Is Clapton God?*

More like an Evangelist

When music fans hear the name Eric Clapton, their first thought would likely be “guitar virtuoso”.

Or perhaps they’ll think of the guy who was in a bunch of bands before finally accepting that he was a solo artist.+

Maybe they’ll just start singing “Layla”.

But I suspect that Eric Clapton’s most lasting musical legacy will be as a fan.  In fact, Eric Clapton might be the most influential evangelist of music in modern history.

Blues Power

In 1962, the American Folk Blues Festival brought legendary blues artists like Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, and Howlin’ Wolf to European audiences.  The crowd at the first venue in Britain included the unknown teenagers Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Jimmy Page.  If you were to scan the audience at later shows in London you’d see future stars like Eric Burdon, Steve Winwood – and a 17-year-old Eric Clapton.

A lot of British musicians played a role in re-introducing the great American bluesmen to the wider world.  But none had the combination of prominence and dedication as Clapton.

He was in three of the most prominent – maybe the three most prominent - blues-based English bands: The Yardbirds, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, and Cream. These bands covered landmark blues songs like “I’m A Man” and “Crossroads”.  The Yardbirds toured with Sonny Boy Williamson.  Clapton joined Winwood and the Stones’ rhythm section to record The London Howlin’ Wolf Sessions.  

In 1995 he released From the Cradle, a blues cover album, which was Grammy-nominated for Album of the Year, and hit #1 on the U.S. charts.   To this day, he runs the Crossroads Festival that he founded.

Clapton, Muddy Waters, & Johnny Winter (1979)

But perhaps more than anything else, he never stopped talking about the power of the blues.  When Robert Johnson’s The Complete Recordings was released in 1990 – an epic moment in that glorious period of box sets – he wrote the liner notes, which included this quote, one imbued with religious awe: 

“Up until I heard his music, everything I had ever heard seemed as if it was dressed up for a shop window somewhere.  So that when I heard him for the first time, it was like he was singing only for himself, and now and then, maybe God.”

That box set, 41 songs recorded in 1936-37 by an artist that had almost never received any radio play, sold more than a million copies, and won a Grammy.  This is hard to imagine without the enthusiasm and evangelism of Eric Clapton.  

I Hope You Like Jammin’ Too

Did you know the term reggae wasn’t coined until 1968 – 6 albums into Eric Clapton’s recording career with various bands?

The 1968 single “Do the Reggay” by Toots and the Maytals was the first popular song to use the word, effectively naming the genre.  It has roots in earlier Jamaican genres like ska, but even ska only evolved in the 1950s.  One might say ska is to doo-wop what reggae is to rock and roll.

Within a few years, a bunch of newly rich white musicians started vacationing in the Caribbean, where they heard this funky music.  And they loved it.  

Paul Simon, always attuned to global sounds, recorded "Mother and Child Reunion" with Jamaican artists in Kingston in 1972.  The Stones recorded Goats Head Soup in Jamaica.  Led Zeppelin’s "D’yer Mak’er" – a double entendre pun that sounds like ‘Jamaica’ and ‘Did You Make Her’ - is reggae-inspired.

But it was Eric Clapton’s “I Shot the Sheriff” that went to #1 on the Billboard charts and introduced reggae to a much larger audience.  In fact, it was his only #1 hit.

Today, the world is much more likely to play Bob Marley’s version – as they should! – but I’m not sure they would have if Eric Clapton had not fell in love with reggae.

Going Acoustic

Last year, movie audiences everywhere saw the legendary story of Bob Dylan going electric in the film “A Complete Unknown”.  Twenty years after Dylan plugged in, MTV Unplugged invited artists to unplug the electric instruments that made them famous.

The list of artists who appeared on Unplugged is long and illustrious.  Metal (Alice in Chains) and grunge bands (Nirvana) unplugged.  The show featured crooners (Tony Bennett) and divas (Mariah Carey), hip-hop artists (Lauryn Hill) and legends (Paul McCartney).  Heck, even Page & Plant did a few tunes together.  

But the unchallenged king of this latest music ‘innovation’ was Eric Clapton.  

It may not surprise you to learn that Eric Clapton Unplugged was the top selling MTV Unplugged album.  But perhaps it may surprise you to hear that, with 26 million albums sold, it is the best-selling live rock album of all time? 

Further On Up Some Other Roads

Clapton’s career as a music chameleon has other, albeit shorter, chapters.  

In 1968, Cream played some famous shows at The Fillmore, and some of that Haight-Ashbury influence arguably filtered into Cream’s sound.  

In the mid-80’s, he had a slew of hits like “She’s Waiting”, “Pretending”, and “It’s In the Way That You Use It”, that captures the over-produced power-pop sound of the era.  

And in my favorite “Eric Clapton is the greatest music fan of all time” story…when he first heard the music of The Band (arguably a genre unto themselves) he told Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker he needed to quit Cream, because he was planning to join this other band.  He drove to Woodstock where The Band was hanging and…well, he never quite got the courage to ask if he can join, but he wanted to!**

Slowhand’s Masterpiece

There is a downside to all this idolatry.  

It seems to me that Eric Clapton’s music was, at times, derivative.  He was a highly skilled guitarist, became a competent vocalist, and had enough songwriting chops to create a bunch of hits.

But, alas, some of his music feels like an homage to the people he idolized.  He was worshipping the blues artists and reggae artists and even the 80s hitmakers.  It was good music, but arguably music that was, well, dressed up for a shop window somewhere.

The one great exception to this “Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs”, with his final band, Derek & The Dominos.  That album is an absolute masterpiece.  And I suspect it is because for that moment, driven by his star-crossed love for Pattie Boyd, he wrote, sang, and played from the heart.  

It wasn’t a blues album, it wasn’t a reggae song, it wasn’t trying to be the Grateful Dead or The Band or Phil Collins.  It is a great work of art by a highly skilled musician singing for himself, and maybe God.

* “Clapton is God” is an early rock and roll meme.  A graffiti artist painted it on a wall in London in the early 1960s, and soon it was appearing all over town, and even crossed the ocean to New York.

+ I wrote about how the greatest bands are British (Beatles/Stones/Zep/Who/U2) and the greatest solo artists are American (Elvis/Dylan/Bruce/Billy Joel) here.  Clapton, the Englishman, recorded with 6 bands in the first decade of his career, before committing to a solo career

** Clapton told the story himself when he inducted The Band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (here)