‘After Midnight’: how Eric Clapton and one song saved J.J. Cale
Blues musician J.J. Cale was entirely unaware Eric Clapton had recorded his 1966 track ‘After Midnight’ until it became a radio mainstay in 1970. When Cale first heard it, he was dirt poor, barely making enough money to eat, and felt ahead of his 30s, his chance to break into the music business had passed him by. Clapton’s take on the song revitalised his career, the first, but not the last, of Cale’s material he would end up covering. It also marked the start of a musical union that earned the pair a Grammy for 2006’s The Road to Escondido.
When Clapton was working with Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett in 1966, he was introduced to Cale’s music through Delaney. Although Cale might have underestimated his own brilliance, Clapton was in awe of the construction of ‘After Midnight’. In 2014, he took to the San Diego Union-Tribune to praise Cale’s style, saying his track had “everything” you could want from a blues rock tune.
“The thing that summed up J.J. for me is it had a little country, a little blues, it was rock and there was this guitar part that was baffling,” he said. “That has always been the fascinating part; I still don’t think we got it right [on my version]. I’ve always been in awe of J.J.’s technique, he was a rhythm guitar player and a great lead guitar player, too. But when he played rhythm, it was very difficult to get it and know what he was doing.”
When Clapton and Delaney recorded their version, both attempted the guitar part at the same time, with Clapton describing the claw-hammer picking as extremely technically demanding. “I thought: ‘This is too hard,’ so we made a meal out of it,” he joked.
“What got me is that it appeared to be a very complex track, and I was just intrigued and thought: ‘I’ve got to try and get this.’ Cale was coming from this very soulful white music,: he added. “It was at Delaney’s insistence that I did [‘After Midnight’], and that was probably one of the first songs we decided to record. And that began my association with J.J., really.”
When Clapton’s version was first released, Cale recalled thinking it wouldn’t go anywhere. He was so stunned when he found it getting consistent airplay in the following years that he drove his car off to the side of the road when he first heard it, having never heard anything of his own on the radio before.
“All record companies want big-selling records, and my music is a little too raw for commercial success,” he mused in 2016. “People are familiar with my songs, especially through Eric Clapton. But I have a hard time drawing a crowd, because I have been a songwriter. I’ve never sold a lot of records. My music’s gotten much more famous than me.”
