The band Eric Clapton thought ended too soon: “We could have gone on”
Some artists aren’t meant to be confined to just one project. As much as people like the idea of bands staying together for the rest of their days, it’s important to let musical marvels fly solo and see where the road takes them. Although Eric Clapton prided himself on being one of the resident journeymen of rock and roll in the 1960s, he still felt that Blind Faith had some unfinished business to attend to.
Because for a while, this looked like the next best thing after Cream disbanded. It was becoming abundantly clear that Jack Bruce and Giner Baker couldn’t stand each other, so ‘Slowhand’ and the drumming lunatic starting a new group with Steve Winwood was destined to be incredible right out of the gate.
While most people know the group from ‘Can’t Find My Way Home’, the one album they made together is a good indicator of where Clapton’s head was at the time. After shedding his psychedelic skin, this was an excuse for everyone to stretch out when they played, developing songs like ‘Had to Cry Today’ into massive exercises that managed to muscle past pretentious and work their way back to endearing again.
If anything, this is the closest thing to a straight-ahead blues record that Clapton had made since The Yardbirds. Despite being on the verge of creating God’s gift to blues rockers with Derek and the Dominoes, hearing him invoking spirituality on ‘Presence of the Lord’ fits right in with the divine intervention that people like Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson were asking for when they put together their masterpieces.
Once people started showing up to their first gigs, though, Clapton had grown tired of the touring lifestyle before he had even started. He wanted to break free of the guitar god tag that he was stuck with, but most people were attending the shows as if they were about to witness the musical equivalent of the Second Coming live onstage, which led to Clapton dissolving the group, working with John Lennon in the Plastic Ono Band, and eventually hooking up with Delaney and Bonnie.
Still, Clapton always felt that there was some ground that never got covered with Blind Faith, saying, “I think Blind Faith was over too soon. We could have gone on maybe a couple more years. I’m not really a band member. I think all of those bands probably lasted about the right amount of time for what they were meant to do.”
Despite Baker trying to keep things rolling in Ginger Baker’s Air Force, Clapton needed to strike out on his own when it came time to release 461 Ocean Boulevard. Sure, he wasn’t the same guitar legend that he had started out as back in the day, but those years performing alongside Delaney and Bonnie and listening to The Band led to him making the most tasteful playing in his career.
But that didn’t mean the door wasn’t open for a Blind Faith reunion, either, with Winwood including some of the sketches for Blind Faith songs on the album The Finer Things. With Baker having passed on now, though, who’s to say whether Winwood and Clapton can’t get together and resurrect those demos like The Beatles did with their old material?
