A Messiah on Guitar

Rock has its kings and queens, with royal egos to match, but it does not have many who are willing to say, as Guitarist Roy Buchanan does, "Probably the reason I never made it big was because I didn't care whether I made it big." If there is room in rock for a shy, devout, balding man of 36, Buchanan may make it big in spite of himself.

Old guitar pros like Nashville's Chet Atkins say that Roy's pickin' is just about the best there is. His vibrating high notes come at the listener like a highballing truck. No less extraordinary are his strumming chord changes, his mercurial runs and the broad processional quality of his rhythms.

Buchanan combines jazz, country, blues and rock 'n' roll, but he first learned music in church in the California farming town of Pixley (pop. 1,584). His father, a Pentecostal preacher, gave him his first guitar when he was five. At 15, Buchanan left for Los Angeles and began bumming around the country. ("I can remember sleepin' in fields. I can remember sleepin' in bars.") The roving life also got him what he calls "messed up on dope." Then came a day of revelation: "I had a vision one night. I saw Hell. I fell on the floor and completely freaked out. That's when I quit."

Right On, Roy. In 1972 Ahmet Ertegun, chairman of Atlantic Records, heard Buchanan play in New York's Carnegie Hall and said: "You can write your own ticket on my label." Only now has Buchanan finally decided to pick up that ticket. His new LP on Atlantic, A Street Called Straight, is working its way onto the charts and has generally been hailed as the first album that captures the excitement Buchanan can generate in public performances.

In California last week, Buchanan demonstrated that quality at the San Jose Center for the Performing Arts. He sauntered onstage, took a gulp of beer, then stepped forward with his Fender Telecaster guitar. The youthful audience welcomed him with screams and cheers. For the next two hours, Buchanan and his three sidemen played to constant outbursts from the crowd: "Come on, Roy ... Right on, Roy." Roy responded by singing about half the 18 songs on the program, including the wailing Roy's Bluz and the chuckling My Cat Walked Out Last Sunday. But the biggest applause came for the broad, sweeping melody that is by now his theme, The Messiah Will Come Again.

"There is a town," Buchanan intoned over the moaning of his guitar, "a strange, lonely little town they call the world, till one day a stranger appeared ..." At the end, having promised that the Messiah would come again, Buchanan moved slowly toward the back of the stage and, like a sort of rock Messiah, slipped off into the darkness.

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