Quote:
Originally Posted by jmn3
But there was no way anyone was seriously going to take the song out on the road with her playing it. I’m not saying she was ever going to be Nancy Wilson wielding that acoustic around the stage like a dynamo, but I think her career would’ve taken a far more interesting path if she had spent any time learning how to play a guitar or piano with even some Credibility.
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There’s the famous mid-70s tour rehearsal picture of Stevie with a guitar (which first ran in
Newsweek, I guess) and also the picture from the 1979 tour rehearsal in the
People cover story of November 1979 (probably playing “Save Me a Place” with Christine and Lindsey also on acoustic).
She just did not have the chops to play seriously in front of a paying audience (for show, she used to play the electric piano on “Rhiannon” for thirty seconds on the 1983 solo tour). Wasn’t it some print interview where Christine said that Stevie should have built her chops and played onstage just to be thought of as “one of the musicians”? Stevie had every opportunity to do so in a fifty-year career and chose not to. (We know why: it doesn’t look alluring for the Welsh witch to have a guitar strapped around her shoulders. It restricts her flowing movements.) Her guitar playing is OK for someone’s living room (that may be her playing on one of her demos on the
Enchanted box set), but her piano playing shouldn’t be foisted on any paying customer — except in a decorative context (where she puts candles on a grand piano and bangs out “Dreams” or “Gypsy”). She is practically hopeless on an instrument. Her voice is her instrument (and a good one it is).
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