The song that turned Eric Clapton into the guitarist he is today: “Milestone for me”
In the 1960s, every soon-to-be great British guitarist had a record from one artist on their shelves.
You might think it was The Beatles, and that would be a fair assumption. You couldn’t turn a street corner in Britain during that decade without being confronted by a Beatles record, for their influence was ubiquitous. But really, their innovation was built off the back of blues artists who formed the early ideas of rock in the decades before their formation.
While the middle decades of the 20th century were nowhere near as exciting as the swinging ‘60s, they were arguably more important in determining how modern rock would sound. If it wasn’t for the likes of BB King, Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters, the roaring sounds of classic rock wouldn’t have existed. It was only when these icons fused the worlds of gospel and country with the 12-bar blues technique that rock as we now know it was invented.
So naturally, when a generation of art-hungry students fell into their beloved world of music, it was the blues records that they first sought out. Like a rock and roll bible, musicians studied it intently before building their own blues scene right here in Britain. Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton all shared a deep affinity for these American icons and in turn, created their own scene in honour of it.
While playing in the wild clubs of London’s blues scenes undoubtedly formed Clapton into the guitarist he became, it was in those intimate moments shared with Waters’ records that really taught him the most – not about how to charismatically perform on stage, but how to craft his fretboard skills into songwriting.
“Muddy was there at a time when, really, the music was getting to me. I was really trying to grasp it and make something out of it,” Clapton said. More specifically, he cited ‘Honey Bee’ as a song that inspired a direct technique approach. Suddenly, that record unlocked everything that he had been absorbing in the vibrant blues scene of the mid ‘60s.
“It was a hook to me. And I made this as a sort of milestone for me, for my learning capabilities,” Clapton says. “If I can get that, I’m one rung up the ladder. And I did, finally, manage to do it one day, and I thought, well, you know, I think I can probably do this.”
As his career moved on into the ‘70s, it became clear that he would have to evolve with it. He couldn’t simply honour the great guitarist by copying his music and letting the rest of the world leave him behind, he had to take what ‘Honey Bee’ taught him and inject it into something contemporary.
But really, that was the best way to honour Waters, for in his pomp, he was doing exactly the same. Blending great genres that had traditionally been exclusive and instead using it to create blues, Clapton and his modern contemporaries did the same, by taking Waters’ philosophy and blending it with the innovation of classic rock.
