The band Eric Clapton thought were out of everybody’s league: “The kings”
It’s obviously quite a significant thing to be able to claim that you’ve been involved in one of the most influential bands of all time, but for Eric Clapton, he’s arguably able to claim that he’s been in multiple.
Starting out with The Yardbirds in 1963, Clapton’s first major project rapidly became one of the most important rock bands of their generation, with three guitarists who all performed with the band having gone on to establish themselves as some of the all-time greats. Although his tenure didn’t overlap with that of Jeff Beck or Jimmy Page, for the band to have been a starting block for all three only goes to signify just how important they were as a foundation for what was to come.
Clapton would leave after just two years in the band, paving the way for Beck to join, but that wasn’t going to stop him from attempting to form another project that was capable of taking over the world, and soon after, he’d find himself in a couple of other groups that were just as important, if not more so.
After a stint with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, he’d eventually form Cream alongside Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce, a truly formidable power trio who, by virtue of their personnel, were almost certain to have taken the world by storm.
Both of the other musicians in the band are regarded highly, arguably more so than some of Clapton’s old associates in The Yardbirds, and the fact that they were all working alongside each other and so easily able to bounce off each other creatively made them such an exciting prospect.
It was, however, a fleeting involvement, and while they managed to release four studio albums, they all arrived in a flash, with the project having disbanded after barely three years of existence.
This does call into question whether Cream were anywhere near as significant as people make them out to be, given how they weren’t around for as long as many of their contemporaries. However, Clapton himself would argue during a 1970 interview with Rolling Stone, two years after they’d disbanded, that they were more formidable than any other group at the time. “That group started out as one thing and turned into something else when we got to the Fillmore,” he reflected. “In California, for the first time, the group actually sort of got into another gear. We really thought we were the kings of our instruments.”
“No one else could come near what we were doing,” he argued, “and it was all through the adulation we were being given. The audience was to blame as much as anyone else. Because they pushed us to those heights. You should never allow yourself to think at any time that you’re the best at what you’re doing – it’s ridiculous. But we definitely did think that – every one of us! I think some of us probably still do.”
Clapton undeniably has a valid point, and the mercurial talents of the trio were certainly nothing to be sniffed at. The fact that the three of them are all so highly regarded to this day only goes to illustrate their excellence even further, and very few are able to argue against the three members of Cream having been kings, even if it was only for a short while.
