The Blues Today: Jonny Lang
By David Wild

Talk about your mannish boys. Even if 17 year old Jonny Lang had made a deal with the devil at the crossroads--as in the Robert Johnson legend-- the contract wouldn't be legally binding. "I think 14 was the legal age back then," Lang responds with a laugh. Without Satan's help, Lang has become an adult sized star, selling 1 million copies of Lie to Me, the 1997 A&M debut album on which he sings and plays lead guitar confidently. Though his quick rise has not impressed all blues purists, Lang is clearly helping to bring the blues to a new generation. Not bad for a white kid from Fargo, ND, who didn't even take his first guitar lesson until he was thirteen.

RS: When you sing "good morning little school girl" how young a school girl are you imagining, anyway?
JL: Well, I don't know. I just thought it was a cool song--I didn't have an age bracket in mind really.
RS: But you can't sing like a dirty old man yet -- unless were talking about an 11 year old school girl or something.
JL: [Pauses] Right. I'm trying to get myself out of some deep water there.
RS: Was it great and scary to open for the Rolling Stones recently?
JL: Oh man, it was a trip. It was surreal, because our first gig with them was in Hawaii, in Honolulu at the Aloha Stadium so it was just crazy 'cause it can't get any better than that. We all kind of had to just stop, look around and take it all in. The show was just amazing.
RS: Since they, too, started out as teenagers playing the blues did the Stones have any advice for you?
JL: Well, I had laryngitis in Hawaii, and I was talking to Mick -- or squeaking to Mick -- and he was so helpful. He got, like, his assistant to call his personal doctor or whatever and get a prescription for this stuff, and it was great.
RS: Mick Jagger got you drugs!
JL: Well, legal drugs.
RS: Do you get frustrated with purists questioning your right to sing the blues?
JL: There's a huge initiation process, but it's music -- it's for everybody as far as I'm concerned. There are people who'll say "No, you can't play; you don't have the right." Well it's like, "What do you mean I can't?" I am, you know.
RS: What was the first album you ever bought?
JL: I don't even remember.
RS: Come on, You're 17-- It couldn't have been that long ago!
JL: The first album I personally purchased…it had to be, like, Nirvana. No, it was Jane's Addiction.
RS: Was there blues stuff around your house?
JL: Not really. More Motown, Otis Redding, Gladys Knight kind of stuff.
RS: You toured as an opening act with one of your blues heroes, BB King. What sort of attitude did you get from the older blues artist?
JL: Everybody who's been an influence, who I've met--Buddy Guy and BB King and Luther Allison and all those guys--has been really supportive and happy to have young people carrying it on. To them it doesn't matter what color the person carrying it is. If young kids don't have the right to play then how does the art form survive? So they were supportive -- or the appeared to be, anyway.
RS: Does it bother you to marketed in a way that capitalizes on the fact that you're sexier looking than, say, Johnny Winter?
JL: Well, no. I think that to have to market music to sell it in the first place is lame. I don't pay attention. I would never go to the record company and say, " Take a really gorgeous shot of me and, like, airbrush it and make me look flawless." That's the last thing I would ever do. I would think that would be bogus.
RS: Your first video, for "Lie to Me," was pretty bluesy, but the second one, for "Missing your Love," sort of made you seem like Hanson with sadder songs.
JL: I thought the video fit the song well, and I don't think anyone was going for a sell-out thing there. It was just…I had my girlfriend in there, who is, like, my best friend, also, and it was really fun.
RS: You mention having fun and being happy, Is it fair to say you don't feel that a good bluesman should be miserable?
JL: Definitely. If playing music makes you sad depressed and drunk and you die when you're thirty, then why do it? That's, like, folklore, or something. BB King was never sad. I mean, I'm sure he was, but he wasn't depressed to be playing music. Buddy Guy loves to play.
RS: Who were your formative influences?
JL: Albert Collins and BB King are probably my biggest influences, guitar-playing wise. Musically, I think all around, Stevie
Wonder is probably my biggest influence. I never get star struck or nervous, but if I met Stevie Wonder, I would freak out.
RS: Was playing with BB King or any of the other blues greats frightening?
JL: I wouldn't say playing with those guys is intimidating. That would mean my frame of mind would be competition, and that's not it at all. Playing with BB Blew my mind, and I wasn't even concentrating on saying anything. I just had the good fortune of standing 3 feet away, watching him play.
RS: You've already taken blues music to some unusual places--like a Disney special. You figure even Mickey mouse gets the blues?
JL: That sounds like a question Disney would have asked me! Yeah, it seems maybe I am reaching a younger audience that wouldn't have been exposed. When I see kinds my age--I calling them kids-- down front at shows, listening to our music with their eyes shut and waving their heads, it's like they're honestly getting this. And that's really cool because it proves that I'm not
some freak of nature that appreciates the blues.