The one guitarist Eric Clapton will always love: “I still listen to it”
The entire legacy of Eric Clapton always comes back to the blues.
Even though so many of his songs have crossed over into the mainstream and even sound like the furthest thing from the blues, there’s no way he could have stumbled upon ‘Tears in Heaven’ without talking about his fair share of bluesy turmoil beforehand. But even when brushing up on some of his favourite leads, he felt that some guitarists would always hold a special place in his heart whenever he heard the true masters play their licks.
Because as much as Clapton was known as a rock and roll god, he didn’t want to be the only deity in the music industry by any means. He knew that he was a cut above what everyone else was doing, but he did feel like he could learn a thing or two from the biggest names in the industry as well. Duane Allman and Jimi Hendrix each had lessons to teach him, and he wasn’t too prideful to be taught the ins and outs of what it meant to play slide or approach the guitar in a totally different way.
He had already mastered what rock guitar playing sounded like, but the blues was a completely different way of approaching the instrument. He spent as much time as he could trying to sound like his greatest heroes, but after all the hard work that he put into everything, there was no sense in his being a copycat. His heroes wanted to hear what he sounded like when he was quoting his own heart, because that’s half the reason why the biggest names in blues worked in the first place.
Robert Johnson may have been gifted with a guitar in his hands, but the reason why he still resonates is that you can hear his pain on those first recordings. No one could doubt that the guy had been through some truly dark chapters in his life whenever he performed, and while ‘Me and the Devil Blues’ and ‘Crossroads’ had a significant impact on Clapton when he truly dissected them, he felt that Freddie King had all of the bluesy swagger that he was looking for.
You have to remember that Clapton was still figuring out his sound when King was becoming one of the biggest names in blues, and a lot of what ‘Slowhand’ had heard up until that point were the giants of rock and roll guitar. Scotty Moore and Chuck Berry could certainly play a mean groove whenever they wanted to, but King was operating on a much different level when he bent the strings and made the whole thing sound like it was crying.
This was love at first sound for Clapton, and he felt that nothing could make him feel the same way that King’s licks make him feel every single time he plays them, saying, “I was interested in the white rock ‘n’ rollers until I heard Freddie King. I knew that was where I belonged – finally. That was serious, proper guitar playing, and I haven’t changed my mind ever since. I still listen to it, and I get the same boost now that I did then.”
But the real test was seeing what Clapton could do with that kind of music once he had it under his fingers. He did have a fair bit of chops when listening to Berry’s style of playing, but when you look at him playing with a band like Cream, he was much more free to loosen up whenever he played one of King’s licks, especially while having someone as chaotic as Ginger Baker playing right alongside him.
The number one rule Clapton abided by was based around playing what he felt inside, but there’s a good chance that he could still find himself stealing a few licks from King without even realising it. There are plenty of artists who are open about being inspired by their favourite artists, but even if Clapton blatantly takes a few pages out of King’s playbook, it’s all done in service to the one who made him fall in love with the blues.
