The one musician Eric Clapton owed everything to: “I don’t know how to repay him”
The journey of Eric Clapton wasn’t about becoming one of the greatest guitar gods that the world had ever seen.
He was more than happy to perform with his friends whenever he had the opportunity, but if you look at his track record, the common language was always centred around spreading the blues to everyone within earshot whenever he played. He wouldn’t have picked up an instrument if not for people like Buddy Guy and Muddy Waters, but there are also some of his rock brethren that he credited with saving his life more than a few times over during his prime years.
Because as much as Clapton was seen as ‘God’, he was more than a little bit fallible. Aside from the moments when he put his foot in his mouth and said some of the most egregious things that anyone could ever say while intoxicated, he was already starting to have a bit of a fallout with George Harrison ever since falling in love with Pattie Boyd. He was no angel even when he was working on his friend’s album All Things Must Pass, but the real heartache was yet to come.
He knew that he could never woo Patti without breaking Harrison’s heart, but even after letting out all the emotion that he could on Layla, there was still something missing. And since his other half wasn’t going to up and leave his friend, he ended up burying his feelings behind heroin and as many guitar licks as he could muster. But no one was going to sit back and watch him throw away his life.
Clapton was given a gift, and Pete Townshend knew it from the moment that he saw him. He knew that he was never going to reach the same level as his friend when working with The Who, but even if he had a lot more Marshall stacks behind him, Townshend felt that Clapton only needed something to help pick him up from everything. And when working on his shows at The Rainbow, Townshend wanted a chance for Clapton to show his stuff.
And while ‘Slowhand’ didn’t disappoint at those shows, everyone could tell that he clearly hadn’t taken anyone’s advice about getting clean just yet. His other muse at the time was drinking, and after years of not taking care of himself, you can hear the pain throughout every single note that he plays, almost like he’s trying to numb himself by getting every emotion out as he bends the strings.
But even if Clapton was still in bad shape, he had to end up thanking Townshend for helping him realise how far he had gone, saying, “I don’t know how to repay him. He was always there to give me faith in myself. It’s a very intangible sort of debt I owe him. I did the Tommy movie for him, I must admit. I didn’t want to do that at all. Me playing the preacher in Tommy was very, very paradoxical. Especially while I was doing it, ’cause I was loaded at the time. I thought that was the least I could do for starters though. I don’t know what’s next. I’m still in debt to him, right up to the hilt.”
If there is one silver lining, though, it was that those Rainbow gigs did eventually get him back in Harrison’s good graces as well. Despite all of the drama they had gone through, even the guitarist had to admit that Clapton almost looked like an angel sent from heaven whenever he closed his eyes and went into his signature riffs, which is something that Harrison could have never done on his own.
Clapton did eventually marry Patti after she broke things off with Harrison, but it was never about trying to get the girl in the end for him. Because as much as he loved the idea of all of his troubles disappearing, the real sadness he felt every single day only served to fuel every single lick he played. After all, the blues came from hardship, and Clapton had been through more than enough heartache to know what he was talking about.
