The two classic rock guitarists BB King personally admired
Humility is one of the greatest things any true legend can have, and BB King was no different. As he said in 1971, “You know a little fire always makes everyone move just a little bit faster. I enjoy guys putting the heat on me, for it makes me realise that I’ve still got a lot to learn, I really have.”
Someone as well-versed in the art of real, authentic rock ‘n’ roll energy would have never gotten their influences from a singular place, and King sought inspiration from anywhere and everywhere possible, from the jazz innovators to pop greats. But perhaps one of the more obvious was King’s love for Howlin’ Wolf, specifically his voice and how he was able to sing in a way that “seemed like a sword that’d pierce your soul when he’d sing.”
That said, most point to people like King when thinking up examples of people who had that kind of energy, the kind that felt like real musical passion in its purest form, the kind that could only come from directly within, making it difficult to think about the fact that King ever sought external influences at all. But this he learnt from people like Lonnie Johnson and Bukkha White, who “gave me confidence”, as well as legends like Blind Lemon Jefferson, T-Bone Walker and Lightnin’ Hopkins.
As someone with a burning, deep-seated love for anybody infiltrating other spaces with the quintessential blues fervour, King also fell in love with Eric Clapton and Peter Green, immediately drawn to the way they took older, traditional structures and energies from the blues and folk scenes and made it the defining factor of contemporary rock ‘n’ roll.
“I guess there’s so many [I admire] but right off the top of my head I must pick Eric Clapton and Peter Green,” King told New Musical Express in 1971. “But then again there are so many great ones both here and in the States. I feel so close to them all, and there are many musicians whether they are guitarists or not who I feel so very close to. It’s just impossible for me to name them all, and I wouldn’t even try.”
This connection makes complete sense, especially with regards to Clapton, who became so endeared to blues sensibilities that he once fancied himself to be a part of one of the groups themselves. “I wanted to be in Freddie King’s band or Buddy Guy’s band, that’s the band I wanted to be in,” he once said. “The real thing. I didn’t want to be in a white rock band, I didn’t want to be in a black rock band, I wanted to be in a black blues band.”
For Clapton, blues was a way to keep things fresh and exciting, something that would guarantee a path to something more instinctive in rock that prevented it from getting stale. It was the same love that guided Keith Richards, who held the same deeply woven appreciation that extended into his love for jazz greats like Billy Eckstine. And as for Peter Green, he was the very reason Fleetwood Mac built a stage to thrive on, achieving the same feat in spaces that had long surpassed the need for convention.
