Eric Clapton names the artist that made him want to run offstage: “I can’t handle this”
Anyone who has been playing for as long as Eric Clapton has had their own bag of tricks to pull from whenever they get onstage. Aside from the years that were lost to his addiction, ‘Slowhand’ could always be relied on to throw together something no one had ever heard before, and even if he was playing a traditional blues lick, no one was going to have the same touch on the guitar as he did. Clapton was always a student of the guitar, though, and he did have those moments where he needed to be humbled out of his god-like status in the rock guitar scene.
Because as much as Clapton mastered the blues, there was much more to explore. Many bands can only dream of having as many iconic musicians as those that came through The Yardbirds, but whereas Clapton always stayed with the blues, both Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck took the guitar into new areas that no one had even considered. This was a different flavour of rock, and the rest of the world was definitely paying attention.
It’s not like blues was the only prominent guitar music in the world at that point. Clapton may have been known for being one of the only guest guitarists with The Beatles, but George Harrison’s lyrical approach to his guitar solos was always going to serve the song better than someone giving him a standard bluesy backing track and have him improvise a solo for the hell of it.
Even for an era that was inundated with guitar groups, seeing Jimi Hendrix in the flesh was enough to send all of the guitars into a daze. There was still that blues foundation in Hendrix’s playing, but it was being channelled through something much more spiritual, as if pieces of his music were being beamed down from a spaceship half the time.
Compared to every other player on the blues rock scene in England, Hendrix seemed more concerned about what he could get out of his guitar. He already knew that he could play a massive Muddy Waters guitar solo if he could, but since everyone had already heard that, it was better for him to make the kind of spectacle that psychedelia had only hinted at, like playing the guitar with his teeth or playing an entire solo backwards on record.
Although Clapton was quickly becoming the father of all things blues in Cream, he knew that there was no way that he could compete with what Hendrix was doing when they played live, saying, “He got up and played. He was doing Howlin’ Wolf songs, and I couldn’t believe this guy. I couldn’t believe it. Part of me wanted to run away and say, ‘Oh, now this is what I want to be—I can’t handle this.’”
And despite Clapton eventually morphing into a more lyrical guitar player, even his best solos were no match for what Hendrix did. Many guitarists have taken their fair share of inspiration from him, but Hendrix is one of the few guitarists that subsequent generations are forever doomed to be compared to whether they know it or not, from the gear that he used to the massive licks that he pulled out of every one of his songs.
It might have been impossible for Clapton to emulate what Hendrix could do, but perhaps that was the most important lesson that he could have been taught. Because above all else, Hendrix taught everyone it was important to be themselves on their instrument rather than emulating their heroes.
