When Eric Clapton crowned the live guitarist who was still “beyond anyone” in the 1980s
Eric Clapton had more prime chops than a butcher’s front window. That much is undeniable. While a few folks might have quibbled that he just regurgitated blues riffs, those who’ve played live with him offer a different perspective.
Take Jimi Hendrix, for example. When the pair famously jammed before Hendrix was a noted name, prompting Clapton to quip, “You never told me he was that fucking good,” Hendrix pretty much matched that sentiment in response. The Cream man might not have been lauded for his innovations on record, but when he hit the stage, it became clear why he was so readily called “God” on the London scene.
Night after night, he would strive to deliver something that soared. That’s a near-impossible task. Things get gruelling and formulaic on the road, particularly when you’re battling addictions, too. But in the mid-1980s, he would find himself rejuvenated by a showman who seemed to find the spotlight as elevating as Cuban heels on a trampoline.
“I did a tour a couple of years ago where we’d been on the road for about a month, and it was getting slightly stale,” he told Musician in 1986. “We dropped into Chicago, and I went to see [Buddy Guy] at the Checkerboard. We got up and played, and I came to life again. It was like being with Muddy for half an hour; the whole thing was revitalised.”
For a musician who has shared the stage with everyone from Paul McCartney to Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and everyone in between, it’s high praise indeed that he views Guy as a guitar god among mere practitioners of the craft. “Buddy’s still got that,” he said of his electric soul on stage. “I mean, he’s by far and without a doubt the best guitarist alive.”
There’s an indefinable quality to his playing that seems to personify the blues. Pete Townshend once said that music might not get rid of your problems, but it does let you dance all over them – in some ways, the fretboard was a dancefloor for Guy, and he footloosely hotstepped across it in a way that made it seem like he wasn’t even thinking about musical theory as he played, the notes were just naturally sliding into place.
This inspired a new style of guitar playing when he first broke onto the scene, and seemingly the gift was still abiding by him even in the ‘80s, as John Mayer once said, “If you follow Clapton or Hendrix back, you get to Buddy Guy. He really invented this abandon on the guitar that Hendrix saw and adapted.”
Clapton saw it as a guitarist’s duty to actively seek out such studies. As the ‘Layla’ man explained, “I don’t know what it is – it doesn’t stand up in a recording studio, you couldn’t put him on a hit record, but if you see him in person, the way he plays is beyond anyone. Total freedom of spirit, I guess.”
He concluded, “It would be important for anyone who wants to play guitar to find out about that aspect of it. Records can’t do that, you know. If I’d never met Buddy Guy, I’d probably think that all he could do was what I’d heard on record, and I’d be sadly mistaken. And that goes for BB [King] and Freddie [King] and all those guys, too, because they came alive much more on stage than they ever did on record.”
On record, he was always confined. On stage, he was always reaching. And as Ritchie Blackmore said, any guitarist worth their salt should be reaching, it’s the only way to find something unknown on the other side. Guy always found it.
