“I just went with the flow”: Eric Clapton and the band that overpowered him
You always get the impression that Eric Clapton wished to be the leader in all of his projects. With a style of guitar playing that was so assured and confident, he would regularly steal the show with his electrifying performances and deft ability, and there’s plenty of good reasons as to why he often ranks so highly on lists of the greatest guitarists to have ever lived.
When you’ve got that much raw talent to be showcased to the world, you’d want to be front and centre of every performance, right? It’s completely understandable that Clapton wanted to be regarded as a showpiece for any act, and throughout the majority of his career, there are plenty of examples of groups where he has been able to shine in this regard.
From his brief time with Derek and the Dominos to his stints with The Yardbirds and John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, Clapton established himself as a formidable blues guitarist. While he was often surrounded by other exceptional musicians in all of these groups, you always got the impression that he was able to easily play off the talents of his colleagues in a way that still gave him ample opportunity to find himself in the spotlight.
However, not every act of his was ideal for him showing off, and sometimes the combination of musicians that he found himself working alongside wasn’t conducive to him being the main focal point of the group. While Cream enjoyed incredible success in a short space of time, they were far from what Clapton had imagined they would be when he formed the group with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker in 1966, and after four studio albums in only three years, the group disbanded and went their separate ways, with Baker joining Clapton in the equally shortlived Blind Faith alongside Ric Grech and Steve Winwood.
Clapton doesn’t look back as fondly as one might think on his time in Cream, and in an interview with Guitar World, he revealed his main gripes with the group were the intense atmosphere and the different direction they took. “I think my overall feeling about it now is that it was a glorious mistake,” Clapton revealed. “I had a completely different idea of what it would be before I started it, and it ended up being a wonderful thing, but nothing like it was meant to be.”
He continued: “It was meant to be a blues trio. I just didn’t have the assertiveness to take control. Jack and Ginger were the powerful, dominant personalities in the band; they sort of ran the show and I just played. I just went with the flow in the end and I enjoyed it greatly, but it wasn’t anything like I expected it to be at all.”
While Bruce and Baker may have dominated the trio with their equally proficient playing on bass and drums respectively, Clapton’s contributions to the band have never been ignored, and as a trio, they’re still one of the most formidable forces to have ever worked together. However, the rigorous recording and touring schedule that they enforced, plus the diversion from blues into psychedelic rock, were far from what Clapton ever felt comfortable doing. We can be grateful that they existed, but it was perhaps always destined to implode before too long.
