SLIDE MASTER
BONNIE RAITT
SHARES HER
STORY OF
HEARTBREAK,
HEALING, AND
WORKING
WITH ICONS
HER FIRST ALBUM
IN SEVEN YEARS.
While teaching herself to play acoustic guitar as a teenager in the late ’60s,
Bonnie Raitt—now world-renowned for her
sultry voice and bracing electric slide prowess—dreamt of leaving her native California
and joining the Greenwich Village beatnik
scene. As soon as she was old enough, she
left her parents—Broadway star John Raitt
and pianist Marjorie Haydock—behind to
head east and plant her musical roots in the
burgeoning folk activist movement.
From there, Raitt tapped into a wide
array of influences, with a big turning point
coming when she befriended influential
blues promoter Dick Waterman while she
was in college. Waterman gave her the
opportunity to share stages with blues gods
like Howlin’ Wolf and Mississippi Fred
McDowell, which no doubt left an indelible
impression on the blossoming slide player.
Despite such beginnings, Raitt’s road
to superstardom was anything but easy.
While a 1970 gig with McDowell led
to a record deal with Warner Bros., she
experienced only moderate commercial
success with the label. Her first hit didn’t
come until 1977’s “Runaway,” and she was
eventually dropped in 1983. She struggled
with addiction until Stevie Ray Vaughan’s
own recovery in the mid-’80s prompted
her to get clean. Not long afterward,
Raitt released the album that changed
everything. Released in1989, Nick of Time
won her three of her nine Grammys to
date and set her on a path toward her
2000 induction into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame. In the process, Raitt went
on to become the first woman to have a
signature Fender—an offer she originally
turned down because she was uneasy about
putting her name on a product. (Ever the
activist, Raitt used the profits to create the
Bonnie Raitt Guitar Project, providing gui-
tars to underprivileged kids in more than
200 Boys & Girls Clubs of America.)
