In her extraordinary life, Bonnie Raitt has notched up thirteen Grammy awards, sold more than fifteen million albums, beaten alcoholism, and counted BB King and Prince among her fans. But the main reason Bonnie, 75, is happier than a pig in slop when we speak is she is back touring the British Isles next month, playing 90 minute sets on all ten dates. Isn’t that a tad taxing? “If anything, it’s frustrating not to go on longer,” the California-born roots music star tells me. “I could easily do another hour. If you take good care of yourself and still have your faculties, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t sing better in your seventies than in your fifties.” The only sign of Bonnie’s advancing years are two grey curls at the front of her tumbling russet locks. She will spend five months on the road this year. “I’d love to do more, but it makes sense to rest my voice and keep it at its optimum,” says Raitt, who still has fire in her belly, a sparkle in her eyes and a passion for causes unlikely to appeal to her President.
Scottish by descent – there are pockets of Raitts all over the Highlands – and Quaker by upbringing, Bonnie keeps in shape by hiking, meditating, practicing yoga and getting plenty of sleep. All far removed from her hard-drinking years. At the peak of her 1980s boozing, she put on nearly three stone. “It got to the point that someone asked me when the baby was due,” says Bonnie. In Louisiana, a fan left a blunt but well-meaning note saying, ‘What happened? You got fat. Maybe you should work out or something.’
Nearly 40 years sober, Raitt remains committed to activism, including playing benefit gigs for hurricane aid and press freedom. “There is a tremendous threat to investigative journalism,” she says. “You can’t have a democracy without an informed electorate; you can’t have people only getting news online and from social media. You need local newspapers to present all the different sides of any issue. There appears to be a move towards authoritarianism [in the USA], they’re censoring political cartoons, closing down a wide range of views in universities, and there’s an oligarchy problem. Billionaires get a blank cheque. Conglomerates are buying the news on cable TV.” And the Donald? “What we stand for is not in the same ballpark, but they won the election, and we have to deal with it. What’s worrying is they’re trying to undermine constitutional checks and balances.”
Bonnie’s equally liberal late father John Raitt was a Broadway sensation, the leading man in productions like Oklahoma! and Carousel. “We’d be in restaurants and someone would come over and say to my dad, ‘Oh Mr Keel I loved you in Showboat’, thinking he was Howard Keel – and Howard Keel would get mistaken for him! So, they had an agreement that they’d sign each other’s name to keep people happy.” Similarly, Bonnie broke through in 1990 when Wynonna Judd was making waves and Reba McEntire was country’s rising star – three famous redheads. “I remember coming out of a department store changing room and this girl screaming ‘Reba!’ People bawled ‘Wynonna’ or ‘Reba’ at me a lot.”
That year Raitt dominated the Grammies, winning three for her tenth album, Nick Of Time, and one for best trad blues recording with John Lee Hooker. The album, went multi-platinum, selling more than five million copies in the US alone. “I was on the front of every paper,” she recalls. “It was like a Cinderella story – a woman catapulted to four Grammy awards after 21 years…Everybody loves a coming-from-behind story.” The unexpected downside was getting mobbed at LAX as “the Grammy lady” when her then-boyfriend, actor Michael O’Keefe’s plane was delayed. Panicking she ducked into a gift shop and bought the biggest hat she could find so she could hide under it.
The Raitts settled in LA in 1957 when her father was starring opposite Doris Day in the film version of hit musical The Pajama Game. That Christmas, aged eight, Bonnie got her first guitar, an £18 Stella. Her maternal grandfather, a Methodist missionary, taught her basic chords and she got hooked on folk at Quaker summer camp where she first heard the songs of emerging stars like Joan Baez, also a Quaker. Then a family friend gave her the classic Blues At Newport album…
They returned to the East coast where Raitt enrolled at Radcliffe College (now part of Harvard), in Massachusetts, but study rapidly went down the pan. “I got $75 for my first solo gig in a park – a lot of money back then. I gave up my part-time job and starting playing opening spots at clubs”. Bonnie opened for James Taylor and Cat Stevens, then started dating Dick Waterman who promoted shows by bluesmen like Mississippi Fred McDowell. She found herself opening for living legends. Muddy Waters was “fantastic and dignified, very smart”, John Lee Hooker was “a sweetheart…It was incredible for me as a blues lover to open for my heroes”.
Bonnie’s knock-out combination of velvet vocals and mean slide guitar played made her distinctive and bewitching. BB King called her the “best damn slide player working today”. As well as King and John Hammond Jnr, she idolized 1920s blues queen Sippie Wallace whose career she later revived. Warners signed Raitt at 21. She took a leave of absence from college, and never went back. The wheels came off in 1983 when Warners dropped her, despite her two gold albums, along with Van Morrison and Arlo Guthrie. That, coupled with the breakup of a romance, sent Bonnie into a downward spiral fuelled by hard liquor. 1983 was her low point – “I really messed up”.
Prince played a part in her recovery. The late superstar contacted Bonnie after seeing her live in December 1986 and sent his customised limo to bring her to his rented LA home – like being “whisked away in a fairy tale”. He wanted to sign her to his new label and collaborate. If the Purple One gave her the incentive to clean up, a skiing accident gave her space. Friends took her to an alcoholics’ recovery programme, she bought a bicycle, lost weight, and never drank again. She and Prince wrote together that April, but plans to record fell through due to touring clashes – his was extended, hers started. Instead, Capitol snapped her up. Nick Of Times sold a million copies before Bonnie’s Grammy jackpot; 1991’s Luck Of The Draw did better, spawning the hits like I Can’t Make You Love Me and Something To Talk About. She sold more than 15 million albums in the 90s.
Raitt has embraced causes all her life, from the anti-war movement to the Rhythm & Blues Foundation who help early R&B artists recover revenue owed by music companies. A Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inductee, her recent honours include a Billboard Icon Award, Lifetime Achievement from America’s Recording Academy and Washington’s prestigious Kennedy Centre recognised her ‘lifetime of artistic achievement’. Bonnie’s personal highs include closing her show singing Oklahoma with her father – “the audience stood up and sang along” – and befriending blues icons – “the greatest gift, a relationship of mutual respect and joy”.
Her home in northern California is surrounded by areas of astonishing beauty – the Santa Monica Mountains, giant redwood trees and the Pacific Ocean. “A forest is the only church I need,” she says. Lockdown stopped Raitt touring but British TV kept her sane. “I was watching BBC nature shows, detective series, dramas. I loved All Creatures Great & Small – I fell in love with Yorkshire and the Lake District on vacation a few years ago. I’d like to go back and explore more. I wish I could live there.” Bonnie is “so excited” about touring here again, especially headlining the Royal Albert Hall – “it’s a jewel, I couldn’t be happier”. She is also hoping to see more UK beauty spots. So if chance upon a 5ft 4 redhead communing with nature near Loch Lomond, just don’t call her Wynonna.
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