The 1990s genre Eric Clapton always looked down on: “Self-important”
Eric Clapton was never one to think before he spoke when he was in his prime.
There were plenty of moments where he had to stick his foot in his mouth whenever he worked on one of his records or performed live, and while that had subsided over the years, there are still many bands that he was never all that keen on. But while he can say his piece on plenty of artists these days, there are entire genres of music that he was convinced didn’t have to exist in the first place.
Then again, that was already the problem when he worked with Cream. The band were one of the biggest supergroups around at the time, but since they got the tag of starting heavy metal, it’s not like ‘Slowhand’ was happy about that. That’s not how he wanted to be perceived, and the rest of his career saw him running away from the bands that started to jam a little too much for his liking.
There were plenty more genres to explore, and nearly anything he touched could have been turned into a blues in some fashion. He wasn’t afraid to make songs that were a bit more adventurous from time to time, but for every project like Derek and the Dominos that became an absolute monster, there were others like Slowhand that brought him back to the more streamlined blues rocker that he had always been.
But when looking through rock and roll history, the world never lost touch with that kind of throwback sound that he was known for. He could still go outside of his comfort zone and make a song like ‘Tears in Heaven’, but there was so much more for him to explore when he started working in other genres as well. He was always fond of R&B artists like Babyface and even D’Angelo, but when looking at the 1990s rock scene, he wasn’t all that fond of what was coming from England.
Grunge didn’t really have anywhere else to go after Kurt Cobain passed away, but hearing the biggest names in Britpop reach the top of the charts was a bit grating for Clapton. This was the kind of music that he had spent his entire life trying to run away from, so to see Blur and Oasis trade barbs back and forth while sounding like one of his contemporaries did him no favours when he first heard them.
There was a lot more ground for him to cover, and none of them were exactly leading towards Clapton becoming a Britpop fan, saying, “The Brit Pop thing, I think became so self-important. I mean, what I would experience would be based on traveling. I’d go way, say, if I went to America or I went to some other part of the world… As I do quite frequently, I love traveling.” And that’s where he found a lot more interesting songs to choose from.
He had always been a fan of old blues songs, but critically listening to someone like Robert Johnson gave him a lot more respect for what he was able to do with one guitar. There was so much to choose from, and he didn’t think that there were many ways for him to go wrong when he started following his heart rather than the charts every single time he worked on a new record.
Britain was swinging once again in the 1990s, but Clapton had clearly had his fill when he went through it the first time. He was a different person than he was when he left The Yardbirds, and it was time for him to start working on something new that had a bit more passion behind it than the Noel Gallaghers of the world.
