One Friday night back in August, my phone lit up with Stephen Dale Petit’s caller ID. Nothing unusual in that: the Anglo-American bluesman doesn’t use press officers, has little regard for office hours, and by this point is almost a friend. He asked me to stop what I was doing, check my emails, listen to the six-minute track he’d just sent me, then call him straight back. Seems important, I thought.
The song was stunning: a stately slow-burn lament topped by a molten guitar solo, with Petit acknowledging a litany of fuck-ups over his 56 years, but always cycling back to the titular phrase: ‘I will do all that I can, I will strive to be a better man’.
When I returned the call, full of praise, the guitarist told me I was the first ‘outsider’ to hear the lead track from his new album Be The Love, which he believed was the album of his career. But when I asked why it had taken a half-decade to put out a follow-up to 2020’s Visions – winner of Classic Rock’s blues album of the year – the conversation got heavy. For the past three years, Petit told me, he’d been fighting an aggressive cancer. Now, it was no longer a case of if, but when.
“I went through all this in 2017,” he said. “Then it was five years of all-clear. I thought it was done. But at the end of November 2022 I got the call.
“I had a scan, which showed the tumour,” he continues. “It’s in a really difficult-to-access place. After my first chemo, when I began easing back into Be The Love, I thought to myself: ‘Well, if this proves to be my last album, let’s pull out all the stops and make it a masterpiece.’”
To those who have followed his studio records since 2008’s Guitararama, Petit is perhaps the most electrifying roots player of the post-millennium. Once dubbed a ‘blues hooligan’ – he likes the tag – the bandleader respects the genre’s history and dogma but rips it up anyway, giving this often de-fanged genre back its hair and teeth.
What few realise is that there’s a whole tangled backstory. When I first spoke to Petit, I assumed he was a well-preserved British punk; he’s got the trademark 100 Club sneer and highly quotable lip. In fact he came up in Huntington Beach, California, and had his epiphany at the seaside city’s Golden Bear nightclub.
“It was magical,” he recalls. “But I was full of piss and vinegar. I wanted to get on stage with BB King. I remember Albert King once let me on his bus. He was sat in the driver’s seat with his corncob pipe. I wish there were iPhones back in those days.”
Petit’s long association with London, though, began when he arrived in the late 80s, hoping to find a little of the same mojo that birthed the blues boom. “[Cream’s 1967 album] Disraeli Gears still resonated with me as a teenager, and it had been out for decades. It was punk as well. London was a whole different thing – plus the weather. But I’m not interested in lifestyle and luxury. I’ve always put music first.”
Petit’s early years in London brought fantastical highs and lows that made him take a hard look at himself. Always good at making connections – his career hook-ups include Ronnie Wood and the Black Keys – he was brought into Pretty Thing Phil May’s all-star band, sharing an amp with David Gilmour for the first gig.
By the millennium he was a mess and practically homeless (“Am I just going to be a drug addict?” he asked himself before seeking help. “Is my passion going to be washed down the toilet?”). Wary of the “minority percentage of nutcases”, he wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of busking on the Tube. But cranking up his amp and getting an honest reaction proved rejuvenating – and financed Guitararama.
His sixth album, Be The Love is indeed a masterpiece – but not the one you’re expecting. With Petit recalling: “There was a lot of throwing myself off a cliff”, the opening and closing tracks – Gift Horse and Low And Tight – are the only true-blue tracks among glistening ballads (Diamond), Eastern-tinged psych-rock (Cherish A Ghost) and the skin-shedding, seven-minute Sky Scraper, which flips from 1960s jangle to rampant funk. “The song was chief,” he says.
He’s quick to credit co-producer Vance Powell, arranger Charlotte Glasson, and the chemistry with drummer Sam Walker and bassist Jim Mortimore, and old friend Eric Clapton’s guest solo on A Better Man is among the greatest modern acts of God. “It’s fucking insane, the way he’s picking up on counter-melodies. Eric is a player where his solos are different night by night. On Friday it’s like: ‘Fuck, that was great.’ On Saturday you’re dribbling and forgotten your name.”
But those happy sessions don’t mean Be The Love comes from harmonious times. It was written before his diagnosis, and he says the album’s flashpoint was the acrimonious end of an eight-year relationship. Today, Petit doesn’t say the name of the woman, who played bass in his band, so we won’t either.
“I’d gone from an eight-year relationship to no girlfriend, no band,” he reflects. “I’m not even sure what happened, exactly. We both played our part in pushing the relationship off a cliff. My experience is that women generally know where they’re jumping before they jump. And she ended up with someone who does vintage jump-blues, astonishingly well. So the initial break-up was quite hairy. It’s like: ‘She’s left the band and she’s got a guitar player who she rates, and she thinks you’re not all that!’
“I loaned my studio speakers to her, and she disappeared with those too. So I had to collect them. The whole process was just another humiliation, y’know?”
At least the music came fast, he says.
“A primal scream is what happened. The lyric of Cherish A Ghost is true. I cried walking down the street. I cried on the bus. I cried at the Tesco checkout. I remember playing that song for Walter Trout, in his sitting room. He was frustrated because he didn’t know how to help me. The simple way to say it is that I had a breakdown. But what we get with this album is a breakthrough.”
It’s true. Listen hard and the tone relents on Be The Love, with Petit remembering the good times on Low And Tight (“The kissing, the sex, the hanging out…”), before moving on with Sky Scraper (“It’s a song of hope, about a new person”).
Finally, he gave the album its magnanimous peace sign of a title. “You end up sounding like some sixties hippie, an ancient philosopher, or some religious proselytiser – and some people might think ‘nutjob’ as well. The relationship was over. But I reached this place where I thought: ‘Well, behind it all is love…’”
A difficult question, then, purposely saved until last. Does Petit anticipate he’ll make another album?
No sentimentalist, he gives a throaty laugh and says: “I have to stay alive first!” Then he pauses a beat. “I’d love to look back at that comment in five years or whatever and think: ‘Oh, what a fucking drama queen.’ I’d love to be able to do that.”
Be The Love is released on February 27 via 333 Records and is available to pre-order now.
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