The band Eric Clapton was uncomfortable touring with: “It was a teeny bopper thing”
Every musician usually gets to a place where nothing can scare them anymore. There might still be the occasional moment where people get cold feet in front of the audience, but when it becomes second nature, you may as well just be showing up to do a job rather than blowing minds whenever the guitar is strapped on. For Eric Clapton, though, he did have his tolerance tested playing live when he was opening for The Beatles back in the day.
Then again, being in The Beatles’ circle in the 1960s was the creative golden ticket that anyone could have dreamed of. Whether it was a casual meeting in passing or watching them perform up close, anyone could have benefited from having some talent rub off on them whenever the Fab Four passed by.
At the same time, even The Beatles knew that their lives were becoming a living nightmare half the time they played live. Sure, they could still make incredible music when they came together, but the average age of their audience didn’t let them hear any of it, with most of the music getting drowned out by screaming fans half the time.
All you need to do is look at their performance at Shea Stadium to see how they really felt. They had the potential to deliver a memorable show, but considering John Lennon was scraping his elbows across the keys during ‘I’m Down’ pretty much says everything about how little they cared about the high life.
So if that’s how the headliner felt, just imagine being the person standing in the way of a huge crowd of girls and the four-headed-moptop-monster. When recalling his time playing to Larry King, Clapton thought that the fun had gone out of it before they even went onstage, saying, “[Who] they were playing to – it was a teeny bop thing. That was my first experience of, you know, screaming girls in the audience. I really — I didn’t think it was a very comfortable situation. I’m not sure if they did, either.”
Despite The Yardbirds being more or less another R&B/blues act, Clapton found the solution to playing to audiences of that size: design amps that would blow their ears out. The Who were at the forefront of that technology, but ‘Slowhand’ became a man possessed when performing with Cream, including live shows where he could hardly hear himself opposite the rest of the group.
But Clapton never sacrificed volume for taste when he played. Whether it was laying down a solo on ‘Layla’ or putting his trademark ‘woman’ tone down on record, he made sure that every note that came out of that amplifier was ripped out of his soul, almost like he was crafting a musical tapestry as he performed.
After all those years of playing at roaring volumes, though, seeing him trade in his aggressive approach for the Unplugged saw him finally coming back down to Earth. He had been known as a musical god, but even the deities needed to find time to rest before they found true peace.
