“He’s totally off his nut”: The one musician Eric Clapton needed to stop working with
Eric Clapton could have had his pick of working with anybody in the late 1960s.
The entire music world was his oyster whenever he strapped on a guitar, and even if he was indebted to the blues whenever he played, there was always another side of himself that was trying to make something that no one had ever heard before whenever he made one of his records. And after years of slowly becoming the greatest guitarist in the world, ‘Slowhand’ felt that he didn’t need people holding him back whenever he started making some of his finest records.
If you look at where rock music was at the time, though, Clapton wasn’t alone in becoming one of the finest guitarists in the rock scene. Jimi Hendrix had put everyone to shame the minute that he made his debut in England, and even though Clapton was a pure blues disciple every single time he played, there was always Jeff Beck to deal with whenever discussing who was objectively the best player out of the UK.
But even if it was a fair argument between the best guitarist at the time, you couldn’t script a better band than what Cream was doing. Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker practically had more chops than Clapton ever did, and even after being dubbed a guitar god after working with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, Clapton admitted that half of his job in Cream was trying to keep up with the rest of the band whenever he played.
These were seasoned musical technicians in every sense of the word, and when Clapton decided to work with them, it was like all three of them were soloing at the same time whenever they got to cut loose. None of them lost track of what the song needed, but even if Clapton and Baker left Bruce in the dust when forming Blind Faith, Clapton quickly realised that working with Baker was far from the best idea.
Bruce may have been overly demanding about what he wanted the songs to sound like, but Clapton felt that Baker was too unruly to contain for too long, saying, “He’s totally off his nut. If I joined a band of his now, I’d probably go round the twist. I mean his escapades… man. I love Ginger, I really do love him as a guy, but it’s easier for me to love him when I’m not working with him. Because I don’t have to go through all the heavy side of it. Obviously, when you love somebody, you have to love all their faults as well.”
This probably explains why Clapton had such a good time working with Derek and the Dominos after the fact. Every member of the band knew exactly where he was coming from when talking about sounding like his heroes, but even then, the friction between him and Jim Gordon was enough for him to fold the entire operation before the band could ever fully get off the ground.
If anything, the fact that Delaney and Bonnie were there for Clapton is half the reason why he was able to go off on his own. He didn’t see himself as a singer, but having the right people by his side to encourage him was all he needed when he first started making the best music that he could on songs like ‘Let It Rain’ and ‘After Midnight’. The softer approach wasn’t for everybody, but Clapton could never sustain a career working with Baker every single day.
They were great friends when they were working on the right riff, but considering how wild he could get behind the scenes, Clapton knew that he was better off making the best music that he could on his own. Baker was clearly a technician that no one could mess with, but Clapton needed to see what else was out there if he wanted to make the music that he felt in his heart.
