The pop icon Eric Clapton thought was “all packaging”
As the 1960s began to give way to the Summer of Love, Eric Clapton looked like England’s only credible answer to Jimi Hendrix. While Hendrix may have been able to set his guitar alight and play in an uninhibited manner every time he stepped onstage, Clapton had turned in his time with the blues as well, creating dark masterpieces whenever he stepped behind the fretboard, either with Cream or his solo outfits. Although Clapton may have had kind words to say about many acts that he had the pleasure to work with, he thought that one pop icon lacked any sort of substance.
When first emerging on the scene, though, Clapton was already starting to veer towards pop music. Although he may have been able to twist his sound into different shapes and sizes with every band that would have him, Clapton still had his eye on the hit parade, eventually forming Derek and the Dominoes after listening to a Wilson Pickett record featuring the guitar stylings of Duane Allman.
After spending time in different outfits, Clapton would move from one strength to another as a solo star, creating songs that would become solo smashes like ‘Wonderful Tonight’ and ‘Cocaine’. While the man’s hitmaking days had started to wane in the 1980s, he still managed to jam with the best in the business as a sideman.
Regardless of his potential as a solo act, Clapton was still enamoured with the emerging artists in the blues scene, counting Stevie Ray Vaughan among the best to ever play after hearing him on the radio. While making later career renaissances like Journeyman and collaborating with friends like George Harrison in the latter half of the decade, Clapton did call out artists that were too flashy for his taste.
Outside of the synth-heavy stalwarts of the pop world, one soon-to-be icon was emerging in the early 1980s out of New York. Riding the momentum of her smash ‘Holiday’, Madonna was soon becoming one of the biggest stars in the world, creating one hit after another while reinventing her image with every single new album rollout.
While every one of her songs stayed within the confines of pop, Madonna would continue pushing the envelope with her image, including videos that got her in hot water like ‘Like a Prayer’ and ‘Justify My Love’. Although most fans couldn’t get enough of every single pop marvel that she churned out, Clapton didn’t think that the singer had any kind of staying power.
When asked about the music he was listening to in the 1990s, Clapton was brutally honest about how little he saw in Madonna, recalling, “To me, music is either good or bad if it makes me feel something. If it doesn’t make me feel anything, I’m just indifferent to it. Madonna is a phenomenon that I recognise, but she doesn’t make me feel anything. I can’t identify with her on any level because all she is is production and packaging”.
Although Madonna may have lived to provoke her audience, the latter half of her career would see her continuing her streak of creative reinventions on albums like Ray of Light, along with a few creative detours like American Life. Clapton may have kept himself firmly rooted in the blues for most of his career, but even without the sounds of old, Madonna was still rewriting the rules on what a pop star was supposed to be.
