Last Thursday night in a room at M.D. Anderson, a very good friend of mine passed over. I found out today that his ex-wife and his brother were with him when he expired and for that I am grateful. Steve Winky Weisbergs stint in Austin was short and before most of you were born, so I dont expect any of you to know much about him. He was a great guitarist, a person who could hear a line of music and play it right back with few if any mistakes. When he played in our band in the sixties, he blew all of our ears out with his double-stack Marshall with the same wah-wah pedal that Jimi Hendrix used, but before Jimmie or Stevie he was nailing Hendrix note for note. Same with Clapton; he heard what those two played and knew how to make his guitar sound like theirs. And before I hear any whining about Yeah, but you guys were just copy bands, yeah that was true but so were Doyle, Henly, Doug and many later original musicians. When our band changed personnel, Steve went to one of the great show bands in Texas, The Sparkles for a while, then he quit and moved with his wife up to Aspen, CO where he played with a blue grass band that had a soon-to-be famous banjo player/comedian, Steve Martin. Mr. Weisberg said he never asked John Denver for an audition, figuring that John would hear about him soon enough. And he was right, John heard about Steves prowess through the musical grapevine and called Steve to come over to pick with him. When John Denver owned the airwaves in the 1970s, Steve Weisberg and Dick Kniss (from Peter, Paul and Mary on upright bass) played with John throughout. And John was kind enough to encourage Steve to write a couple of songs for the albums they recorded, thus insuring Steves fortunes. I heard them live and although Johns music is not my cup of tea, the three of them were consummate musicians and Steve had gone from one of the loudest guitarists Id ever heard to one of the most sensitive guitarists on the planet. I knew all three of them and they are all gone now. I hope that they are not resting in so much peace that they cant welcome Steve back to his place in the band. Bless yall and bless you, Steve Weisberg!
Posted on: Sun, 25 May 2014 07:39:41 +0000
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