Eric Clapton

i hope mr. clapton has some good lawyers, and that the defamation laws in Argentina are favorable to plaintiffs. and i don't even like mr. clapton (or his music), either.

Ha, ha, ha! Woman tone!

why is this guy held in such high regard? obv he was at the center of some interesting developments in the UK but there must be a million guitarists that can play like him?

no-one could fuse the blues with a bone-deep love of enoch powell like he could

He is way out there on his own amongst English bluesmen. Nobody else can compare for sheer outspoken, small minded, toxic racism.

jesus fucking christ that hard rock cafe ad!

Sad songs are nature's onions.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, May 12, 2011 1:23 PM (eight years ago) bookmarkflaglink

the only thing he's involved with i can take any pleasure from is Blind Faith, and thats only because i can twist my brain to pretend its a Winwood/Traffic lp.

no-one could fuse the blues with a bone-deep love of enoch powell and album covers featuring topless 11-year-old girls like he could

One of the biggest dickheads in rock history. Mind you, for some reason I prefer his version of Cocaine to Cale's.

yeah it's weird, Beck was so much more inventive, I think Brian Jones and Peter Green were so much better as blues players, yet Clapton was "God"

And the lord came down from above and yea he was the fifth or sixth best guitar player from his island in that specific era, and yea did he covet thy beatle’s wife, and yea was he racist.

I sort of get all the criticisms, and don't know that I can really pinpoint one great thing about his playing (other than vague "elegance" and "lyricism"), but somehow I almost always enjoy listening to him regardless.

Me too. I think it's his phrasing and tone (but "woman tone," yuck).

He also has a cool watch named after him.

He became a big name a bit earlier than Beck or Green, right? I sort of figured that the early legend came from speed-addled kids seeing him play live and getting convinced they were in the presence of greatness. Maybe a bit of wanting someone who could be on the same level as the Americans that everyone worshipped.

also the progression of his hair from 1965-67 is pretty amazing.

it's in the way that he used it

https://www.express.co.uk/celebrity-news/679055/Rock-legend-Eric-reveals-Clapton-is-God-graffiti-was-stunt

his best stuff was always buoyed by the ppl he was playing with but i'll cop to finding stuff of his here and there worthwhile up through "promises".

WTF? “held in high regard”???? He’s every millenial music fan’s whipping boy! I don’t even think the Dave Matthews Band are more bad and hated. I have no problem with him, though. I like “Key to the Highway” and that re-recorded “After Midnight” on the Crossroads box set.

probably led more people to Robert Johnson than anyone else, which is a good thing. Clapton was, for a couple of decades at least, a very solid blues guitar player. He's seemed bored since probably 1990.

I love Derek & The Dominoes, and that’s about it. I bet he has a few sweet funky deep cuts on his 70s albums

WTF? “held in high regard”????

this is the opening paragraph from wiki so no wonder if a person who had never heard him play thought he was incredible:

Eric Patrick Clapton, CBE (born 30 March 1945) is an English rock and blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist and separately as a member of the Yardbirds and of Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and influential guitarists of all time.[1] Clapton ranked second in Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time"[2] and fourth in Gibson's "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time".[3] He was also named number five in Time magazine's list of "The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players" in 2009.[4]

I don't dislike his music just find it weird that people think of him as a uinquely great guitarist

uniquely*

i'm not really a fan of most of clapton's bands but at his best he was a pretty incredible guitarist. his lead guitar on lennon's "cold turkey" is so loud and intense -- i kinda wish he'd played that sort of thing more often.

I love Derek & The Dominoes, and that’s about it. I bet he has a few sweet funky deep cuts on his 70s albums

Can't claim to have listened to his entire back catalogue, but . . .

Good: all the Cream stuff, Layla, Promises, Cocaine, Lay Down Sally

Bad: pretty much everything else, especially all that "Armani blues" stuff from about 1985 onwards

Lay Down Sally, really?

I mean it's hard to find fault with just the definition of bland

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hQqP6RNnDE

the "clapton is god" thing began with ppl shouting "give god a solo" during sets with mayall's bluesbreakers.he'd quit the yardbirds early in 1965 (bcz they were going "pop" and he was a pure blues-only type), and was on-off a bluesbreaker till 66, in among his own projects (the glands!) and of course the emergence of cream. (internet seems to tell me "give god a solo" was first mentioned in print in 1966 in a very early clapton profile by melody maker journalist nick jones, but if so this piece is not on the internet)

at this point he was the poster-child for a newly emerging idea: guitar-player as exciting focus of a wider change in the music -- which had begun with the yardbirds, and encompassed breakdown frenzies during live performance, formal invention (pop structures which broke with the classic city 12-bar) and of course volume wars adding new layers to feedback play (the who were also leaders in all these, but tho not of course from a blues-purist start).

given what i know abt enthusiastic young white male fans, clapton's initial *resistance* to the first -- the anxious purism that took him out of the yardbirds into the bluesbreakers -- is just the thing for crystallising passion, basically a bogus moral principle ported into the music. he gave up fame for the good of the true music! etc. and then when cream demonstrated that he was actually entirely comfortable with formal invention and non-blues structures (fresh cream is half-and-half but disraeli gears really breaks with strictness), he deftly carried his fans from being suspicious of the development to embracing it as the way forward. ("progressive blues" was often the shorthand at the time for this…)

as for being the white rep of a black art-form: i mean yes obviously, but actually opps to see the black originators *live in london* were few and far between in the 60s. muddy waters had played in the late 50s, but his amp was small and apparently somewhat swamped by otis spann's piano, plus besides fannish attraction to the electric guitar barely existed back then (when big bill broonzy came over round the same time he stuck to a folk-only acoustic set). there were yearly folk-blues festivals from 1963 with biggish names, but the term "folk blues" tells much of the story i think. I don't think BB King played in the UK before the 70s? (glad to be corrected here).

