INTERVIEW
Now in his 70s, having survived rock ’n’ roll excess and a debilitating pandemic-induced depression, Walter Trout takes us on the emotional road he travelled to release his 30th solo album, Ride, a record that revisits the trials of his New Jersey childhood and affirms his place in the annals of blues-rock
We are just five minutes into our interview with Walter Trout when he starts to well up. It’s been an emotional time for the 71-year-old. A few years ago Walter became so unwell that he required a liver transplant. He was holed up for eight months in hospital and it very nearly killed him. When he finally returned home he couldn’t walk, let alone play the guitar. He recalls a conversation he had with his longtime partner-in-sound, Mesa/Boogie. Walter told them: “I can’t play any more, it’s gone from my memory, I don’t know how to do it. I’m going to start over.” They responded by sending him two amplifiers. “They’ve never asked me to pay,” he tells us. “They just said, ‘We hope you get your music back.’”
Talking in person to Walter it is easy to understand why Mesa/Boogie made this gesture; he is a smart and kind man. If you’ve ever witnessed Walter on stage you’ll understand that he goes into everything he does with full commitment. Looking at his tour schedule, it’s hard to imagine where anyone would get the energy to continuously hop both sides of the Atlantic, let alone with a new liver and all the complications that puts on the immune system, especially in a world still dealing with the aftermath of Covid.
In fact, it was just a few years before the pandemic that Walter finally got back on stage, making a triumphant return at the Royal Albert Hall. He was frail and thin, but the fire never left him. Having finally got his groove back and his chops up to gigging speed, it all came crashing to a halt again, as the pandemic hit.
“We were out there killing it and suddenly it stopped, everything stopped,” he remembers. “And it’s hard to even find the words for what that felt like. One of the reasons is that after I faced death every day for eight months in that hospital, I am deeply aware of mortality – and how much longer do I have to do this? I am deeply grateful, I’m even going to lose it here,” he says as his voice starts to crack. “Every day that I get to go on stage, and play to somebody, and look them in the eye, and see if I can create a feeling and an emotion in that person, and we can communicate – every day that I get to do that I’m overjoyed, and I’m grateful and thankful.”
Nevertheless, the forced hiatus sunk him into a state of depression, heightened by the realisation he was here on borrowed time. “[It created a real] depth of depression. I fought the depression, and I went and stayed in our house in Denmark with my wife
