The musician that gave Eric Clapton’s life purpose: “I was in total awe”
Eric Clapton wasn’t the kind of guitarist meant to be tied down to any one band.
He was absolutely brilliant, no matter who he played with, but when looking at his career history, it was better for him to be out on his own doing his own thing than being tied down by whatever his bandmates had to say. That being said, every single band Clapton was in had their fair share of lessons to teach him when they stopped jamming.
After all, The Yardbirds taught him that he wasn’t meant to be playing pop hits. Their music may have been indebted to the blues, but he wanted to be the true answer to the likes of Buddy Guy, and he wasn’t going to get there when making tunes like ‘For Your Love’. At the same time, he had to have wondered what he got himself into when he was working with two warring musicians like Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce whenever they started jamming.
Cream was among the finest bands that anyone had ever seen, but ‘Slowhand’ had to make sure to keep up with everything his bandmates were doing. This wasn’t a way for him to get his rocks off as he did with John Mayall. This was the real deal from the minute that they kicked off tunes like ‘Crossroads’, and when he folded the group to work with Blind Faith and Derek and the Dominos, he had become a seasoned veteran of the music scene. He could have played solos with the best of them, but he wasn’t looking to be a guitar hero for the rest of his life.
The fame and the glory had to have been awfully nice, but his music needed a lot more depth if he was going to go solo. He had been listening to everyone from Bob Dylan to The Band, and after working with George Harrison, he put together All Things Must Pass; he got a front-row seat to see how the best musicians came up with their tunes. So, for someone who was looking to dial things back, working with Delaney and Bonnie was the perfect halfway house for him to work with.
Not many bands can claim to have Clapton, Harrison, and Jimi Hendrix in their ranks at one point, but Delaney Bramlett had a great way of serving the song perfectly. He relied on the rest of his band to play most of the flashy stuff, but even when being demoted to eternal rhythm guitar, he was the perfect mentor for Clapton when he wanted to learn about how to structure his own career.
He was unsure of what the hell to do after the Dominos went their separate ways, but when he tried for a solo career, Clapton mentioned Bramlett as the main driving force behind everything, saying, “I was in total awe of Delaney. He was the first person to instil in me a sense of purpose.” And you can hear a lot of that influence when Bramlett helped produce his first solo album.
There are still those signature blues chops on display, but tunes like JJ Cale’s ‘After Midnight’ and ‘Let It Rain’ were exactly the break that he needed. And when Clapton officially got his bearings on 461 Ocean Boulevard, he was finally comfortable putting his guitar on the shelf when he needed to when working on his own versions of Bob Marley’s ‘I Shot the Sheriff’.
The 1970s might not be the most exciting era of Clapton’s career, and there were more than a few extracurriculars that got in the way of him breaking out his God-like chops, but Bramlett should at least be commended for teaching him about subtlety. So few guitarists are able to rein things in after years of being at the top of the world, but after working with him, Clapton understood that the simple licks in ‘Wonderful Tonight’ mattered as much as the flurry of notes he played with Cream.
