The only guitarist Eric Clapton thought could play like him: “Played from the same origin”
There are seldom any artists who could manage to reach the size and scope that Eric Clapton did with the guitar.
He may not have been the most technically proficient guitar player that ever lived, but if you look at the archetype for what a guitar hero should look like, you’re going to be describing him without thinking half the time. But when looking at his own track record, ‘Slowhand’ was convinced that a few people had the power to match what he could do on the six-string if they knew where to look.
Then again, it’s hard to keep up with someone who is essentially a walking encyclopedia of music. The whole point behind having a great rock and roll guitar player always comes down to the licks, and Clapton seemed to take every single line that he heard out of everyone from Muddy Waters to Robert Johnson and channel them into whatever he was doing, whether that was working with Cream or occasionally throwing in a lead lick in his solo career.
But beyond being a walking piece of musical history, Clapton wanted the opportunity to make music that no one had heard before, either. He was at the cutting edge of a lot of the greatest guitar effects, and even though Jimi Hendrix held all the cards when it came to chops, you couldn’t really undersell what the British guitarist could come up with once he had a wah pedal at his disposal.
Even if he could layer different effects on top of each other, Clapton wasn’t the only one looking to make things weird in the world of blues. Jeff Beck was awfully good from a technical perspective, and Jimmy Page was virtually a wizard that somehow inherited the skills of a rock god, but for Clapton, he felt that Peter Green was one of the few people who understood what it was like to play the guitar hero role.
Green was far from the same skill level as Clapton, but what he did with the instrumental felt a lot more familiar to where ‘Slowhand’ was coming from, saying, “I only got to know two or three guys that play that style. There was Peter Green, and I can’t think of anyone else who played from the same origin, same root of influence as I did. The other guys mentioned — like Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page — were much more from a rockabilly sensibility.”
But perhaps Clapton was only looking out for his old band when scoping out Green. He knew that he could have conducted himself a little better than leaving John Mayall hanging with the Bluesbreakers, so when he saw what Green could do when he eventually formed Fleetwood Mac, it gave him peace of mind knowing that the guitarist role ended up falling into the right hands.
At the same time, Green was miles different from what his predecessor was like as well. Whereas Clapton was a blues purist that wanted nothing more than to play, a lot of the chaotic licks on tunes like ‘The Green Manalishi’ and the original version of ‘Black Magic Woman’ took the basis of the blues and ended up throwing in a little bit of darkness into the mix that fit the band’s style perfectly.
So in case Fleetwood Mac is still the band that sang about snow-covered hills for most people, Green is the archetype that all of them were studying. Not all of his successors had the same playing ability, but that mystical vibe behind most of their songs comes down to what he started back in their prime.
