The one artist Eric Clapton said deeply hurt him: “He wrote me off”
By the time that Eric Clapton launched Cream, it was safe to say that he had reached the height of what every guitarist should strive to do.
He was the epitome of a guitar hero, and if you look back on his interviews from around that time, he did carry himself as someone who deserved every single bit of his ‘God’ accolades that he received around the late 1960s. But underneath all of those classic licks was still just another musician who was as susceptible to criticism as everyone else.
And it’s not like Clapton didn’t take criticism lightly whenever he performed. Many fans were well within their right to call him an asshole when he started missing shows and getting up to a lot more misbehaviour when he was a junkie, but the fact that he fainted after hearing the first bad review of Cream should tell you everything you need to know. He was not willing to hear the other side of what people thought of him, but it hurt even more coming from people who knew him as a friend.
All the disagreements between Derek and the Dominoes came down to him and Jim Gordon not getting along, and when Clapton stopped talking to him, he figured that he would let the band die after just one record. He had a perfect solo career waiting for him, but ‘Slowhand’ wasn’t exactly the coolest guitarist on the planet when rock and roll started transitioning towards punk and new wave.
He was already starting to play to the more mellow side of his sound when working on the album Slowhand, but when the next generation began dismantling rock and roll, people like Elvis Costello seemed like a better middle ground for someone like Clapton. Here was someone who knew their way around a tune, but Costello didn’t think that he needed to concern himself with people like Clapton around that time.
Costello’s angry young man schtick was already one of the biggest draws towards him, but even if he crossed the line more than a few times, he figured that there was no point in trying to put the guitar legend up on a pedestal when he started selling out to beer commercials. Some artists need to get themselves back in the charts however they can, but Clapton felt deeply troubled when he heard Costello tearing him a new one.
He was still at the top of his game from a musical standpoint, but he didn’t feel like the new wave star needed to get up on a soapbox about him, saying, “The last time that something hurt me involved Elvis Costello. I mean, I consider him a peer because we’re in the same business. I’m not that well acquainted with this music or anything, but I consider him to be very serious. And he wrote me off. It had to do with the beer-commercial syndrome and all that. So that, coming from a peer, is hurtful. But that will make me strive more than anything a critic will say. When a musician runs me down, then I want to prove something to him.”
This is probably why Clapton wanted to kick himself back into gear after working with Phil Collins on some of his 1980s work. He could still play a blistering solo when he needed to, but long before MTV Unplugged became one of the biggest things in the world, hearing him with an acoustic guitar playing his classic hits was the best way he could have hoped to dismantle some of his old tunes.
Countless other musicians would have told Costello to go to hell and stick to playing his own tunes, but Clapton wasn’t afraid of learning something new every single time he worked on a new record. He understood when musicians had to keep him in check, and even if he didn’t like getting called out, it was better for him to work on his own music than spin his wheels by making the “safe” decision.
