The reason why Robert Cray ended his friendship with Eric Clapton
Eric Clapton has a history of making public statements that range from the abhorrent to the bizarre. His drunken on-stage rant about immigrants in 1976 was straight out of Enoch Powell’s playbook as the guitarist proclaimed, “Keep Britain white”, and Clapton’s behaviour has lost many friends over the years, including Robert Cray.
Following the speech, Clapton later reflected: “I was so ashamed of who I was, a kind of semi-racist, which didn’t make sense.” As a result of his actions, the ‘Rock Against Racism’ movement was born and some good came out of Clapton’s unforgivable behaviour. However, when he compared the Covid-19 lockdowns to slavery, that was the final straw for Cray, who ended their friendship.
Cray first began supporting Clapton in the 1980s, and he was taken under the wing of the Englishman. The two became close friends and collaborated several times, but the slavery lyric tested their relationship beyond the limit. For context, Cray was born into a segregated community as a Black man in Georgia in 1953.
The song which caused their friendship to disintegrate was Clapton’s woeful anti-lockdown collaboration with Van Morrison, titled ‘Stand and Deliver’. On the track, Clapton questionably sings: “Do you wanna be a free man / Or do you wanna be a slave? Do you wanna wear these chains, Until you’re lying in the grave?”
After hearing ‘Stand and Deliver’, Cray emailed Clapton to politely explain his issue with comparing these incredibly different events. He was saddened by the response and told the Washington Post that Clapton’s “reaction back to me was that he was referring to slaves from, you know, England from way back”.
Cray also addressed Clapton’s photo with controversial Texas governor Greg Abbott, who supports anti-abortion laws and policies restricting voters’ rights.
“There’s this great photo [from 2013] at Madison Square Garden after the show, with B.B. King sitting in a chair, Jimmie Vaughan, myself and Eric sitting behind him,” Cray told the Post. “And I looked at that picture of Gov. Abbott, Jimmie Vaughan and Eric Clapton in that similar pose, and I’m going, ‘What’s wrong with this picture? Why are you doing this?'”
Although it harmed his pursestrings, Cray felt inclined to pull out from his forthcoming tour with Clapton, which he couldn’t proceed on in good faith. Cray’s decision to follow his moral compass when most would have stayed silent in his position is commendable and a mark of him as a man.
