The 1970 album Eric Clapton called his greatest: “That was incredible”
Eric Clapton is one of the few guitarists in the world that can claim to have multiple periods of being the greatest.
There was never any questioning his ability on the guitar. Even if he occasionally put his foot in his mouth and said something foolish in interviews, all of that tended to fade into the background whenever he picked up the instrument. His playing always spoke louder than his words. And as great as he was, he was also happy to admit that some records shone brighter than anything he had managed himself.
Then again, it’s hard to really break down which period will be known as Clapton’s definitive era at this point. His solo career has been going on for far longer than any of his individual bands, but if you really break down everything that he did, his greatest guitar moments seem to have changed more than a few times, depending on which generation you started with when listening to him.
There are plenty of Beatles fans who will remember him for laying down the solo during ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, but there are still a handful of kids that are going to remember crying their eyes out listening to him work his way through a song like ‘Tears in Heaven’ after his son passed away. He was a lot more mellow during his Unplugged era, but one of the greatest parts of that period of his career was seeing a lot of his songs in a completely different light whenever he played them.
A lot of the tunes that turned up on that Unplugged record were covers of old blues tunes, and while he does a great job at performing all of them, hearing his reinterpretation of ‘Layla’ helped reinforce what a great song it always was. The original was one of the most bold declarations of love that Clapton ever made, and while he does a great job at showing the weariness in his voice at the time, there’s always going to be something special about that one Derek and the Dominos record.
‘Slowhand’ was still finding his footing after Cream broke up, and even though Blind Faith only lasted a few months, Derek and the Dominos had everything that he was looking for. Every player seemed to know about the kind of music that he was after, and even after the band broke up horribly after a falling-out with Jim Gordon, Clapton had to admit that he still considered the album his crowning achievement.
Other records may have had more depth and nuance, but none of them had the musicianship that the rest of the Dominos did, saying, “I think the greatest thing now that I recognize from it, was how lucky I was to be around those kind of musicians, especially like Jim Gordon, Carl Radle, I mean, everyone of them. Bobby Whitlock, Duane Allman. I mean, that was an incredible band. If I’m proud of anything, I’m proud of the fact that I was enough of a musician for them to want to work with me.”
And when you think about it, a lot of that comes down to what Duane Allman brought to the table. The Allman Brothers Band were already becoming one of the biggest groups in the world, but whenever Allman got hold of his slide with Clapton, they were practically soulmates working together, especially with a song like ‘Layla’ where that slide guitar sounds like someone crying out in pain.
There was a lot more heartache to come after this album and more than a few high points for Clapton from a commercial standpoint, but he didn’t care about how high one of his songs charted or anything. He felt that the best measure of his work was the musicians that he had around him, and there’s no way of trying to compete with the kind of chemistry that the Dominos had at their peak.
