The guitar legend that Eric Clapton disappointed: “He wasn’t impressed at all”
It’s never easy for anyone trying to meet some of their musical heroes. There can be a lot of genuine people in the industry who are more than happy to talk to those who like their music, but there can also be an inverse effect where artists get jaded and would rather do anything else than satisfy a handful of fans that claim that they changed their lives because of one of their songs. That’s not a great tightrope to walk, and despite Eric Clapton being a guitar disciple, even he had moments where he let his heroes down.
Then again, Clapton was always in rock and roll for the right reasons. Whereas most people were picking up guitars to be famous once acts like The Beatles started blowing up, Clapton was much more interested in becoming a student of the blues, following the same model that he saw from Robert Johnson records and listening to people like Buddy Guy and Muddy Waters whenever they played.
Even when things were moving in a different direction with The Yardbirds, Clapton was more than happy to leave a band behind if he didn’t think they were in it for the right reasons. All great blues had to come from the heart, and that meant making something that managed to harness the power of those original bluesmen and bring it one step further into the future.
And it’s not like Clapton didn’t have the chops to pull it off. The psychedelic take on blues that he made with Cream was still some of the greatest playing of his career, and even when he managed to play more laid-back music in his solo career, there was always a handful of moments where he would hit one lick good enough for any lues purist to give a nod of approval when they heard it live.
But the pressure of playing live can also get to someone when their heroes are looking over their shoulder. Anyone who had been playing tapping licks their whole lives would have crumped into a million pieces if they had to play in front of Eddie Van Halen during his lifetime, but despite Clapton holding it together in front of Sonny Boy Williamson, the blues legend was far from bending over backwards about his technique.
He may have studied under some of the best, but Clapton remembered Williamson being ice cold towards him later, saying, “I don’t think he was stunned by any of it. I think he was seriously disappointed. I found out when I sat down and talked with Robbie Robertson [later of The Band], who knew Sonny Boy very well, and he said Sonny Boy would come back to the States from working with us and say some pretty disparaging things about what we were doing and who we were. He wasn’t impressed at all.”
Then again, it’s easy to cut Clapton a bit of a break there. Outside of the fact that he wasn’t taking care of himself during the 1970s, there may have been some bitterness on the part of Williamson. Because imagine being one of the first people to bring blues to people’s attention, and now having to be happy that you received little reward for it and clap as your successors live life as millionaires watering down what you did first.
Even if Williamson did have a bit of a chip on his shoulder regarding Clapton’s playing, there weren’t too many people arguing about what he could do. ‘Slowhand’ would forever be a student of the blues, and given how much the genre would fade from view in the next few decades, it was perfect to have someone who could follow in the old guard’s footsteps and pass his legacy onto the next generation.
