Teabag: The moment Eddie Van Halen insulted Eric Clapton
They say don’t meet your heroes. Well, as Eddie Van Halen taught himself guitar in his bedroom from a young age, looking up to a poster of Eric Clapton, memorising solos and recreating them, all he wanted was to shake hands with the man who inspired him. Well, he should have headed the classic advice, as after meeting Eric Clapton, all the duo did was bicker.
Their first meeting went off without much of a problem. They had a drink, and Eddie told Clapton how much of an inspiration he was. They got along well. However, the world of rock ‘n’ roll is one filled with persistent arguments between those who helped build it, and Eddie Van Halen and Eric Clapton were no strangers to dispute. Subsequently, it was only a matter of time before the two butted heads.
It all started with a simple dedication. Brian May and Eddie Van Halen joined forces on a track called ‘Bluesbreaker’. This was side B of a limited edition project they worked on, which they dedicated to Eric Clapton. While most people might have been happy that two of the most esteemed guitarists in the world at the time devoted a song to them, Clapton took the track as an insult.
Long story short, he hated it. “One side was kind of a fusion thing, really, really interesting, great to listen to,” he said, “And the other side was a blues jam, it was so horrible, and they dedicated it to me… I was almost insulted that they should send this to me.”
Clapton had a point; the track certainly isn’t the best guitar work that May or Van Halen ever did; it lacked layering, didn’t build in the way classic blues tracks do, and generally just felt a bit lacklustre. Eddie Van Halen said that that was the whole point; it wasn’t a well-constructed song; instead, it was music in its rawest form, just two guitarists jamming to the genre that inspired them greatly. As such, it only made sense for them to dedicate the song to an artist who inspired them just as equally.
Eddie Van Halen wasn’t happy at all that Clapton was so outspoken about his disdain towards their jolly jam and, as such, went back on a lot of the compliments he had sent the guitarist’s way since then. He said that he was only a fan of Clapton’s music in Cream and didn’t like his solo work after that. He doubled down on this comment when he saw Clapton live, “To be honest with you, I was expecting something more powerful…the show is more of a Doobie Brothers kind of thing.”
Finally, the big insult that drove a constant wedge between the two came at a party in New York. Eddie Van Halen was very drunk and decided to go up to Clapton to try and heal old wounds, but a newly sober Clapton turned his nose up at drink-filled Eddie. Sensing his dismissal, Eddie Van Halen doubled down and simply said, “Forget that Teabag.” After that, the two never spoke again.
