“It’s always intriguing”: The guitarist who gave Eric Clapton a wake up call
Being at the top can sometimes get boring for the greatest musicians in the world. There’s no rulebook that says what to do when you’ve conquered all of your goals, and once every artist reaches their creative apex, it’s either nothing but downhill or no real sense of competition any more. But for someone who was labelled as a guitar god before coming out of the 1960s, Eric Clapton had a lot more learning to do after being crowned as one of the best guitarists in the world.
Looking back on his time in the spotlight, though, ‘Slowhand’ never intended to be the biggest and the best every time he played. His goal was to carry on the tradition of the blues that he loved growing up and listening to a lot of his best moments in any one of his bands, it was always about either paying tribute to people like Robert Johnson or jamming with some of the living legends to see if he couldn’t get some wisdom out of them.
But the 1960s weren’t simply about writing bluesy tunes. Clapton knew that he could never compete with the four-headed monster that was The Beatles throughout their time in the spotlight, and even when working within the confines of Cream, he had admitted that he was trying to keep up with what Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce were doing as a rhythm section half the time he played.
Then again, if it meant getting away from The Yardbirds as fast as he could, that’s what he was going to do. Despite loving the idea of playing blues music, Clapton could quickly see The Yardbirds going in a much different direction towards pop, and since he wanted to keep everything pure whenever he played, that meant he would never play a song like ‘For Your Love’ live.
Clapton was already out the door, but Jeff Beck was the biggest upgrade a band could ask for. The entire mentality of Beck was to take the guitar to new places, and looking through his later hits like ‘Beck’s Bolero’, he had started taking the crux of blues music and turning it on its head to make something that no one had heard before.
As much as Clapton was ahead of the game in many respects, though, he felt that Beck made him re-evaluate where he stood in the greater context of guitarists, saying, “There’s been a lot of wake-up calls for me: Watching Jeff, listening to Jeff play, and working with Jeff. It’s always intriguing.” But those kinds of wake-up calls went beyond strictly his chops when playing old blues standards.
Throughout his solo career, Beck took the time to explore every part of the instrument that he could. Clapton was fine with playing the blues for the rest of his life, but listening to Wired or Guitar Shop, he started to understand how the instrument could be used in a different context, whether it was playing off the rest of the group or finding ways to infuse pieces of jazz into the mix.
Although Clapton would take his own fair share of risks when making softer rock and roll on Unplugged, Beck would always be the guitarist’s guitarist in many respects. Clapton was the shining light for the six-string during his prime, but for anyone looking to understand the limits of where the guitar could, you either listen to Jeff Beck or Jimi Hendrix.
