The album Eric Clapton became obsessed with: “All I listened to”
Traditional schools of music suggest that instrumental virtuosity is the key to enjoyable and, hence, marketable music. However, as the rock ‘n’ roll revolution and the subsequent punk rock revolution showed, attitude, concept, and aesthetic can be just as crucial, if not more so. Before the calculated dumbing down of the punk era, rock ‘n’ roll brought us some icons who deftly married instrumental command with rock ‘n’ roll spirit. Among them was guitar whizz Eric Clapton.
As Jimi Hendrix’s counterpart in Cream, Clapton helped establish London’s psychedelic rock scene in 1967. The subgenre had evolved from recent musical and lyrical innovations by leading figures like The Beatles and Bob Dylan. As rock ‘n’ roll moved further from its roots, psych-rock bands like The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Cream decided to shake up the conformities, with Mitch Mitchell and Ginger Baker ripping up the 4/4 rulebook and putting their respective bassists through their paces.
For his part, Clapton walked in Hendrix’s shadow as an innovative blues guitarist. As he moved from band to band, eventually winding up in a successful solo career, Clapton proved himself a talented songwriter. However, his greatest strength was always supporting lead guitar work, as his contributions to The Beatles’ ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ and Aretha Franklin’s ‘Good to Me as I Am to You’.
Just as Gordon Ramsay enjoys eating well-prepared food, Clapton will find himself seeking out talented instrumentalists. Therefore, he warmed to the likes of JJ Cale and Mark Knopfler in the 1970s and regarded the punks with caution. “I felt threatened because I was frightened,” Clapton told Louder Sound in 2016 regarding the punk wave. “I thought these guys were scary, you know?”
As the antithesis of prog-rock and adjacent complexities, punk threatened to dethrone instrumental savants like Clapton. Fortunately, Slowhand was far from alone as a purveyor of classic rock. As the punk wave bled gradually into the more stable post-punk era in 1978, Clapton heard plenty to be excited about in Dire Straits’ debut album, home to classic uptempo blues hits like ‘Sultans of Swing’ and ‘Down to the Waterline’.
Central to Dire Straits’ appeal was Knopfler’s guitar skills, especially where Clapton was concerned. Speaking to Rolling Stone in 1991, Clapton singled out Knopfler as one of the contemporary musicians he admired most. Clapton called the Dire Straits frontman “totally unique” and a “great craftsman” since he somehow manages to sing, play, and write complex and ever-engaging hits. “Dire Straits, if you listen to any of their albums the first time, it sort of goes by you a bit,” Clapton admitted. “Then gradually, it just gets better and better, and it stands the test of time. They’re fantastic craftsmen”.
At around the same time Dire Straits broke out in the late 1970s with an antidote for punk, The Police presaged new wave with Outlandos d’Amour. Songs like ‘Next to You’ and ‘Roxanne’ stood adjacent to the energy of contemporary punk, but Sting and his talented troup were wolves in sheep’s clothing.
In a 2021 interview with Far Out, Will Sergeant, the guitarist of Echo & the Bunnymen, noted how he and other young punks saw through The Police’s facade. “We were watching bands every week that couldn’t really play, [but] the sort of exuberance and attitude came across enough,” he noted. “In a way, if you could really play, it was a disadvantage. Some bands we saw at Eric’s Club, like The Police, we thought were shit because they were too good.”
For the very same reason, Clapton admired The Police as one of the few punk-adjacent groups he could get on board with. Although Sting wrote and played with a bass guitar alongside guitarist Andy Summers, Clapton saw similarities between The Police leader and his Dire Straits counterpart. “Sting has that same quality,” Capton continued. “[The] Soul Cages was exactly the same thing for me. I liked it the first time, but it was a bit esoteric. Then it grew and grew.”
Indeed, the music listeners hold most dear will often take a little while to acquaint themselves. An acquired taste seems to make a more profound impact on the soul. “For a period of time, it was all I listened to, over and over again,” Clapton added. “I would listen to it in my car in a CD cartridge. Along with Mozart and Puccini and The Band and Muddy Waters. And it stood up on its own, amongst all those other classic things.”
