The genre of music Eric Clapton called his bible: “It completely changed my outlook”
The foundation of all good rock and roll comes from some type of blues riff. Even if no one claims to be the biggest fan of the genre, anyone who has ever thought of picking up a guitar and rocking the house has undoubtedly put some pentatonic lines together to get everything started. While Eric Clapton learned early on that foundation was all he needed to get by, it went far beyond just a style of music. It was a spiritual calling.
Looking through Clapton’s back catalogue, every single part of his music has been about putting the kind of tasty licks that he had heard based on what he was hearing from Chicago artists like Muddy Waters to the legends lost to time like Robert Johnson. Even when other classic rockers were expanding their horizons and moving into more jazzy territory, ‘Slowhand’ was more than happy to hunker down and see where his muse would follow him.
Despite his work with The Yardbirds becoming stale after a while, Clapton didn’t leave because of their tendency to fall back on that traditional I-IV-V progression. No, their transition to pop music is what made him seek new ventures like Cream, but even for a group that eclectic, Clapton was taking his licks with him.
The entire construct of Cream seemed closer to jazz than rock and roll, but Clapton was more than happy to sprinkle in blues licks along the way. The way that Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker bounced off each other seemed like a musical freight train, but when you hear Clapton’s tone roaring in on tunes like ‘Strange Brew’, it sounded like the same Muddy Waters tones that just happened to get dipped in acid.
Anyone who sticks with one genre for that long is bound to get stale after a while, but Clapton always innovated based on what was happening around him. 461 Ocean Boulevard and Slowhand are miles away from any of Cream’s material, and even when he played on his Unplugged, he was just exploring new ways to approach his instrument half the time.
While Clapton could appreciate each style that he worked in, he credited the blues for being the one genre that completely changed the way he looked at music, saying, “It was stumbling on to really the bible of the blues, you know, and a very powerful drug to be introduced to us and I absorbed it totally, and it changed my complete outlook on music.”
Just like any good bluesman, though, Clapton knew that he was only as good as the people he surrounded himself with. Outside of rubbing elbows with the likes of The Beatles throughout the 1960s, jamming with fresh faces like Duane Allman on ‘Layla’ or playing shows with Stevie Ray Vaughan helped him pick up a few cues from where the genre was heading in the future.
As he continues to play to this day, though, Clapton knew that he didn’t need to make his passion the centre of all pop culture. Whereas acts like ZZ Top make it their entire schtick, Clapton has found a way to take those musical textures and spin them into something genuinely tasteful in everything from R&B to rock and roll.
