“Extraordinary”: The album that made Eric Clapton high for three days
Any great music goes beyond being a catchy tune that people like to throw on the stereo. The whole point behind rock and roll was to tap into something a bit more visceral, and from the moment that people heard Elvis Presley, they were convinced that they were listening to a new musical movement being birthed from the ground up. Although Eric Clapton was far more interested in what the true blues musicians were making, he knew when music helped take him on a journey through the speakers.
But it wasn’t hard for him to have that visceral reaction to any music that he loved. His idol, Robert Johnson, had always had a spectral quality about many of his tunes, and while artists like Buddy Guy were happy to pass along that tradition, Clapton knew that there was some power that would take him years to harness, even if he studied those records for hundreds of years.
That kind of blues was certainly powerful, but it was far from the only thing happening during the Summer of Love. The entire rock scene had switched towards psychedelia, and while ‘Slowhand’ had had enough of working with The Yardbirds, their new look with tracks like ‘Heart Full of Soul’ gave listeners a kaleidoscopic view of what the guitar could do, having new kids like Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck working their magic on everything.
Clapton was more than happy to keep everything going with Cream, but any guitar trickery he did would also be competing with the pop charts. The British invasion had turned the entire rock scene on its head, and while bands like The Who and The Kinks were scoring massive hits on the charts, there was no reason to think that anyone was competing with The Beatles during this time.
Before the summer of 1967 fully kicked in, Sgt Peppers served as the perfect soundtrack to the era. Regardless of some of Paul McCartney’s more fanciful moments on the record, songs like ‘A Day in the Life’, ‘Fixing A Hole’, and ‘Being for the Benefit of Mr Kite’ challenged what the idea of a rock song could be, and for anyone out of their mind on drugs, it was like being able to see the future within the confines of a pop song.
When Clapton first heard everything, though, he was halfway through a massive trip, saying, “I was at the club with my girlfriend Charlotte when The Beatles came in with an acetate of their new album, Sgt. Pepper’s. Shortly after, the Monkees wandered in, and one of them started handing out these pills, which he said were called STP. I had no idea what that was, but somebody explained it was a superstrong acid. I stayed high for three more days. I couldn’t sleep and was seeing the most extraordinary things. Without Charlotte’s guidance, I probably would have gone mad.”
It’s easy to blame it on the after-effects of the drugs, but with the song power on the record, it’s easy to get lulled into that mindstate. ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds’ provides all the vivid imagery of an acid trip without ever having to ingest anything, and while George Harrison’s ‘Within You Without You’ isn’t innately tied to any drug references, hearing him sing about love on a much deeper level was the entire point behind people opening their minds at the dawn of Flower Power.
But the fact that Clapton was in a haze for the better part of a week probably wasn’t uncommon for someone who hadn’t even had a history of drug abuse. Sgt Peppers was the definition of the addictive power of music, and considering how highly regarded it is to this day, fans have been more than willing to take that trip over and over again.
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