“It was hardcore”: the musician Eric Clapton said was too heavy for him
By the end of the 1960s, fans had grown accustomed to the fact that rock and roll could get a bit heavy. The Yardbirds had shown people the darker side of the British invasion, and by the time Jimmy Page started working with Led Zeppelin, fans were ready to be hit in the mouth with some of the heaviest grooves that anyone had ever heard. Although Eric Clapton existed on the fringes of that style of music, he always had a natural respect when someone was doing something well outside of his comfort zone.
For everyone trying to get heavy during this period, though, they had to put some blues into their repertoire. And not the kind of blues that The Beatles were doing either. There were moments when the Fab Four hit on a bluesy groove like on ‘Love Me Do’, but what Clapton was doing was following in the footsteps of people like Muddy Waters and BB King, who lived every minute of the music they made.
But if most people had a passing interest in the blues, Clapton was so knowledgeable that he may as well have been a professor on the subject. From the minute that he reached the end of the 1960s, he had practically covered every single great lick that the blues had to offer, and while Zeppelin were a bit more chaotic and Jeff Beck went down the road of fusion, ‘Slowhand’ was always going to have a certain spot in most people’s hearts for being the blues purist.
Then again, a lot of Clapton’s earliest licks were more about speed than anything else. A lot of it was incredibly tasteful and attributed to the classics, but when listening to his performance on a tune like ‘Sunshine of Your Love’, there’s a certain sense of flash that comes through in his tone more than anything else. If the Chicago players taught him to play fast, Robert Johnson made him understand the meaning of slowing it down.
“At first the music almost repelled me, it was so intense, and this man made no attempt to sugarcoat what he was trying to say, or play.”
Eric Clapton
Dating back far beyond all the Muddy Waters of the world, Johnson was the kind of blues troubadour who seemed like he was ripped directly out of a western. He didn’t have a ton of great tunes to his name, but listening to the massive presence of his voice on many of his greatest tunes, it’s easy to hear that rough-and-tumble player dead set on making the most authentic performance possible.
Clapton had countless licks under his belt at this point, but he admitted to being physically shaken the minute that he heard Johnson play, saying, “At first the music almost repelled me, it was so intense, and this man made no attempt to sugarcoat what he was trying to say, or play. It was hard-core, more than anything I had ever heard. After a few listenings, I realised that, on some level, I had found the master and that following this man’s example would be my life work.”
Although it would take Clapton a while to get anywhere close to what Johnson did, he did follow in his footsteps to the letter in many respects. Outside of being a phenomenal emotional translator most of the time, his turn towards acoustic music was another way of tuning into Johnson’s work.
But the biggest lesson that Clapton could’ve learned from Johnson almost had nothing to do with the actual music. It was about saying what was in his heart, and even if he was playing something slightly softer than usual like ‘Tears in Heaven’, no one could deny that he was wearing every single emotion on his sleeve like every other bluesman that came before him.
