SPOTLIGHT 0N... ERIC CLAPTON

Rip It Up, Issue 137, 1 December 1988, Page 15

SPOTLIGHT 0N... ERIC CLAPTON

His arrival at the top has been neither easy nor accidental. Rather, the route Eric chose was the only one he felt comfortable with, slightly to the left of mainstream pop since he made a crucial decision to quit the Yardbirds in 1965. It was the pivotal career move for a 20 year-old who had a lot to lose on such a gamble The group had embarked on what Eric saw as a thrust to commercial!ty for its own sake. He quit. To Clapton, it was a natural decision in which his honesty to pure music came before the prospects of being an overnight pop star. > “I am, and always will be, a blues guitarist”, he says. That simple philosophy has been the anchor of Claptons’s career, the commitment which has not only separated him from his contemporaries but has given him a perspective that disallows him a pop stars ego. Eric sought kindred spirits and found them after the Yardbirds in .the musical integrity of John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. It was a short-lived but indocile important apprenticeship for Clapton. Mayall was a tough taskmaster who attracted serious, improvising musicians into his band. Given the scope to be individual and inventive, and finding empathy with Mayall’s outlook, Eric shone. Yet it was here that he was hit with his biggest ciris. Heralding his work as Messianic, fans literally described him as God. ‘Clapton is God’ was scrawled on the walls of London’s underground and club audiences clamoured for his solo work. ‘We want

more God’. Clapton was embarrassed. His unease at such adulation came just before the formation of a new band which would be the foundation of his life as a musician. Through playing in the Mayall band Eric met bass guitarist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker. They formed Cream in 1966, a trio of great players well ahead of their time playing long, extemporising solos. Cream featured the adventurousness of jazz in a rock framework and paired with such outstanding musicians Eric produced some memorable songwriting as well as challenging guitar work. Sunshine Of Your Love and Strange Brew are examples on this album of the emergence of Eric as a melodic writer. At its end in 1968 Cream had unwittingly begun to change the face of popular music. It was a band in the vanguard of the public’s acceptance of rock as a new word to. run alongside pop. Thoughtful, inventive sounds now stood parallel with superficial pop, the album arrived as a major force instead of in the wake of a hit single, and Clapton’s integrity as a blues-based musician was about to bear commercial fruit. Eric has always been a 'musician’s musician’, and his link with Steve Winwood in Blind Faith was his next natural, if temporary period. It was Winwood who realised, possibly before Eric, that the inevitable next move for Clapton would be to go out under his own name. The year was 1970. But after the high profile of Cream Eric wanted anonymity.

He went on tour as Derek and die Dominos. While die music was gutsy the plan to mask himself in a different person was clearly not going to last. It did, however, yield Layla, probably his most electrify ing song, die spine-chilling opening salvo of which today still lights up audiences at his concerts from Guildford to New York' Clapton has packed more experiences into five years than many players acquire in a whole career. And his next music showed it.- . If Eric ever wanted a reminder of how essential it was to stick to the blues, it came from his mentor and friend Muddy Waters during their 1979 tour together. The blues giant who has been a lifelong inspiration admired Eric’s work and told him it was quite good enough to play blues music for a living. “That was it”, Eric reflects; “Coming from someone like Muddy, it was the message that 1 never needed to hang up my guitar!” What lies behind that is the belief that commercial success, while gratifying, should not ■be the prime motivation for a serious musician. To absorb Eric Clapton it is essential to study him, to understand just why the same man who plays stunning guitar on Cocaine and Tearing Us Apart can also be a true romantic on Wonderful Tonight, or deal convincingly with the soulful simplicity of Bob Dylan’s Knockin’ On Heaven’s D00r... '■ The gold albums and trophies line his walls. The international awards tell him he is the Best Guitarist in Rock. He has moved into stimulating new areas like writing film scores.

The roar of the crowd could be intoxicating if he allowed it to be as he travels the world and sends audiences away enriched by his continual change. To Eric Clapton, his relevation to new heights is not the mountain he expected to scale because mass popularity was not part of his plan..