When I was playing with Ronnie Hawkins, Ronnie brought in this guitar player, Roy Buchanan. Roy played with Dale Hawkins, Ronnie's cousin. And Roy's attitude was like a gunslinger coming to town: The Axman Cometh.
Roy had a command over the guitar that I couldn't comprehend. He bent the neck; he bent the strings behind the bridge. He played with both hands on the fingerboard. He used every ornament on the thing to get a noise out of it. It was like the guitar came to life. It started speaking.
I had so many questions for him. And you couldn't get a straight answer out of him. One night, I said, "There is something about you and this instrument that I don't understand." And he said, "I'll tell you what it is. I'm actually half-wolf. It's a complicated thing, but my mother and the wolf . . ."
The next night, we were playing -- Roy was doing this gunslinger thing on me and he became the wolf. Finally, Ronnie Hawkins came to the conclusion that Roy was too weird and spooky to deal with.
Because Roy was such a complicated person, he never played with anybody where he could be shown in his proper light. I remember hearing years ago that the Rolling Stones were talking to him, wanting to try him out, and he didn't even show up.
