The one musician Eric Clapton couldn’t play without: “Instrumental in the way I make music”
It’s easy to picture Eric Clapton as the kind of artist who doesn’t really need much to wow an audience.
If the Unplugged record had taught us fans anything, it’s that ‘Slowhand’ could be just as dangerous even if he had just a simple acoustic guitar to play all of his songs, especially when he was paying tribute to his heroes like Robert Johnson. But even if he had nothing but his guitar and his wits about him, he always felt that he needed someone to work off of if he was going to truly wow an audience.
Which probably explains why so many of his first bands were among the most accomplished musicians in the world. Cream, Blind Faith, and Derek and the Dominos had the kind of insane pedigree that’s normally reserved for the greatest supergroups in the world, but even then, Clapton was just looking for the right outlet for his songs half the time. And when he finally felt that he had had enough, spinning the whole thing into a solo career wasn’t exactly the first thing on his mind, either.
He wanted the opportunity to make music that sounded a lot more authentic to him, but that also meant going through a few hard times as well. He already wasn’t taking great care of himself when working with his bandmates, and when he eventually did get the affection from Patti Boyd in the 1970s, his next muse would be the bottle when he started working on some of his greatest solo material.
There are still some great songs throughout those years, but a lot of it is being held up by the fact that Clapton seems to clock out on a few solos. He’s not terrible by any means, but if you were told that this was the same guy who was being called a god of guitar and was brought this, you’d probably be asking your fair share of questions as well. But when he had the right band behind him after he sobered up, he became unstoppable again.
Behind the Sun was certainly a divisive album amongst some fans, but Clapton was in rare form when looking at his guitar work. ‘Forever Man’ was a fantastic way to get things started all over again, but when assembling his next band, he felt that no one else would have fit as well behind the drum kit as Steve Gadd. He had already been an industry legend, but Clapton’s admiration for him was more about having someone he could relate to both on and off the stage.
It had been murder trying to handle the two egos in Cream, but getting Gadd in the band was practically a godsend for Clapton, saying, “This is probably the longest relationship I’ve had with one musician, apart from Nathan East. It’s about having something so deeply in common that if I try other things, I always find myself coming back. So Steve has been very instrumental in the way I make music.”
And a lot of that comes from the subtlety in what Gadd does. He could have been out there playing his heart the same way that he did on the solo to Steely Dan’s ‘Aja’, but a lot of what he’s doing is about pushing the track forward. Every blues or rock and roll song is about putting the rhythm forward before anything else, and Clapton could always count on having a subtle foundation behind everything.
Anyone could have practised as much as they could to snag that kind of job, but given what Clapton went through with Ginger Baker and Jim Gordon, it was almost as if he didn’t have to worry about the drums anymore with Gadd. That side of the band was taken care of, and all he needed to do was sing and give the people what they wanted every single time he went for a mind-melting solo.
