"Anyone who's ever questioned the suitability of a Squier Strat for the upper echelons of guitar goddery, needs to listen to this attacking riot of tonal colour."
When Gary Moore dumped heavy metal at the end of the 1980s, and ripped into a blistering, firebrand explosion of blues, there were two camps of observer. In camp one, those who said: "Whoa! Where the Hell did that come from???!"… And in camp two, those who said: "Jeff Healey."
If you listen to Confidence Man on Healey's 1988 debut album - See The Light - you hear an almost perfectly mapped template for what became Moore's trademark blues repertoire a short time later. Not to detract in any way from Gary Moore. But would he have found that exciting new territory without the groundwork of Jeff Healey? Play the whole of See The Light, and you'll find it very hard to imagine that Moore's seismic shift in style wasn't pretty singularly inspired by this amazing album - especially given the timing of the events.
See The Light is not only a scorching document of the late 'eighties rebirth of blues - it's also a really interesting mine of trivia. For starters, there are some highly notable additions to Healey's own bass/drums backing duo of Joe Rockman and Tom Stephen. Original Heartbreakers keyboardist Benmont Tench appears on several songs. I can sense your eyebrows raising already. Also featured are the eminent percussionist Bobbye Hall, and a decidely luminous backing vocal duo of Separate Lives chart-topper Marilyn Martin and former Eagle Timothy B Schmit… And assisting on guitar, early 'eighties Robert Plant associate Robbie Blunt. For a group that had only formed in December 1985, that was some guest list by 1988.
The inlay notes quote the great Stevie Ray Vaughan - with whom Healey had already performed by that time - as making the assertion:
"Man, he is going to revolutionize the way the guitar can be played."
Meanwhile, as also recounted on the inlay, the legendary B B King had praised Healey with some phenomenal feedback…
"I've never seen anything like it. Your execution is the best I've ever seen. Stick with it, and you'll be bigger than Stevie Ray Vaughan, Stanley Jordan and B B King."
Then there's the lead guitar. That sublime, almost vocal scream of passionate expressiveness is not coming from some top of the range Paul Reed Smith or an early bespoke Pensa-Suhr. It's the full-blown sqwawk of a humble Squier Strat. Healey was using two of them at the time - modified only in the addition of some Rod Evans pickups. Anyone who's ever questioned the suitability of a Squier Strat for the upper echelons of guitar goddery, needs to listen to this attacking riot of tonal colour. Not to omit credit, he was using Marshall amps, and in the right hands they've always been capable of searing articulation. But if you don't already, respect the Squier, because that was one of the best guitar sounds of the decade.
Jeff Healey was unusual in that he routinely played the guitar flat on his lap, with left hand over the neck rather than under it. In early 1989, Guitarist magazine's Rick Batey asked him if this meant he was actually voicing the chords differently. He replied…
"On the whole I use the same strings on the same frets as everybody else. As for barre chords, the same notes are there, but I'll use the whole hand, or rather all five fingers all doing different things to go across the neck."
The cassette is released on the Arista label, with the product code 409 441. There are twelve tracks on it in all, and there's no filler. It's all premium stuff. Hard to believe, given the excellent fidelity and definition, but the media is not chrome. It's actually quite a light brownish coloured tape, which suggests a pretty standard ferric formulation - if situated at the upper end of the quality spectrum. It might be for the best that the tape is not chrome, actually, because the raw, high end sizzle of the lead guitar might lapse into the territory of "dangerous" with any more brilliance available from the media.
And if there are any studio tape freaks reading, I can dish some dirt on the actual reel to reel tape used for the original recording. Scotch 226, and mixed at Plus 3 IPS. There you go. An album positively immersed in trivia, as I said.
It's really important to take account of the date of this release, because it did represent a reinvention of blues that others subsequently followed. Indeed, I believe See The Light brought a new excitement to blues, which helped lay the foundations for the major blues trend of the early 1990s. It's still exciting today. But in 1988, it was nothing short of mindblowing.