“The whole thing will collapse”: The one band Eric Clapton wanted to see fail
No one gets to be one of the greatest musicians in rock and roll without having a little bit of fire in them. People might like the idea of having some divine inspiration whenever they sit down to write a song, but sometimes the best way for people to become masters is to give them a target to aim at when they are making their way to the top of the world. It’s not always an easy road to the top, but when Eric Clapton finally made his way to the massive heights of rock and roll, he figured that every one of his affiliates shouldn’t bother trying to keep up with him.
Granted, ‘Slowhand’ was about to get a bit of an education when he first joined Cream. There are many fans that have said Clapton was the greatest guitarist to ever live, but the minute he stepped into the room with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce, he realised that he was dealing with poeple who were miles better than him in almost every way, to the point where he was keeping up with them half the time.
Then again, that might have been a lesson in disguise. The whole point of any blues musicians is to play from the heart rather than outdoing the person next to them, so by having new musicians around him, Clapton would spend years honing his abilities until he managed to become a lot stronger than he initially was, to the point where he seemed like a completely different artist when he started working with bands like Blind Faith and Derek and the Dominos.
If nothing else, though, Clapton could rest easy at night knowing that he didn’t have to worry about being in The Yardbirds any more. He had always been somewhat of a free agent, but since the band itself was becoming far closer to pop than anything he wanted to play, he figured the next best thing would be to spend time with players that wanted to push themselves rather than throwing out any kind of catchy schlock that the record company convinced them to play.
He may have felt free for a few seconds, but he never expected Jeff Beck to come roaring in right after him. Jimmy Page may have been an ideal replacement for Clapton when he started, but it takes a true master for the Led Zeppelin guitarist to switch over to bass when the band first started playing clubs, to the point where most of Beck’s stuff started sounding like a human voice rather than a guitar.
And while Clapton was more than happy to keep rolling with his own band, he did admit that he was disheartened to see the band continue on with someone new, saying, “There shouldn’t have been a replacement. That was why I left: I’ll leave, and the whole thing will collapse without me. In fact, they got better with Jeff and became more successful. To be absolutely honest, I wanted to be as critical of him as I could. It hurt me bad because I could see they were getting, with Jeff, at something beyond what I was capable of.”
If that wasn’t bad enough, Clapton also had to deal with Hendrix when he first arrived in England. Many of Cream’s best tunes could have been considered far greater than any average rock song, but since Hendrix was painting with colours no one had thought of before, it would have been enough for Clapton to hide underneath the stage whenever his friend played ‘Purple Haze’.
But that’s a lesson that almost every single guitar player goes through at some point in their lives. It’s easy to think that you’re God’s gift to guitar players whenever you come up with certain riffs, but it only takes a few years before someone else starts reaching for your crown at the top of the musical food chain.
