Why didn’t Eric Clapton want to match The Beatles?
The Beatles are a band that launched a thousand others. After the Liverpool lads took the world by storm, countless other troops started up, being deeply inspired by what the Fab Four were accomplishing, not only in terms of their major fame but also their tireless evolution. It might seem that every act at the time would’ve wanted a bit of what they were doing, but not Eric Clapton.
That isn’t to say that Clapton didn’t like or deeply respect The Beatles because, of course, he did. In their later years especially, Clapton even played a role in their legacy, shredding guitars on ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ and inspiring George Harrison especially during their tumultuous yet influential friendship. As The Beatles regularly invited friends into the studio, Clapton’s presence was a common occurrence.
In fact, at one point, there was the suggestion raised that maybe Clapton should simply join the group. During the rocky Get Back sessions, where the band’s cracks were well and truly showing, George Harrison walked out and quit the band. On a deadline to make a new album, the rest of the members were left scratching their heads, wondering how to make this work in case the guitarist really was gone for good.
“I think if George doesn’t come back by Monday or Tuesday, we ask Eric Clapton to play,” John Lennon suggested, considering replacing Harrison with his own best friend. He added, “We should just go on as if nothing’s happened.”
Luckily, Harrison did make a return to the suggestion, which was never more than just that, but chances are, had they asked, Clapton likely would have said no.
When reflecting on the early impact The Beatles had on all musicians in the early 1960s, Larry King asked Clapton if he ever wanted to be the band. “No, not at all,” the guitarist answered firmly, adding, “Actually, even from my earliest recollections of that was too poppy for me.”
While he would certainly come to change his mind about the group as they became friends, when the band first emerged, Clapton was already hooked into a different school of inspiration. Rather than the classic rock and roll the Beatles represented, he was entrenched in a different style. “By the time they came around, I was already deeply ensconced in hard-core blues and becoming a purist very fast,” he explained, seeing the fab four as a distraction from his true love.
However, later down the line, when Clapton eventually heard about Lennon once suggesting he joined the group, he seemed to reconsider somewhat. “The pros and cons of being in a band like that were massively extreme,” he said in Martin Scorsese’s 2011 George Harrison documentary Living in the Material World. In the corner of the pros, he said, “There were times when it was like the closest-knit family you’ve ever seen in your life,” seeming to yearn for their tight friendship. However, for the self-proclaimed “lone-wolf” and the purist blues lover, that was never going to be his path.
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