“Genius!”: Eric Clapton names the album that knocked him out
Eric Clapton is perhaps one of the only rock virtuosos who understands the true potential of audience transactions. “I get quite bored listening to myself play the guitar because I’m not a very good audience. If there are people there, you go further,” he said in 1968—which also happens to align well with those he regards the best in the business. In his eyes, if a musician can utilise audience and listener energy, they can push their performance into a realm where the music becomes a shared, visceral experience.
As a part of Cream, Clapton’s experiences in the late 1960s were signposted by his connection to his audience. Aside from the shock at realising their own popularity across the pond in America, he realised the one self-fulfilling prophecy about the broader musical experience: that the audience can elevate the performance to new heights, creating a feedback loop where the musician and the audience inspire each other.
This wasn’t just restricted to live shows, though. When done right, a skilled musician can record songs that can fulfill emotionally while leaving enough nuance and room to inspire the listener. This allows them to apply their own experiences, resulting in a deeper level of appreciation and connection. Of course, this is incredibly difficult to pull off, but a handful of musicians across history have been able to do so with the utmost effortlessness.
The Beach Boys were one group that achieved this by utilising Brian Wilson’s songwriting, which not only touched upon universal themes but yielded enough ambiguity for listeners to project their own thoughts and feelings. Pet Sounds, for instance, beckons multiple levels of resonance, allowing for a seemingly endless amount of personal and intimate connections to be made with the music.
Understandably, therefore, when Clapton heard the album, he was besotted. “All of us, Ginger, Jack and I, are absolutely and completely knocked out with Pet Sounds,” he once reflected. Not only did he “consider it to be one of the greatest Pop LPs to ever be released,” he also believed “it encompasses everything that’s ever knocked me out,” all rolled into one.
In his eyes, Pet Sounds is what proved Wilson to be “a pop genius”.
Later, Clapton went one step further, revealing that Pet Sounds was actually a significant aspect of Cream’s formation, explaining that listening to the album “non-stop” placed them in a semi-frustrated state where they pushed themselves to be the best they could possibly be while realising the realities of never actually being able to obtain the exact status of excellence as Wilson’s collective. It was inspiring but humbling.
Still, much of what The Beach Boys revolutionised became a constant thread throughout Clapton’s work both in Cream and the projects that followed as he sought to incorporate pop rock and blues-infused sensibilities into his own sound. Although the album also inspired and frightened The Beatles, its excitement served as a catalyst rather than a source of despair, urging others into action when attempting to create their own opus.
Above all, Pet Sounds didn’t just teach players like Clapton about the possibilities of audience transaction—it invited them to explore the boundaries of musical convention, demonstrating the explosive possibilities of emotional depth, intricate arrangements, and the fusion of personal interpretation with universal themes.
