Electric guitar heaven

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  Charles Spencer

  Electric guitar heaven

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Alexander Larman

What happened to the Rishi Sunak I knew at school?

Once I’d picked myself up from the floor and applied a steak to my black eye, I set about rearranging some of my collection. And the first CDs to take pride of place in the new chest of drawers were by the amazing Sonny Landreth. A Louisiana slide guitarist, he has been described by Eric Clapton ‘as probably the most underestimated musician on the planet and also one of the most advanced’. I saw him the other week, in the intimate surroundings of the Borderline in London, where he reduced a packed house to awed silence.

‘Are you still there?’ he inquired anxiously at one point. ‘Yeah, we’re listening,’ a voice from the crowd shouted back. ‘We’re not used to that at home,’ Landreth replied with a grin, before blasting off into yet another amazing run. 

There seems to be nothing he can’t do with his guitar, no sound he can’t coax, or cajole, or command from it. He taps it and slaps it, fingers it like a lover, makes it roar and blaze and cry and wail. But backed by bass and drums, this is no empty display of virtuosity. His playing is also full of feeling and emotional depth, and he conjures up the Louisiana swamps and bayous with a rich mixture of blues, rock and Zydeco styles. It was electric guitar heaven and I couldn’t believe my luck in catching him live so soon after discovering his recordings. 

The place to start with Landreth is his latest album, From the Reach, in which he’s joined by Dr John, Mark Knopfler, Jimmy Buffett and old Slowhand Clapton himself in a blazing, blinding album that is as deep as it is exciting. I’d also warmly recommend the live set, Grant Street, which thrillingly captures his great live performances.

At the end of his set at the Borderline, Landreth’s amp blew up. It had taken a hell of a lot of punishment over the previous 90 minutes, but undeterred, Landreth, a scholarly, ascetic-looking fellow in wire-framed specs, simply plugged into the PA system and played on. In a graceful compliment to his by now enslaved English audience he remarked, ‘When your back’s against the wall I’d rather be with my friends.’ If only poor Gordon Brown could say as much. But then he can’t play guitar like Sonny. 

Charles Spencer is theatre critic of the Daily Telegraph.