How Bonnie Raitt Overcame Loss for Her First LP of New Songs in a Decade
Raitt kicks back on a worn-in couch with a piece of double-chocolate cake, which she ordered for her bassist’s birthday. “Mmm, tastes like gluten!” she says, eating it straight off a napkin. Someone mentions that the Rolling Stones are rehearsing nearby, and Raitt recalls how she took a semester off from Harvard to tag along on the Stones’ 1970 European tour (Raitt was dating the manager of opening act Buddy Guy). She missed class registration on the road, and her parents, angry, stopped supporting her. “That’s why I started playing,” she says. “I had to make a living. I’ve got the Stones to thank for it!” At 23, she landed back in Laurel Canyon, becoming a regular on the L.A. club scene with friends like Tom Waits and Little Feat. “We all sang and played on each other’s records and hung out, dated each other,” she recalls. “We’d start at the Troubadour and then go to somebody’s house to keep the party running.”
Raitt is approaching her 30th year of sobriety. She started attending AA meetings in the mid-Eighties after losing her deal with longtime label Warner Bros. and going through a difficult breakup. Her first “sober album,” 1989’s Nick of Time, was a multiplatinum success that won her three Grammys. “I remember the change in her when she stopped drinking,” says Browne. “It was like she just flipped a switch and this power happened in her.”
Raitt is still a big draw on what she calls “the Americana circuit.” She adds, “My end of the music business doesn’t rely so much on looks. It allows you to age more gracefully than the mainstream pop stars that are total babes. People are snarkier about them getting older. It’s just terrible. So I’m actually relieved that I’m in the character actress end of the world, where I can just get more seasoned and people go, ‘Oh, well, look how mythical she’s become!'”
Most days, at home, Raitt spends mornings hiking with friends, and then works from her home office with a staff of four. She has touring down to a science, looking online for hotel deals and doing her laundry at theaters with washers and dryers. Today, she’s wearing motorcycle boots with zippers – she doesn’t ride, but they’re easier to get off at airport security. Raitt’s tour dates often include benefits for progressive causes, like safe energy and campaign-finance reform. She also finds time for the romantic relationship she’s been in for more than a decade, her longest since her eight-year marriage to actor Michael O’Keefe ended in 1999. “It’s not a joined-at-the-hip relationship,” she says. “I like my independence. I have a full life.”
In March, she’ll begin a two-year tour. She’s already planning daytime adventures like seeing music at New Orleans Jazz Fest and exploring old railroad tracks that have been converted to bike paths along the East Coast.
“They’re usually under a canopy of trees or along a river, so it’s really beautiful,” she says, smiling. “You get to see a lot more when you’re up in the daytime.”