“Deep emotional work”: The musical genius Eric Clapton avoided for years
Some of the greatest artists of all time seem almost unavoidable when working in specific genres. It’s impossible for anyone to look at a fresh take of jazz without checking out Miles Davis, and anyone who has ever tried to become a pop star since the 1980s is going to be following the playbook Michael Jackson was working with, even if they have to avoid some of the unsavoury aspects of his career. And while Eric Clapton could be considered one of those artists for the blues, he knew that some artists didn’t need to be a part of his repertoire.
When looking at the modern blues troubadour, though, ‘Slowhand’ is everything that a traditional guitar slinger is supposed to be. He had been a free agent all his life, and even when he was working with a band like Cream or Derek and the Dominoes, there was no doubt that everyone would be focusing on him the minute that he hit the iconic solo in the middle of ‘Crossroads’.
But as much as he came back to the blues, Clapton was always searching for something more than the traditional blues-rock tune. He had been influenced by everyone from The Beatles to The Band, and looking at some of his pop-leaning stuff, he wasn’t above trying to write a handful of pop tunes along the way, even if it meant adopting the sounds of reggae later on in his career when he covered Bob Marley.
As with most artists of his generation, though, the 1990s started a trend where he began to get a bit more mellow. He had already gone through the heartache of losing his son, but listening to Unplugged and Pilgrim marked the moment where most people started to see him as a songwriter first rather than the guitar god that everyone had known him for. This was the older and wiser version of Clapton, but if this was what his music was sounding like then, the next step was to make an album of traditional songs.
That wasn’t out of the question, either. Everyone from Rod Stewart to Linda Ronstadt to Paul McCartney have their album of standards to get out of their system during their career, but for someone who was never in love with the sound of his own voice, Clapton was always hesitant to go anywhere near the songs of Frank Sinatra.
“I think it might have something to do with the fact that [Frank] is so highly revered. And often my response to that idolatry is to go, ‘Nah’ – to trash it and go looking for something more obscure.”
Eric Clapton
He certainly had a great deal of respect for what ‘Ol Blue Eyes’ brought to music, but he felt that covering him would have been too much of a cheap shot, saying, “I think it might have something to do with the fact that he is so highly revered. And often my response to that idolatry is to go, ‘Nah’ – to trash it and go looking for something more obscure. [But] bit by bit I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that he was a genius. And I’m not sure I’m really comfortable with saying that even now, because I’ve still got this sort of prejudice. Frank Sinatra could actually really do deep emotional work, but I didn’t want to admit it till the last couple of years.”
But there’s not much distance between Clapton’s blues standards and what Sinatra was doing. Both of them knew what heartache was like, and looking at the way Sinatra sang during his prime, he had that same kind of lived-in experience every time he sang that made him feel like he was sitting across the bar pouring his heart out to you.
It might not have been anyone’s first choice for Clapton to go the way of standards, but even if he let his guitar sing for him half the time, no one could argue that he could do right by other music legends. ‘Slowhand’ might be called ‘God’ by many people, but it took him a while to realise that there are more musical titans who walked the Earth during his lifetime.
