The band that forced Eric Clapton leave Blind Faith
Eric Clapton didn’t want to have a career where he ever felt tied down by any one band.
All of his greatest inspirations were always lonewolves whenever they made one of their records, and even if he had a fabulous time working with whoever he could back in the day, it was never a question about him eventually moving on to a solo career later down the line. He could only be his most authentic self when he put his name to something, but for a brief moment in time, it looked like Blind Faith was actually going to work out after Cream finally dissolved after one too many arguments.
There was no way to sustain Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker constantly butting heads, but in his new band, Clapton seemed to have a lot more to work with than the most technically demanding music that he had ever made. Steve Winwood was the perfect vocalist that he could have asked for when making the record, and while Baker might not have really been invited to join the party, no one was going to suddenly reject one of the most hard-hitting drummers in rock and roll history or anything.
But right after they started playing gigs, Clapton was already looking elsewhere. There was a lot more that life had to offer him outside of being a guitar player, and you can hear him slowly starting to bring in influences from acts like The Band in a lot of his music. He had already asked to join the Americana group when he first quit Cream, and while Blind Faith was still faithful to the blues, there was something a lot different that he was hearing out of Delaney and Bonnie when he first heard them.
They weren’t exactly his flavour of rock and roll in the traditional sense, but that’s precisely why they worked so well. Their ever-evolving cast of musicians is what made them stand out compared to everyone else, and since every song developed into a jam where he could play anything he wanted, Clapton only needed to play with them a few times before realising that Blind Faith wasn’t going to work.
The supergroup was still a baby band, and Clapton figured it was better for him to cut loose with a group that didn’t have as much expectations, saying, “If Delaney and Bonnie had never played on the same bill as us, it is possible that Blind Faith might have survived and regrouped at the end of the tour.” But, really, his musical perspective was already made up when he first started seeing them perform.
In fact, Delaney and Bonnie were already a breeding ground for a lot of Clapton’s friends. George Harrison was more than happy to play with them leading up to making All Things Must Pass, and while Clapton was able to get his innermost feelings out of his system with Derek and the Dominos, it was much better for him to start making a name for himself on his own with tracks like ‘After Midnight’ and ‘Let It Rain’.
And while the songs he made throughout the 1970s were a lot more downtempo than what everyone was used to, it was better for him to follow his muse than worry about becoming another one-trick pony. He may have been drinking himself into oblivion during a lot of the shows, but even when working with The Band on The Last Waltz, his gift for making great licks never left him throughout his career.
He was the great guitar god that people had always known him to be, but it just took Delaney and Bonnie for him to see what else was going on out there. He had the potential to make the most complicated music of all time, but that wasn’t going to satisfy him nearly as much as making music with his friends.
