Johnny A.
John Antonopoulos was born in Malden, Massachusetts on November 14, 1952, and from day one his last name was invariably mispronounced. “It’s always been ‘Johnny A.’ since age eight,” he says. He started playing drums at age six and, after he heard The Beatles in early 1964, his parents bought the 11-year old a $49 Lafayette guitar. And the rest is history.
Johnny’s sound and playing style often recalls Danny Gatton’s “redneck jazz” approach as well as some aspects of Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, Chet Atkins, Wes Montgomery, Pat Martino and Les Paul. He’s widely known for fusing elements of rock, jazz and blues with his identifiable use of the whammy bar. “I think that adds a texture, not unlike a vocalist finishing a note with a nice natural vibrato,” he says. “From my perspective, it also emotes a certain warmth to the phrasing.”
THE STREET, HIDDEN SECRET, HEARTS ON FIRE
In the ‘70s, he formed The Streets and the band had a lot of local radio hits including “What Gives,” which made it to the top of the charts at Boston’s then-premier rock station, WBCN. They toured nationally with Aerosmith and Bob Seger and also competed in the first WBCN Rock ‘n’ Roll Rumble (in 1979). In 1980, Johnny formed Hidden Secret and that group had local hits including “No More Lonely Nights,” which stayed at #1on the ‘BCN charts for 26 weeks.
In 1986, the Boston rock scene was red hot with a deep, clear division between mainstream and punk and the love/hate relationship came to a head when Johnny A.’s band Hearts On Fire made it to the finals of that year’s Rumble, where their multi-influenced rock competed against Gang Green’s hardcore. After the punksters won, Johnny admitted that his group didn’t play their A game. “I don’t think the best band won,” he says. “I think the tightest band on that particular night won. I’d broken up Hearts On Fire months before that show and only put the band back together for that performance at the request of WBCN. My heart wasn’t in it, and as a band we were out of shape.”
COLLABORATIONS, GOING SOLO
Over the next few years, Johnny worked as a sideman with percussionist Mingo Lewis of Santana and Creedence Clearwater Revival drummer Doug Clifford. After that, he joined former Bonnie & Delaney and Derek and The Dominos’ keyboardist Bobby Whitlock’s band before becoming guitarist and music director for The J. Geils Band‘s frontman Peter Wolf. He played on a few of Wolf’s solo albums, joined several of his world tours and co-produced his 1996 release, Long Line, which received four stars from Rolling Stone.
In 1999, he launched his solo career and self-released his debut CD Sometime Tuesday Morning. Soon after, he signed a licensing deal to re-release the album on Steve Vai’s label and the instrumental “Oh Yeah” became the #1 single on some US radio charts. It was the first time in a decade that an instrumental achieved that and the CD went on to sell over 100,000 copies.
SIGNATURE MODEL GUITARS, BLUES ARTIST OF THE YEAR
In 2003, Gibson Custom Guitar released the Johnny A. Signature Model guitar. Designed to his specifications, it’s among the company’s most successful of their signature models and in 2007 Gibson introduced a second, the Johnny A. Standard. In 2014, Gibson released a second version of the Johnny A. Standard.
In 2004, Johnny recorded his second album, Get Inside, on Vai’s label and in 2006, Warner Brothers released a Johnny A. instructional DVD, Taste. Tone. Space. A live DVD/CD set recorded at Sculler’s Jazz Club in Boston, One November Night, dropped in 2010, the year Johnny was named Blues Artist of the Year at the Boston Music Awards.
DRIVEN, BOSTON MUSIC HALL OF FAME, THE YARDBIRDS
His most recent release, Driven, came out in 2014. The disc is his engineering debut; he also mixed the album, produced it and played all the instruments on all the tunes. “I wrote 16 songs for that album and put a recording studio in my home,” he says. “So, in a way, it was my first complete solo album.” Johnny was inducted into the Boston Music Hall of Fame at the Boston Music Awards in December 2014, joined The Yardbirds in 2015 (following in the footsteps of Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page) and has been touring with them ever since.
(by A.J. Wachtel)
