The band that made Eric Clapton break things off with John Mayall: “Be so free, you could go anywhere”
While everyone talks about The Beatles being the most important band of the 1960s, there was one act that existed in the shadows of London’s blues scene and indirectly became the alma mater of some of the greatest musicians of the era.
John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers were the premier outfit of that tightly knit community. Almost like the house band of the era, Mayall’s outfit nurtured some of the greatest talent to ever live. Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor, John McVie, and Mick Fleetwood were just some of the names that cut their teeth in the band and subsequently thanked Mayall for guiding them into rock immortality.
Eric Clapton may be revered as the finest talent of that crop. Peter Green certainly ran him close, as he quickly shot to fame in the late ‘60s as Fleetwood Mac’s charismatic frontman, but there was something about Clapton’s virtuosic guitar playing that was enduring, and set to build a legacy far stronger than anything Mayall had imagined.
He was a student of the blues, adopting everything the masters had given him, but took it one step further and used the blueprint of the genre to pen innovative rock songs that made him one of the premier guitarists in the world. Soon, Mayall’s name was left in the dust, and Clapton’s was heralded as the new saviour.
Of course, Clapton was willing to accept this crown, but not without mentioning the mentors who came before him. While Mayall, BB King and Muddy Waters all stood tall as the likely candidates for his influence, it was an American who came out on top. Buddy Guy was the man Clapton described as someone who “did far more than just hold his own. In my humble opinion, he stole the show”.
But Guy changed Clapton’s world for two reasons. One, because he was a contemporary, someone sharing the modern space with him and showing that greatness could emerge from the shadows of the aforementioned greats, who established blues as a genre, and secondly, because you could lead a song with just one guitar and thus, create a chart-topping three-piece.
“What it said to me was ‘this was possible’,” Clapton recalled in a 2005 interview, “If you were a good enough guitar player, you could do it as a trio. It seemed to be so free, you could go anywhere. With Jack [Bruce] in my filing cabinet, and being in a fairly rigid structure like John Mayall’s band, I was thinking about that as a way of breaking free.”
Clapton was heralded as the groundbreaker of the 1960s blues scene, taking it into the ‘70s with his band members from Cream and pioneering a wild new era of rock.
But in actuality, it was Guy who sparked the influence, building the bridge between the past and the present to ensure that the legacy of the greats was continued, but in a fresh and innovative way that allowed for Clapton, Green and a whole host of Mayall’s alumni to break out on their own.
