The guitarist Eric Clapton felt was too good to understand
There aren’t many accolades that Eric Clapton really needs any more as a guitarist.
He has already been one of the central figures of different pieces of rock and roll history, and chances are he has done every one of his blues heroes proud thanks to the tone that he has carved out for himself over the years. But even for someone who has seemingly seen everything that rock and roll has to offer, there were always going to be people who were going to give ‘Slowhand’ a run for his money whenever they strapped on a guitar.
Then again, Clapton himself would be the first to say that he wasn’t necessarily the greatest artist in the world. He was more than happy to see that people were calling him a god of guitar when he first started honing his chops outside of The Yardbirds, and there were even more surprises to come when he started working with bands like Cream later on. But if there were musicians who could blow him away, they would have needed to be doing something a bit more than traditional blues licks.
Duane Allman had already been one of Clapton’s heroes when they began working together in Derek and the Dominos, but there were bound to be more players who were giving him different avenues to work in. He might not have been the biggest fan of artists like Eddie Van Halen when he first started, but he could recognise taste in an instant whenever he heard someone, whether it was the fingerstyle playing of Mark Knopfler or Stevie Ray Vaughan turning in some of the most gritty blues solos ever committed to tape.
But as time goes by, there’s always going to be guitarists who have a different way of approaching the instrument. There’s no right or wrong way to pick up the guitar when people first start learning, and since Vaughan had shown everyone what the blues was all about, Doyle Bramhall II was practically a fish in water when he first got introduced to what the blues could do to people when he started playing.
His old man had already been a sideman for Vaughan for years, but when Clapton started working with Bramhall on guitar, there was a lot more going on than he realised. Here was someone putting a heavy layer of soul into his playing, and Bramhall remembered Clapton being dumbstruck as to where some of his gifts were coming from when he first started jamming with him.
All of it was still blues, but Bramhall had a much more complex approach than Clapton had ever seen, with the guitarist recalling, “I met with him, and we sat together with two guitars. He was trying to learn the way I played things. Finally, he said, ‘I can’t tell a thing of what you’re playing, but you obviously have a vision of what you do. Why don’t you just come in and play it yourself?’”
But that was never a reason for Clapton to feel intimidated. If anything, this was a sign that the blues was progressing, and considering how many other talents were out there like Gary Clark Jr and John Mayer, it looked like Clapton could rest easy knowing that his favourite genre of music was going to keep going for generations to come as long as his musical descendants kept playing.
Because when you think about it, the blues isn’t something that really needs to be taught to someone. All that you have to go on is the way that you feel inside whenever you play, and you can feel that passion and hunger in Bramhall the same way everyone saw it in Clapton when he first started working with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers all those years ago.
