The 1970s band that broke Eric Clapton’s heart: “I didn’t give a shit”
There was no one else who really needed to give Eric Clapton any more praise at the dawn of the 1970s.
He was already considered one of the almighty deities of rock and roll guitar, and even if he switched bands faster than pretty much anyone, that was no reason for anyone to think that he wasn’t going to come out with something extraordinary whenever he made a new record. But there were often a few musical partnerships that left him having to rebuild his soul a little bit after he walked out of the rehearsal room.
At the same time, it’s not like Clapton needed to have that many people around him to be one of the greatest guitarists on Earth. Unplugged proved to everyone that he didn’t even need too much amplification around him, and he could be equally as dangerous as he was in Cream, but that kind of virtuosity wasn’t what he was going after all the time. He wanted people to relate to his songs, and that meant that he had to truly channel his emotion into every single song he sang.
No one was going to give a shit if ‘Tears in Heaven’ wasn’t delivered with the same conviction of someone who had lost their child, and a lot of the problems with Clapton’s 1970s records is that you can hear the state that he was in. He wasn’t taking care of himself thanks to his dependence on drugs and alcohol, and even if Patti Boyd was trying her best to handle him every single night they went out, a lot of his turmoil came from knowing that he lost some of his favourite musicians along the way.
Cream didn’t need to end so acrimoniously once Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce stopped tolerating each other, but Derek and the Dominos felt like the kind of band that was too good to be true. Everyone in the band knew exactly what Clapton wanted out of his own playing, and when you listen to all of them playing together, you couldn’t have scripted a better band even if you were trying to put together one of the greatest supergroups that the world had ever heard.
But aside from Duane Allman having to go back to the Allman Brothers Band, the real problem came down to Jim Gordon’s relationship with the rest of the band. No one knew how downright dangerous he was going to be later on in his life, but after he tried to take charge of the band and left Clapton without a reason to stay anymore, the guitarist was ready to throw the guitar down for the final time.
This was the best that he could have hoped for, and to see the whole thing crumble before his eyes was the real heartbreaker, saying, “When we broke up, I went into that dark place. I didn’t give a shit about the music anymore. I didn’t like the sound of my guitar, I didn’t like the way I played.” But Clapton didn’t normally need a band behind him to be considered one of the greatest guitarists in the world.
After all, all of his favourite musicians were all drifters in many respects, and even if he spent the rest of his career as a solo artist, he knew that it was better for him to stay solo and not worry about keeping the right band together. As long as he had someone like Nathan East to work off of, he knew that he would be fine, and the latter years of his career was proof that he could keep exploring the blues however he wanted.
So when he plays a song like ‘Layla’ today, he doesn’t have to think about the regrets that he has with how the Dominos worked out. He knew that the band were one of the best in the world for a certain period of time, and it was about celebrating the music that they all created together rather than focusing on the dark times.