by contrast in the mid-60s you got to see clapton in london a LOT. and before dylan at the albert hall and then hendrix arriving in late 66 (when everything changed and black permission to freak out feedback-wise arrived) clapton's rivals were other white players -- almost all of whom (in the eyes of the clapton-struck fan) were compromised by having done pop session work (page especially, beck a little). the line being drawn was always kind of a bullshit line -- although the guitarists playing games with a pop/art divide (townshend, hendrix) perfectly well knew what they were doing, they weren't blithely ignoring a distinction, they were messing with the minds that still drew the distinction.

tl;dr: the moment of clapton's coronation was brief (post-yardbirds pre-hendrix) and it arose in a quite specific place as times changed fast bcz he took his enthusiasts on a journey they were leery of in a way that excited and convinced them. (i'm missing out a fuckton of other names i know: rivals and bit players etc)

i too largely find him an uninteresting player on record tho of course i never saw him live 65-68, i was too little and didn't live in london and don't know how i wd have behaved as a live music fan at this time. the good stuff on derek and dominos is mostly duane allman.

sorry "clapton's initial *resistance* to the first" s/b " clapton's initial *resistance* to the second" = the fucking with the structures, a thing that was good abt the yardbirds that clapton tht was bad

Lay Down Sally, really?

I like the main riff, reminds me of Lynyrd Skynyrd. That's all.

A problem with Clapton post Layla is that he was pushed as a solo artist despite never really being a great songwriter, the curse of many a guitar hero; after Hendrix I don’t think anyone has had that kind of lucrative success for so long *as* a solo artist despite being better suited to collaborations and his rep based more on instrumental prowess

*ahem*

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse2.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.3NCaIA4L9RXP_2ARjbnN1QHaE7%26pid%3DApi&f=1

Fun fact: if you sit before a mirror while listening to Eric Clapton's Unplugged performance you can actually watch yourself age in real time!

The coda of Keep on Growing has like three amped up strat leads playing as high and fast as possible. Such a mess

i played Unplugged on Spotify and went to look at myself in the mirror and i was suddenly wearing a Titleist shirt and i don't even play golf.

Clapton's great on the Beatles' stuff, everything else should probably be incinerated

I'd forgotten how sappy and sickly the Unplugged thing is. Ugh.

A problem with Clapton post Layla is that he was pushed as a solo artist despite never really being a great songwriter, the curse of many a guitar hero; after Hendrix I don’t think anyone has had that kind of lucrative success for so long *as* a solo artist despite being better suited to collaborations and his rep based more on instrumental prowess

This also applies to Jeff Beck, but even more so.

Jeff Beck has mostly made instrumental albums or done session work, though.

I like his Robert Johnson tribute album and From the Cradle, great songs played and sung with a minimum of flash or overdoing. If you find them boring, yuppified, Armani blues or whatever, sure, but I listen to a lot of stuff in that vein.

some of the Unplugged is really loose and fun tho--indistinct as far as his playing goes and indistinct in that it could be any well-practiced band, but when they loosen up there's a gentle charm to it. Like listening to a bunch of old guys play bluegrass or traditional Irish songs or whatnot

I think there's some v good playing and atmosphere on the Rush soundtrack. (Never saw the movie.) Idk why someone wouldn't like e.g. this other "Cold Turkey" if they appreciate, say, David Gilmour: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsmmvcqz_BE

well for one...Pink Floyd rules

only Clapton I'd have in the house is the Edge of Darkness soundtrack

OK, I asked my guitar teacher why Clapton became so iconic/revered, and he gave me a couple of explanations. One was simply being the right guy at the right place at the right time; before him, British guitar was still largely influenced by rockabilly or Chuck Berry-styled guitar. The second was that he was the first of the British bluesmen to play a Les Paul through a Marshall (before even Hendrix became identified with playing through a Marshall). The last thing he brought up was Clapton's really strong sense of time; a lot of his peers, while perhaps better and certainly more interesting players, could be both sloppier/looser (Page) and more eccentric (Beck). He also noted that Clapton lost a huge hunk of productivity in his prime when he was all but trying to kill himself on drugs; four years went by between his first album in 1970 and his second in 1974, during which he lost a lot of ground.

Anyway, that's his two cents.

He’s pretty lyrical on White Room.

Crossroads is damn good too

kind of cool on the Live Peace in Toronto “Cold Turkey” the interplay between Eric and Yoko. Maybe already discussed upthread, only saw Sund4r’s recent measure of other “Cold Turkey.”

My problem with Clapton is mainly his voice. Which is not bad, but it's so plain, so white-label. I can appreciate him much more when he doesn't sing, e.g. Beatles, Cream, etc.

Eric Clapton on stage at the Nassau Coliseum, Long Island, New York, 1978 pic.twitter.com/sTHMUyzMWu

— Barney Hurley (@barneyhurley1) September 9, 2020