The heartbreaking gift Eric Clapton never got to give Jimi Hendrix
There are many sad moments in the world of rock and roll. Despite the genre ultimately relying on the sheer excitement of escapist hedonism, the highs of the music created are often equalled by the tragic lows of those who make it. One such story stings perhaps a little more resolutely than others and it sees Eric Clapton remember the night Jimi Hendrix died and reveals the gift he had planned to give him that night.
When Hendrix first arrived on the shores of Britain in 1966, with a guitar slung over his back and all the talent in the world in his case, there was one man many thought would be annoyed to see him. Music is certainly a subjective art form, but that doesn’t mean it is not without its competition. During the 1960s, with London becoming the epicentre of the cultural revolution, the blues and rock guitarists would often gather to duke it out. Eric Clapton had long been the main man in Britain when it came to the guitar, and now he had a challenger.
Slowhand had been shredding his fretboard for some time with Cream and the John Mayall band and had rightly taken a seat at the table of the greatest living musicians, especially in rock music. It had pushed Clapton into an almost untouchable sphere of creation. Hendrix, meanwhile, had spent the majority of his musical career as part of a backing band mopping up scraps under the tablecloth at the time.
Hendrix was always desperate to get over to Britain and embed himself within London, the new epicentre of creativity. But even he, with all his parcelled talent, could not have expected the reception he would receive when he did eventually touch down. Brought over to the centre of the swinging sixties by his manager and The Animals bassist Chas Chandler, Jimi was scheduled to play at the famous Bag O’ Nails club and begin his domination of the rock world.
However, just a few days before that event, Hendrix took himself to Regent Street Polytechnic to participate in a legendary jam session with the notorious rock band Cream. Naturally, one particular member of the band was eager to see the new kid from America have a go on stage. Clapton reached out a figurative hand and helped Hendrix onto the stage in an act of collaboration.
Hendrix got up and delivered a mind-swirling array of talent. Eric Clapton told Planet Rock: “We got up on stage, and Chas Chandler says, ‘I’ve got this friend who would love to jam with you.’” The idea of waltzing up to a night with your guitar and hoping to play alongside a band like Cream is almost unthinkable in the modern age.
“It was funny; in those days, anybody could get up with anybody if you were convincing enough that you could play,” continued Clapton. “He got up and blew everyone’s mind. I just thought, ‘ahh, someone that plays the stuff I love, in the flesh, on stage with me.’ I was actually privileged to be (on stage with him)… it’s something that no one is ever going to beat; that incident, that night, it’s historic in my mind, but only a few people are alive that would remember it.”
With that performance, the relationship between one of the most intrinsically talented duos to have ever shared a pint began. Over the next four years, Hendrix and Clapton would share jokes, drinks, and stages, their admiration for one another growing stronger and stronger until Hendrix’s untimely death on September 18th, 1970.
It was a rock and roll death that would shake the music scene to its very core and leave a gigantic hole in the industry and many people’s hearts. For once, the rock world felt like it had finally found its saviour, and then, as saviours often are, Hendrix was ripped away from his adoring audience. It left a mark on global society and left many fans bereft, including, most notably, his friend Eric Clapton.
In the rarely seen footage below, Clapton explores the pain he felt when losing Hendrix and the sad story accompanying it. Clapton says, “After Jimi died, I was angry. I was incredibly angry. I thought it was, not selfish on his part but just erm, a lonely feeling—to be left alone.”
The issue with losing a friend who is in the public eye is that the general population also feel an attachment to the person with whom you enjoyed a genuinely close relationship. It’s a facet of grief that Clapton struggled to deal with: “And, after that, I kept running into people who kept shoving him down my throat ‘Have you heard this one he did, this one’s never been on record before’. To see these young kids playing the guitar coming up and saying, ‘Have you heard this one’ or ‘I can do all this’. Forget it, mate. It’s been done,” concludes the pained guitarist.
A visibly shaken and angry Clapton continues to open up about his grief, “It’s the same with Robert Johnson,” he shares, reflecting on what he perceives as the inability for general music lovers to perceive the technical textures of what is coming through the speakers. “I won’t listen to Robert Johnson in mixed company. I won’t put him on, I won’t listen to him if there’s anyone there who don’t feel it. And that’s how I feel about Jimi,” he notes.
With a burning fire in his eyes, he addresses the interviewer with a feeling that only the grief-stricken can truly understand. Clapton decries with a p[ainful defiance: “I knew him, I knew him and I played with him and I loved his music. But I don’t ever wanna hear anything said about him again.”
In one of the ultimate sliding doors moments in rock and roll, Clapton had originally planned to meet Hendrix the night of his death, but that never came to fruition. He left the Cream man with an unwanted reminder of his friend’s demise. The guitarist continues: “The night that he died, I was supposed to meet him at the Lyceum to see Sly Stone play, and I brought with me a left-handed Stratocaster. I just found it, I think I bought it at Orange Music. I’d never seen one before and I was gonna give it to him.”
Adding: “He was in a box over there and I was in a box over here. I could see him but I couldn’t… we never got together. The next day, whack! He was gone. And I was left with that left-handed Stratocaster.”
While many people dispute the validity of Clapton’s suggestion that Hendrix was at the show—most people believe he never attended the Sly Stone performance—the final reminder of mortality, the left-handed Stratocaster, remains a powerful image and one that is clearly burned into the memory of Eric Clapton.
