POP MUSIC REVIEW : Sonic Storm Brings Forth Winter of Our Discontent

Eric Clapton has said his highest ambition as a guitarist is to hone his playing down to a single note that says everything.

Peter Townshend of the Who said as much in one of his greatest songs, “Pure and Easy,” wherein he yearned for “one note, pure and easy, playing so free like a breeze rippling by.”

The implication is that musical perfection lies not so much in the release of streams of sound as in the creation of eloquent silence.

If Clapton and Townshend are right, then Johnny Winter’s show Monday night at the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano was the portrait of a guitarist straying perilously afar, lost in a sonic blizzard of his own making.

Winter, 44, has been a high-profile player since he was hailed 20 years ago as a challenger to Clapton and Jimi Hendrix for blues-rock guitar heroism. At the Coach House, it was hard to hear why. Winter’s playing was so profuse, so aimless, so full of wind and empty of content, that he came off as a chatterbox, a filibusterer, a compulsive talker.

The only way to deal with that sort of person, of course, is simply to tune out the noise. A substantial segment of the Coach House audience did just that, voting with their feet well before the end of the 85-minute set.

Winter’s backing duo--Jon Paris on harmonica and overamplified bass and Tom Compton on drums--was far from blameless. The duo’s stiff, untextured rhythms contributed to a cramped, busy sound that allowed the music no room to stretch and breathe. In its attempt to be smokin’, this would-be blues power trio ignored fresh air, open spaces and the pauses that refresh.

Winter’s recent recordings promised far better than he delivered in concert. Backed mainly by Chicago blues veterans, he made three yeomanlike albums for Alligator Records between 1984 and 1987. His new album, “The Winter of ‘88,” finds him returning to a major label (MCA) with a solid set of songs and often exciting playing, backed by the same duo that was with him at the Coach House.

But in concert, the Winter of ’88 was more like the Winter of our discontent. Only one song, “Don’t Take Advantage of Me,” took on drama and structure. It moved from a funky driving opening to a slower passage, interpolated a few bars of “Sunshine of Your Love,” then blasted home with a galloping surge that recalled Hendrix’s version of “All Along the Watchtower.” Other songs that work well on Winter’s new album suffocated on stage in the blizzard of sound. A couple of classic cover tunes, “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and “Johnny B. Goode,” also died. It was hard to tell whether the cause was asphyxiation through overplaying, or just plain boredom.

Winter’s singing was a routine, throaty blues cry. As for presence, he was as nondescript as an elaborately tattooed, skeletally built albino Texan in a 10-gallon hat can be. Winter did nothing to establish rapport with the audience, limiting communication to the blandest of intros and mumbled acknowledgements of applause. As for his speed-of-sound guitar playing, it was less geared to communicating than to filling up every space and blotting out every silence.

Perhaps, in the center of that mindless storm he created, Winter found for himself a pocket of the clear, serene perfection to which Clapton and Townshend aspire. But everyone on the outside merely got drenched.

Winter returns to the Coach House on Friday and Saturday.