Sexy Woman With the Guitar

Sexy Woman With the Guitar
After four decades, singer Bonnie Raitt is still on the road—making music and speaking her mind.
Raitt: Kid of her own era
Robert E. Klein / AP
Raitt: Kid of her own era






Updated: 8:35 a.m. ET Dec. 9, 2005

Dec. 9, 2005 - How does Bonnie Raitt do it? At 56, the daughter of the late Broadway star John Raitt can get away with—she can more than get away with—wearing her skinny jeans and a shimmery black and gold top. (No, she’s not trying to look hip. She just is.) Her soulful voice and funky slide guitar have been with us for four decades now; she’s won nine Grammys, sold more than 15 million albums and been inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And she’s still at it: touring through 2006 behind her 18th album, “Souls Alike.” She recently spoke to NEWSWEEK’s Vanessa Juarez from—where else?—on the road. Excerpts:
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NEWSWEEK: I think there was some confusion about the interview time—you left me a couple of voicemails on Friday.
Bonnie Raitt: That’s what I figured.

It so surreal to come back to your desk and Bonnie Raitt’s left you two messages.
I know, it’s wild, isn’t it.

At your Beacon Theater show in New York, you all played “Unnecessarily Mercenary,” which is the kind of song that makes you want to jump out of your seat.
Oh thank you. I’ll tell Jon [pianist and songwriter Jon Cleary].

But I was surprised that the rest of the audience just sat for a lot of the time.
Well, it’s a theater. And there were a lot of people our age—well, my age. By the end of the night they were jumping around. But I’m glad that it resonated with you. You know, The New York Times article the other day was nice, but she said the band was sleepy or something. I mean, come on, it wasn’t sleepy. You know, to each his own, but whatever.

Before your song, “God Was in the Water,” you said, “Religion is for people who are afraid to go to hell. And spirituality is for the those of us who have been there and back.” I assume you fall into the second category.
It was a sly reference—or a not-so-sly reference—to fundamentalism, and people who think they have all of the answers. I’m not slagging any religion. I’m just saying that true spirituality has to do with how we treat each other, with morality and ethics. That song, “God Was in the Water”—there couldn’t be a more interesting timeliness, with Hurricane Katrina and the absolute lack of care and attention and response. We are our brothers’ keepers and we’re all responsible for putting a government in place that sometimes sleeps on the job. You know, bureaucracy doesn’t have a face to most people—it doesn’t to me. We have to wake up and deal with it. Really, Katrina was our Holocaust in many ways.

Katrina hit about two weeks before your album was released. Did you consider pushing back the release date in order to add a tribute?
The album was finished a long time ago, in the winter. But, interestingly, “I Will Not Be Broken” is already part of a Hurricane Relief record. And the reviews of the record mention both “God Was in the Water,” and “I Will Not Be Broken” as eerily timely. Still, what’s going on elsewhere in the world is equally devastating. Darfur, the earthquake in Kashmir, and the daily carnage in Iraq is so horrific.