The guitarist so good they convinced Ian Anderson and Andy Sumners to avoid the blues: ‘Happily, he did not play the flute’
It really is difficult to put into words just what a lightning bolt Eric Clapton was to the world of rock and roll music in his 1960s peak. Not for nothing did people go around painting his divinity on any wall they could find. In the days before Jimi Hendrix came and blew up what people could expect from a blues guitarist, his playing was at such a level that it was difficult to see how one could improve upon it.
This left an interesting dilemma for many guitarists coming up in the British rock scene of the time. Clapton was eating everyone’s lunch and leaving no crumbs, so what the hell could they do to stand out? Thus, you strike the match on a phenomenon that arguably is the ultimate level of influence on a pop scene. You get people being inspired and making whole careers by trying to be unlike you.
That was, after all, the level that Clapton found himself at. He was such a figurehead for the scene that there were people making their livelihoods by doing the opposite of what he did, and there are two examples that prove this with aplomb. The first comes in the form of someone who wasn’t just chased away from the blues, but the guitar as a whole.
During an interview with Yahoo, Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull named the first album Clapton played on with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers as one of the most influential of his life, but not for the reasons you’d expect. He said, “This exceptional new guitarist in Mayall’s band persuaded me—by example rather than in person—to give up playing electric guitar and seek an alternative vehicle with which to attempt to make my name. Happily, Eric did not play the flute, so it seemed I was in with a chance!”
It’s true, Anderson picked up his iconic flute because Eric Clapton’s guitar mastery was a bar too high for him. However, I think it’s fair to say that the change of instrument worked out pretty well for him. Another example of this is from an artist who stuck to his guns (or perhaps his axe), but went down a very different, some might say more expressive and artistic, route with his playing.
Later, as part of an interview with Prog magazine, The Police’s guitar magnifico Andy Summers mentioned how he came up in a similar scene to the likes of Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, even knowing them personally to an extent. He, however, took his skills in a different direction. One might say it is obvious, as Summers is arguably the most successful jazz guitarist ever, and that must have been his calling at the time, but not quite.
In the interview, he is asked whether he preferred playing acid rock to the blues and, he said, “I did. At the time, I was listening to very exotic music, trying to play scales. Everyone was getting into the blues, and I was trying to play like Ravi Shankar. Obviously, I was around a lot of guys wanting to be Eric Clapton, but I wanted to go in a different direction.”
More power to them, I say. Influence is far from mere imitation. If anything, Summers and Anderson were paying a better tribute to Clapton’s powers by going against the grain and trying to push the medium of rock music forward, rather than keeping it exactly in one place.
