All the while, he continued to toil on the local scene, thrilling audiences with his flashy-yet-tasteful electric guitar playing. His career rebounded in when pop superstar Prince caught one of Johnson's performances on the public television program Austin City Limits.
However, despite the story of Johnson being signed to Warner Brothers courtesy of Prince, it was singer Christopher Cross and producer David Tickle who recommended Johnson to be signed to the label. Johnson's May Guitar Player magazine cover story "Who Is Eric Johnson and Why Is He On Our Cover" was a successful risky bold move that helped promote the release of Tones which brought Johnson considerable praise, if not widespread commercial success, and raised his profile in the guitar and music community.
He signed on with indie label Cinema Records which was distributed by Capitol Records. By the time Johnson released his Capitol Records debut Ah Via Musicom in , he was regularly winning awards for his musicianship in the guitar press. During this period, Johnson was also drawing recognition for the rich, violin-like tone he coaxed from his vintage Fender Stratocaster. Ah Via Musicom was a crossover hit, and was soon certified platinum.
Johnson apologized to fans on his website for the DVD-Audio release. Johnson is an admitted perfectionist, and those traits seemed to work against Ah Via Musicom' s follow-up release.
Unhappy with his recordings, Johnson mastered then subsequently scrapped several completed tracks for the new album and delayed its release for a period of three years, on top of the three three years already spent touring in support of Ah Via Musicom , and also had to deal with setbacks involving musical growth and personal issues while recording his next album Venus Isle.
When Venus Isle was finally released on September 3, , it received mixed reviews and did not match the success of its predecessor. The album at this time has sold , units and Johnson was dropped from Capitol Records soon after that. It was a unique album with world influences which demonstrated Eric Johnson's growth as a guitarist, songwriter, producer, arranger, and vocalist.
The Venus Isle title track showcased the talents of musician Amit Chatterjee. In , Johnson had formed a side project called Alien Love Child and played shows sporadically while Johnson was recording Venus Isle.
The positive fan feedback from the shows made Alien Love Child a permanent gig where a live performance recording, Live And Beyond ,was finally released in on Steve Vai's Favored Nations label, showcasing new songs. The Alien Love Child project helped free Johnson's perfectionism involving recording music and obsessive tinkering with guitar equipment gear.
Johnson eventually returned to the recording studio, releasing Souvenir , an internet release, in January on his own Vortexan Records. The album received nearly 65, plays in the first 7 weeks it was made available on mp3. According to Johnson, he was scheduled to perform onstage with Clapton, but the opportunity fell through. The album was divided into three sections based on vibe of songs that showcased Johnson's musical versatility.
In September , Eric Johnson took part in a theatrical production titled "Primal Twang: The Legacy of the Guitar" - the first definitive theatrical journey through the guitars colorful and surprisingly controversial year history, filmed by the Adams Entertainment Group.
Johnson's current projects did include an all-acoustic project [34] and a live video from his Tour with Joe Satriani. Eric Johnson along with other Texas musicians such as Stephen Burton and Patrice Pike have signed up with Operation Immortality, a project to create a digital time capsule of their DNA and humanity's achievements in the event of global calamity. Eric Johnson is best known for playing stock Fender Stratocaster and Gibson ES electric guitars through a triple amp setup that consists of Fender Amplifiers, Dumble Amplifiers, and Marshall amplification.
The Dumble amp has not made an appearance on his live performances for sometime since and including his best known live DVD at the Austin City Limits. Based in Austin, Texas, he earned a reputation throughout the late '80s and '90s as an eclectic and virtuosic player, winning a Grammy Award for his dynamic instrumental "Cliffs of Dover" from his breakthrough third album, Ah Via Musicom.
In , Johnson took part in the inaugural G3 tour alongside fellow trailblazing axemen Joe Satriani and Steve Vai while occasionally gigging with his side project, Alien Love Child. His output over the next decade consisted of previously unreleased material, live sets, and a studio LP, Bloom , that ranged from instrumental hard rock to new age and country.
