Drummer Chris ‘Whipper’ Layton is in marginally better shape, though no stranger to the drug and booze frenzy that has insiders comparing Double Trouble to the Allman Brothers Band at their absolute worst. In any case the tour is cancelled – though the press release only states Vaughan is unwell – and the guitarist flies home to enter the Charter Lane rehab centre in Atlanta, Georgia, while Shannon goes into their Austin facility. Martha’s husband Jimmie Lee Vaughan – Big Jim – is barely a month in his grave having succumbed to Parkinson’s disease, his own alcoholism and a working life spent around asbestos.
I got to come home.” This isn’t great news. Stevie calls his mama Martha in Dallas and breaks down: “Ma, I’m real sick. Bloom allows him a small plastic cup of champagne to celebrate and to wash down the Phenobarbital. Or you can stop right now and delay your death warrant. Cocaine is crystallising in the man’s intestines. X-rays reveal Vaughan’s stomach lining is rotting. Dr Bloom discovers his patient’s already ruined septum is so corrupted that he’s taken to dissolving the cocaine in the whisky. He’s snorting a quarter ounce of pure, pharmaceutical Merck flake cocaine a day, and necking a quart of Royal Crown scotch – at least. To paraphrase Bo Diddley’s Who Do You Love – he’s got a tombstone hand and a graveyard mind. The day after the Palais gig is Stevie’s birthday. If this is a wake-up call, someone forgot to set the alarm. For the second time in days he is rushed to hospital. The show passes without incident – it is neither great nor tragic – but in the gloom, just before he’s called back to encore, Vaughan slips off a gangplank and starts internal haemorrhaging.
Miraculously he makes some sort of brief recovery, but by the time SRV and Double Trouble arrive in London to play the Hammersmith Palais on October 2, the group and most of the crew are wandering backstage like dead men.ĭr Vernon Bloom, who specialises in helping addicts withdraw – he’s had plenty of practice on Pete Townshend and Eric Clapton – has been contacted via Eric’s people and administered the relevant meds before Vaughan and company take the stage. Staggering to the phone Shannon pleads that an ambulance be called, and Vaughan is rushed to hospital with IVs in both arms. He recalls how in the adjoining room Stevie was mumbling incoherently and vomiting blood and bile. Bass player Tommy Shannon was lying on a hotel bed sick with his own excessive cocaine and alcohol usage. Maybe now we see why Stevie Ray wasn’t on the dime when he came so close to death after playing the Pfalzbau in Ludwigshafen, September 28, on the German leg of his 1986 European tour. Couldn't stand the weather, SRV brings the noise to Minneapolis in 1990 (Image credit: Getty Images)
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