But the best was yet to come. After that Lohues with his Louisiana Blues Club had done the sound check, he and his cousin Marco were enjoying all of Keith Richards’ guitars. “They were there backstage. Very neat, in a flight case. No hassle”, he remembers. “The engineer then showed us those Fender Telecaster and Gibson Les Paul guitars. They’re really famous guitars, so we loved that.”
The showpiece is the Fender Telecaster Deluxe that was used on the hit Start Me Up† “Exactly that guitar”, Lohues says enthusiastically. “The black one with that one humbucker. We got to touch it, that was really fantastic. We stood there in awe, as if we were in Lourdes. I even think we could have it on for a while. Really cool.”
Lohues’ performance went smoothly. “I wasn’t nervous at all, because The Louisiana Blues Club was a really good band. The audience loved it, we were just playing well,” he says.
Also the performance of The Rolling Stones he can still remember. “But I had the idea that The Stones were not in their prime. Keith Richards must have been ‘a little thirsty’ that day,” Lohues jokes. “Mick Jagger was annoyed by that. But you could tell that it really was a band. You know, the lead singer really pushes the band on. They had some trouble initially, but of course they are called The Rolling Stones† After that it got going nicely.”
So Mick Jagger is somewhat the boss of the band? Lohues actually thinks so. “I also appreciate him more and more. I thought Keith wrote all the music, but that’s not true. The music of brown sugar is even from Jagger. Keith Richards also came up with great riffs, of course, but I think Jagger came up with a lot more than we think.”