Throughout his career, Johnson has maintained a steady live presence in a variety of formats and facets, and his studio work in the s reflected this.
Although he occasionally returned to his hard rock fusion, more and more his releases turned to other interests, as on Eclectic , his blues-jazz collaboration with Mike Stern , and 's entirely acoustic EJ , which also saw him playing more piano.
He tonally revisited that album with 's EJ II , a semi-acoustic full-band set that explored Americana, folk, and jazz sounds. Growing up in Austin in the s, Johnson began playing guitar at age 11 and was drawn to an unusual range of influential music from rock dynamos like Hendrix and Cream to Chet Atkins ' nimble fingerpicking and jazz players like Wes Montgomery and the great Django Reinhardt.
Later, the great Texas blues ace Stevie Ray Vaughan left his mark as well. After cutting a demo with a psych-rock group called Mariani in he was only 15 at the time , Johnson spent some of his post-high school years at the University of Texas at Austin and living in Africa with his family. After returning home, he found some regional success as part of a mid-'70s fusion band called the Electromagnets , who recorded a pair of independent albums before disbanding in Unable to find a label deal for his own music, he devoted himself to session work and played on records by some high-profile artists like Carole King and Cat Stevens while also gigging locally.
The tides turned in when Johnson landed a deal with Warner Bros. His real breakout came four years later with 's Ah Via Musicom , which made a strong crossover showing on the Billboard charts and yielded his signature showpiece, "Cliffs of Dover," which won a Grammy Award for Best Rock Instrumental Performance. Johnson 's inherent perfectionism cost him some of the ground he had gained, however, and his follow-up didn't arrive until When Jimi Hendrix released his Are You Experienced album in , Johnson suddenly had to rethink everything he knew about playing guitar.
He began experimenting more and looking for ways to get more unique sounds from his instrument. In the late s and early s Johnson immersed himself in the blues, often attending performances of blues legends such as Freddie King and Johnny Winter.
Johnson began delving into fusion with his own band, the Electromagnets, while playing in clubs around Austin. Although his group began increasing its base of fans in the mid s, Johnson felt that their songs were becoming too complicated. In he ventured into the studio solo, and tried singing for the first time.
After the Electromagnets disbanded the following year, he taught guitar for a while and then reformed his group with Electromagnets's drummer Bill Maddox and bassist Roscoe Beck. In what turned out to be the greatest roadblock to his career, Johnson singed an exclusive six-year contract with Lone Wolf Productions in After cutting his debut album, SevenWorlds, Johnson had to wait while Lone Wolf rejected offers from some smaller record companies and tried to land a more lucrative deal with a major label.
The album was never released and, since Lone Wolf had no long-range plans for Johnson's development as an artist, he was left pretty much in limbo for the duration of his contract. Further hampering his career was Lone Wolf's strategy to keep Johnson out of the public eye in order to increase his "mystique. When his contract terminated in , Johnson got back into action by becoming part of the lineup on Austin City Limits, a popular venue for musical performers in his hometown.
Rumor has it that his playing caught the attention of the rock star formerly known as Prince, who advised Warner Brothers, his label, to sign up Johnson. Tickel had produced Split Enz's Wiatata, an album that had especially impressed Johnson. In the public got its first exposure to Johnson's mastery with his Tones LP. In Guitar Player, Jas Obrecht called the album "a majestic debut, its collage of guitar sounds ranging from purest-of-pure Strat to Hendrix-heavy psychedelia, from delicate koto chimes to magnificent violin textures.
The figures did not live up to the label's expectations, and Johnson's contract was allowed to lapse. Looking for more creative control over his work, Johnson next signed on with the independent label Cinema Records. When Cinema's distribution arrangement with Capitol Records didn't work out, Capitol was impressed enough with Johnson to transfer his contract to them. Unlike Tones, which was recorded and mixed in only two months, Johnson's next album was a marathon ordeal due to the artist's relentless perfectionism.
The effort paid off with the release of Ah Via Musicom in
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