Joe Bonamassa Opens Up On BCC Dispute

In a brand new, and particularly candid interview with Music Radar Joe has opened up about the current dispute within the Black Country Communion camp which saw them announce but then cancel a show in Wolverhampton in the space of a week.

The dispute seems to have stemmed from Joe being unavailable to tour as heavily as Glenn Hughes would like and when Glenn suggested that the band's third album would be their last due to Joe it seemingly came as a surprise to everyone else in the band.

"A lot of this stuff I fell into second-hand – you know, I'd read a blog, or I'd read this or I'd read that," Joe tells Music Radar. "I was going, 'Why all of a sudden is it my fault?' That I'm doing what I said I was going to do for the last three years, and now because somebody changes his mind, that's now my fault? At first, it didn't really faze me. You know, journalists do like to take liberties; they do like to start shit. But then it's time and time again, and then I read the Classic Rock article, and it went from slightly annoying to supremely not cool.

"I never would have done that to my friend, Glenn Hughes, no matter how I felt about the situation," he continued. "l If Glenn Hughes had been offered the Deep Purple reunion Mach III for a two-year world tour, he would've dropped Black Country Communion and put that on hiatus to go do that in a heartbeat. The fact that I tour religiously in the spring, religiously in the fall and do 125 shows – you can set your watch to that. And you could have set your watch to that in 2000 or 1999, and you can set your watch to it in 2012.

"The thing that became more than slightly annoying to me was getting e-mails and negative stuff coming at me, basically unsolicited, from kids in Brazil going, 'My lifelong dream is to see Black Country Communion, and because Glenn Hughes says you don't want to do it, now you're the f***ing blues antichrist.' I wouldn't have done that to anybody. No matter what the situation is internally, you never air that dirty laundry and those grievances out in public. You call me on the phone, you know? And he never did."

So when it came to the sole UK show for Black Country Communion in 2013, which was scheduled for January, Joe says "I'll never do a gig out of obligation to just fleece the fans and have this 800-pound gorilla in the room, with everybody going, 'Well, this could be the last' and waiting for Glenn to make some stupid fucking announcement on stage."

Joe does add that there is every chance that the situation will resolve itself ("if everybody gets on the phone or gets in a room – and most likely it's going to have to be me and Glenn to hash this thing out – then I don't rule out ever doing it again.") and that he is "particularly proud" with the band's career thus far.

If you want to read the full interview (and it's well worth it) then CLICK HERE