“I walked right past Stevie Ray Vaughan when my dad was talking to him. My dad called me back and said, ‘There’s somebody here you want to meet’”: George Thorogood guitarist Jim Suhler on the first time he met SRV – and the profound advice he received

Texas electric guitar heavyweight Jim Suhler may be best known for his starring role in George Thorogood & The Destroyers, but he’s also collected a hat-full of other A-List collaborations and encounters across his prolific career.

Billy Gibbons officiated his wedding, for example, and he tapped Joe Bonamassa for a Hendrix-inspired song on his 2007 solo album. Plus, he also had a rather memorable first meeting with another prestigious blues player: Stevie Ray Vaughan.

“I met him for the first time in 1989,” Suhler says in a new chat with Guitar World. “We had a family jewelry shop in Dallas and Stevie had an old antique watch he brought in to get repaired. I just happened to be there when he came in. In fact I walked right past him when my dad was talking to him.

“My dad called me back and said: ‘Son, there’s somebody here you want to meet.’ And it was Stevie. I was in my late twenties trying to get it together. I hadn’t met George at that point so my dad asked him: ‘Do you have any advice for my son?’”

Very much an adult at this point, Suhler said he was “really embarrassed” to be stood there in front of one of the greatest blues guitarists to ever live, his father asking him for advice on his behalf. But his profound response quelled any concerns he may have had very quickly.

“Stevie said to me: ‘Yeah, keep it clean.’ To me, one of the greatest parts of his legacy was his sobriety and him helping others through that journey as well,” Suhler expands.

Strangely, Suhler adds that SRV “didn’t come back to get his watch”, and so the young guitarist hatched a plan to cross paths with the blues great a year later to return the forgotten timepiece.

“The following year [1990, the last time SRV performed in Dallas], I took the watch out to where he was playing, got backstage, and gave it back to him,” Suhler reveals. “He had a light; an aura or energy about him. It was palpable. It was real and he was very powerful. God bless him; he was a great man.”

The guitarist’s life was tragically cut short in August of that year. Suhler, after slinging licks in The Homewreckers and Jim Suhler & the Monkey Beat for nearly a decade, joined Thorogood’s group in 1999.