The musician who stopped Eric Clapton in his tracks: “I have to know who this guitar player is”
“Eric Clapton is the most important and influential guitar player that has ever lived, is still living or ever will live. Do yourself a favour, and don’t debate me on this.” Steve Van Zandt is clearly quite adamant with his opinion, as he stands by Clapton as the most important person ever to pick up an electric guitar. But why is that?
Steve Van Zandt said that Clapton was responsible for merging multiple genres that previously didn’t seem like they could work well together. He absorbed the popular modern sound and infused it with blues and R&B, forming a style of guitar playing that would be used to develop and popularise rock music in a very exciting way.
It’s true that Clapton was always fantastic at adapting his sound and merging genres to create something new. He had so many different musical outfits because he wanted to explore many different styles and sounds. As such, when someone with as diverse a taste as Eric Clapton hears guitar music so good that it stops him in his tracks, you know you’re on to a winner.
In 1983, David Bowie released his iconic track ‘Let’s Dance’, an impressive infusion of rock, funk and disco. It was one of his most successful songs, achieving number one in multiple different countries. People connected with the upbeat nature of the song, which was easy to dance to and felt a lot warmer than some of the other songs that Bowie had released in previous years.
The song was always tipped for success, as Bowie worked with a super team to assemble the track. Because he wanted elements of funk to be present in the song, he enlisted the help of Nile Rodgers, who wrote the rhythm section for the song. It had a layered feel to it but still managed to get people moving. This was intentional on Rodgers part, as while he knew the song should be one that people could move to, he also felt like Bowie had injected the track with something deeper.
“When David wrote those lyrics, he was talking about the dance that people do in life,” he said, “The conceptual dance of not being honest. He sings, ‘Put on your red shoes and dance the blues’. Like you’re pretending to be happy but you’re sad.”
All of these factors worked together very well, but it wasn’t Rodgers’s guitar work that had stopped Eric Clapton in his tracks; that was reserved for the outstanding craftsmanship of Stevie Ray Vaughn. Unknown at the time, Stevie Ray Vaughn, who would go on to be praised as one of the greatest blues guitarists of all time, was heard by many for the first time on this Bowie track. Despite ‘Let’s Dance’ being far removed from the music that Ray Vaughan would eventually make, his talent as a guitar player still bled through. This is what truly blew Clapton away.
“I was driving, and ‘Let’s Dance’ came on the radio. I stopped my car and said, ‘I have to know who this guitar player is today. Not tomorrow, but today’,” recalled Clapton, “That has only happened to me three or four times ever.”
