Bonamassa Walks Away From BCC
“I’m just not the guitar player for that band" he says.
Joe Bonamassa has gone on record to say that he is "happily not involved any more" with Black Country Communion. The guitarist's clash with frontman Glen Hughes almost caused the derailment of the band's third album, Afterglow.
Bonamassa now describes his time with the group as "pretty much done".
"Originally I did it for the same reasons I did the stuff with Beth Hart and Rock Candy Funk Party: it was an excuse to play a different kind of music that I don’t get to play normally" he recalls.
"So I did it and did a nine-week tour in 2011 that really, by the end of it, wasn’t fun for me. It wasn’t because I didn’t like the cats in the band, but it was just too much – too much involved in getting people from place to place and getting the band onstage.
"Everybody seemed to be very tense, and it made my crew very tense, and it’s not the way I like to tour. I run a family. I have 21 people who go on the road with me all the time, and if you asked them who was the cause of the least of their problems, they would say me.
"It just wasn’t fun for me any more. All the stuff that Glenn says in the media, essentially pinning it on me, that I was the reason for the band’s lack of touring and the band’s lack of future. It became rapidly not fun at all. It would be dishonest of me to get onstage and pretend like I’m having fun to please the band.”
Joe says he remains proud of the legacy he has created with the band, and that when they find a new guitarist he will be "the first guy to queue up and buy a ticket".