-blowingly awesome guitar solos, he's also known for making really exaggerated facial expressions during his performances that make him look like he's constantly in pain. It might be largely due to using really heavy guitar strings, which would make anyone wince (most rock or blues guitarists use 0.09 or 0.10 gauge strings; Vaughan famously used 0.13 gauge, though in the last years of his life, downgraded slightly to 0.12 gauge because he was playing so many gigs).

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