Interview: Jeff Healey

Blind Man's Bluff?

Mark Liddell finds Jeff Healy in outspoken mode as the highly respected guitarist trashes the myth makers.

Last year saw the release of the third album Feel This, a more commercially honed collection of contemporary blues songs with a strong ZZ Top flavour. I wondered whether because of Canada's close proximity to the States he felt that Canadian music was sometimes overlooked. Healey takes a very rational view.

"Well, let's take logistics and say that the US is ten times the population, so, logically speaking, you're going to have for every Canadian band that's good, ten American acts."

Straight onto the LP then. You've had time to reflect on it. Any thoughts?

"The scary thing is that I still like the record. I mean, with the other albums that we did, they were certainly enjoyable, but by the time we were finished making them I would rather never hear from them again," Healey states somewhat surprisingly.

I then broach upon the touchy subject of his physical handicap, which certainly hasn't impeded his musical prowess. Does he think that it has, in fact, been crucial in developing his own distinctive style?

"No; the advantage comes from the imagination, and if you haven't got it up here, it's not going to translate out here," he says, pointing to his hands.

A lot of mythologizing surrounds the blues. Something Healey doesn't subscribe to.

"I think a lot of people outside are under a lot of romanticised misconceptions. It's like saying that everybody who's blind is naturally a great musician or can hear better."

Still, he does concede that being blind has led him to improvise on his chosen instrument. And I would have thought improvisation is integral to their music.

"The spontaneity aspect within the band is very important," agrees Healey. "And it's been one of the keys to what's kept us together, not only as a band, but as a company."

Company? Well, y'see, the band manage their own affairs. A band with cool, sober heads, no less. Rock n' roll gypsies living on the edge they most certainly aren't. Another myth bites the dust.

And just to wrap things up, let's shatter another myth. Cue Jeff…

"We've never really been a blues band. We've been a band, sort of drawing on a lot of things which encompass rock n' roll."

Mark Liddell
Riff Raff
June, 1993

Revenge...?

Riff Raff was a legendary rock magazine based in London in the late 1980s and 1990s. Edited by the ultimate music biz insider, Mark Crampton, and employing such talents as Mark Blake, Jerry Ewing, Mike Harris, Paul Smith, Chris Collingwood, Alan McCrorie, Simon Robinson, Lyn Guy, Anna Marx, Nick Douglas, Marion Garden, Peter "Grunty" Grant, Joe "The Crow" Mackett, Billy "The Kluck" Kulke, and, lastest and mostest, the incredible Liddell Brothers, Mark (a.k.a. "El Perro") and Colin (a.k.a. "Der Fly"). Unfortunately, Riff Raff was just too R n' R for its own good. A genuine working class rock mag, written, edited, and translated into 16 European languages in a drug-N-Jack-D-fuelled haze, often on the back of motorbikes, with spell checking by our staff of attentive rock bimbos (chosen purely for their blondeness and big knockers), it soon fell behind more trainspotterly, nerdish, and politically correct publications like Q, Kerrang, Mojo, Metal Hammer, and Horse & Hound. This website is an archive and kind of shrine dedicated to the writing of its greatest writers, some of whom, luckily for the Rock Kosmos, still continue to write about music. This is the REVENGE of Riff Raff...Rock on!