GOODBYE JOE?
“I could be gone sooner than you think.”
BY MIDDLE AGE, most people still have most of the items on their bucket lists unchecked. Not so for Joe Bonamassa, but then he got started way early. At the age of 12, back when he could still be called a “wunderkind,” he was already a blues hotshot — “Smokin’” Joe Bonamassa — sharing concert stages with his idols and mentors Danny Gatton and B.B. King. From there, he began burning up the road behind him as fast as he could go. He’s released 15 solo albums, 11 of which hit the number one spot on the Billboard Blues chart. He’s played with Eric Clapton (and held his own). And he’s been nominated for Grammys and routinely tops “Best Blues Guitarist” polls.
While many guitarists dream of owning just one sunburst 1959 Gibson Les Paul, Bonamassa has a bunch of them, along with several hundred other guitars he keeps at home in his “Bona-seum.” And when it comes to playing prestigious joints, the list of places he hasn’t performed at gets smaller and smaller with each passing year. The Royal Albert Hall? Check. The Hollywood Bowl? Check. Carnegie Hall? Been there, done that. The Sydney Opera House? Oh, yeah. Radio City Music Hall? Not only once but twice. Hell, the guy even has his own cruise.
“I’ve never come close to being on the radio. So why would it start now?”
“I know it sounds absurd, but honestly, I never thought my career would go this far at all,” Bonamassa says. “I was talking about this to George Thorogood. He’s one of the first people to ever encourage me and give me a stage, and he asked me what it felt like to be where I am now. I told him, ‘I never would have given me a chance.’ I’m serious. If you would have named me out of 10 prospects back in 2002 and asked, ‘Who is going to go
