About Eric Clapton

Eric Clapton also played with Yardbirds, Bluesbreakers, Cream, Blind Faith, Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, Derek & The Dominos

Clapton is God, read the message spray-painted on a wall at Islington tube station, and soon reproduced all over London. Eric Clapton had already built up a following while with the Yardbirds, and contributed to a hit single – For Your Love – although he left the band just as it charted in early 1965. But it was his work with John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers, whom he joined when he had just turned 20, that made his reputation and inspired graffiti from his admirers.

There was more to it than hero worship, though. Clapton’s recorded solos on Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton, and particularly on the instrumentals Stepping Out and Hideaway, inspired a whole generation to pick up the guitar and learn to play. They still do – Clapton’s version of Freddie King’s Hideaway (classic track video lesson as well as free sample available to download from LickLibrary.com) remains an object lesson in the electric blues for the aspiring guitarist.

Mayall managed to hang on to him for just over a year. But Clapton was already considered the UK’s number one blues guitarist (although he was practically unknown in the USA) and he needed more freedom to give rein to his genius. Cream, with drummer Ginger Baker and bassist Jack Bruce (the name symbolizing the status of all three in the eyes of other musicians as well as fans) provided that outlet.

The band lasted just over two years, from July 1966 to November 1968, before factors including Rolling Stone magazine’s stingingly critical review of Clapton’s playing on their second US headline tour, the relentless touring schedule and constant arguments between Bruce and Baker led them to break up. But by then the excitement and extended blues jamming of their live shows along with the blues/rock/psychedelia of their second and third albums – Disraeli Gears and Wheels Of FIre (the first double album ever to go platinum) – had turned Eric Clapton into a worldwide superstar.

Not everything Clapton touched turned to gold, however. After Cream, he and Baker got together with Steve Winwood and Ric Grech to form Blind Faith, a much-hyped supergroup that was much less than the sum of its parts. That band split up after a few months, and Clapton, wanting to be a player rather than a star, joined Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, which had been the support act for Blind Faith’s US tour.

That subsequently led him to form Derek and the Dominos, using Delaney and Bonnie’s backing band, and recording Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. The title track, Layla, was written for his friend George Harrison’s wife, Pattie Boyd, whom he would later marry. At that time, however, it was an unrequited love, which – along with the album’s lukewarm reception by reviewers – may have hastened Clapton’s descent into heroin addiction. That in turn resulted in his withdrawal from recording and playing – with a couple of exceptions, such as the Concert for Bangladesh (organized by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar) and the Rainbow Concert (organized by Pete Townshend of The Who to help Clapton kick his heroin habit) – for over two years.

When he came back, with the 1974 album, 461 Ocean Boulevard, it was less as a guitar hero than a singer who played guitar. There were still solos, but it was a far cry from the fiery blues playing of his early twenties. Ironically, though he rarely again captured the raw energy of the live recording of Crossroads (from Wheels Of Fire) or the sheer inventiveness of his soloing on White Room (from the same album), his career as an artist, singer and songwriter went from strength to strength.

After flirtations with various musical styles, including reggae, 80s pop-rock, and acoustic and electronic based middle AOR, his latest albums mark a return to his roots in From The Cradle, his first ever pure blues recording, which was followed by a collaboration with BB King (Riding With The King) and a tribute to his principal influence, Robert Johnson (Me And Mr Johnson).

While he has won awards for his songs such as Tears In Heaven and Wonderful Tonight, which have become staples of the gigger’s repertoire, it is the playing of the early Eric Clapton that continues to excite aspiring blues and rock guitarists, as demonstrated by visitor statistics from Lick Library, the world’s premier online guitar tuition resource. Lick Library reports that Cocaine, Crossroads and Layla (all available as downloadable video lessons) remain firm favourites with the guitar community.