If you’ve never heard the name Stevie Salas then you haven’t been paying attention. Stevie burst onto the music scene in 1989 when he rocked arenas and stadiums as the guitarist for Rod Stewart’s giant Out of Order tour. He also released 11 solo studio records, including his classic 1990 debut Colorcode, he’s done time as guitarist and musical director for Mick Jagger, spent 2006-2010 as music director and consultant for American Idol, produced and starred in television projects in Canada, and most recently, served as the Executive Producer for, in my opinion, the best music documentary out there, the Sundance winning RUMBLE: The Indians Who Rocked The World.
Please listen to my interview with Stevie below:
On growing up in San Diego: I literally grew up surfing and playing guitar! 2:00
On the road to stardom: I moved to L.A. in 1985 to give this music thing a shot and three years later I was playing football stadiums. 4:10
On race in music: I didn’t notice when I was working with George Clinton & Bootsy Collins that I wasn’t black…I started to research musicians and realized that there are a lot of great Native American musicians out there that nobody talks about. 5:20
Native American people don’t know that they have a lot of role models. 7:10
If you walk in a room and your skin is polka dot but you can kick ass on your instrument, you’re gonna get the gig. 10:00
On the seeds of RUMBLE: I’m not gonna lie, I was just trying to make a positive story, not a race story…I was just trying to tell a story about the heroes. 10:40
Nobody ever told the story, we just got lucky and we did it. 12:30
On the influence of Randy Castillo – I’m not gonna be dramatic and say Randy saved my life, but Randy got me early on…I was definitely out of balance and Randy had the balance figured out. 13:30
Randy said “Do you know what you need?’, I said “Nope”, Randy said “I’m taking you to Indian Country”. 14:00
When I did the Smithsonian exhibit, they didn’t want Randy in the exhibit…They only did exhibits that dealt with art and pottery, they never did an exhibit with the drummer from Ozzy Osbourne. 15:30
On the influence of early Native American musicians like Link Wray: Jeff Beck told me he and Jimmy Page used to play air guitar in his bedroom to Link Wray…they influenced the most important musicians in history in a deep, deep level. 17:40
On the influence of RUMBLE – Stevie Van Zandt’s company has made a high school curriculum out of RUMBLE. 19:00
On the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame – A dream I have is to have an exhibit in the Hall of Fame based on the Native American influence 21:30
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Get more info on RUMBLE
See RUMBLE now on Amazon Prime or January 28, 2019 on PBS
