Introduction

By Chris Welch
Extract from Cream: The Legendary Sixties Supergroup
Amended Friday, 08 April 2005

:: Read

The Formation

By Chris Welch
Extract from Cream: Strange Brew
Amended Friday, 08 April 2005

:: Read

The Farewell

By Chris Welch
Extract from Cream: The Legendary Sixties Supergroup
Amended Friday, 08 April 2005

:: Read

Eric Clapton

By Chris Welch
Extract from Cream: Strange Brew
Amended Friday, 08 April 2005

There had been guitar heroes before Eric Clapton. Jazz pioneers like Charlie Christian, Les Paul, Herb Ellis and Barney Kessell had all brought the electric guitar to prominence and shown its extraordinary versatility. There were the great blues guitarists like BB King, Freddie King and T-Bone Walker, while in rock 'n' roll the sidemen who backed the stars, achieved considerable status like Scotty Moore with Elvis Presley, who was described in a biography of Elvis as "The great unsung hero of Elvis Presley's life." In Britain during the early Sixties, Hank B. Marvin of The Shadows became hugely popular and widely admired by aspiring teenage guitarists for his clean cut, original sound. The Shadows achieved unparalleled chart success with instrumental hits like 'Apache' that hit number one in the U.K. in July 1960. But their dominance would be swept away by the arrival of The Beatles, and then Cream.

Eric Patrick Clapton, the guitarist who did most to define the sound of modern rock music, was born in Ripley, Surrey, a village thirty miles south of London, on March 30, 1945. His birth and up bringing reflected the upheavals caused by the Second World War. He was the son of Patricia Clapton and Edward Fryer, a Canadian soldier who had been stationed in England. Later Fryer, who was already married, went back to his wife in Canada. Patricia married another Canadian soldier and they both went off to Germany before settling in Canada. Eric was left in England in the care of his grandparents, Jack and Rose Clapp. Jack was a plasterer and bricklayer. Years later, at the height of his fame, Eric occasionally liked to refer to himself as a "musical labourer."

Clapton's grandparents didn't have much interest in music, although Rose always took a keen interest in his career and loved to hear him play.

Eric spent a quiet enough time at Ripley Primary School and later St. Bede's Secondary Modern.

When he was aged ten he started listening to pop music on the radio. One day a strangely powerful record called 'Fox Chase,’ by the blues duo Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee was played on a BBC children's radio programme.

It enthralled the young Clapton. He first saw a guitar being played when Jerry Lee Lewis and his band performed 'Great Balls Of Fire' on TV. Recalled Eric: 'It was like seeing someone from outer space. Here I was in this village that was never going to change, yet there on TV was something out of the future. And I wanted to go there!"

The "guitar" Eric had seen on TV was a Fender bass guitar, but he didn't know the difference.

He decided to try and build his own guitar. It was quite a craze at a time when schoolboys were forming their own skiffle groups. Most of them made simple acoustic models, but Eric tried to carve a Stratocaster from a block of wood. He was defeated by the problem of creating the neck and frets. Eric's grandparents doted on their boy and as Eric says: "I was the only child in the family, and they used to spoil me something terrible. So I badgered them until they bought me a plastic Elvis Presley guitar."

The guitar wouldn't stay in tune, but at least Eric could put on his favourite Gene Vincent records and mime to them in the bedroom mirror.

Eric enjoyed a happy childhood until one day when he was aged 12, his real mother turned up and he discovered the truth about his origins. It undermined his confidence and left him hurt and confused, especially as his mother had to be referred to as his "sister."

Said Eric later: "I was raised by my grandparents under the illusion that they were my parents. And so it was a kind of screwy set-up, which sorted itself out as I got older. But throughout my teens, I was very confused, angry and lonely." At school he felt himself an outsider, and as a result was given a hard time by pupils and teachers alike. Eventually he found a clique of friends who shared his burgeoning interest in rock 'n' roll.

Essentially a shy, sensitive and private person, he could easily be hurt and influenced by others. Yet he had an inner strength and a great sense of humour that delighted in the absurd.

He also had the ability to submerge himself in a role, which as a young man, enabled him to act out the part of a blues man, until he quite legitimately became one, accepted by his peers and even his own role models. His innate feeling for the blues, perhaps heightened by his own inner turmoil, gave his playing extraordinary strength, authenticity and conviction quite early on. There were louder, faster guitarists in the world, but none had the feeling and subtlety that Eric at his best would one day imbue in his playing.

His grandparents finally gave into pressure and gave him his first proper guitar, a Hofner acoustic, when he was 15. He had heard an album by blues man Big Bill Broonzy that made a tremendous impression. "I'd never heard anything like it," he recalled.

Playing the guitar like Big Bill proved much harder than he thought and he simply gave up trying. Understandably his grandparents thought it was just another schoolboy craze that would be quickly forgotten. The neck of his guitar began to warp as it lay abandoned for a couple of years.

After leaving school in 1962, he enrolled at Kingston School Of Art to study stained-glass design. As he had been interested in drawing since the age of six, his grandparents encouraged him, and he passed enough examinations to get a place. But Eric never really settled down to study.

His interest in the guitar revived when he heard records owned by fellow students. Their tastes veered towards the music of B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Chuck Berry. He also learned to appreciate the work of a uniquely different rocker—Buddy Holly. This sudden upsurge of interest in the blues among English youth took root most strongly in the art colleges. They became breeding grounds for musicians who helped create the great rock boom.

Eric didn't just want to play records. He got out his old guitar and began practising. It was his downfall as far as the college was concerned. He drank heavily, played records all day and did hardly any work. After three months he was asked to leave and was struck off the register. Said Clapton later: "Actually I am quite proud of that. Not many people are kicked out of Art College. I was playing records most of the time, and getting drunk in the pub at lunch time. I was an undesirable influence on the other students."

Clutching his trusty acoustic guitar, Clapton spent his days busking around Kingston and Richmond, earning a reputation as the local hobo. He took a job for a while working as a labourer with his grandfather, but most of the time was spent learning how to master his guitar and making trips up to London and the West End.

He hung around in coffee bars and met people like Long John Baldry who played 12-string guitar and sang folk and blues. He got deeper into the blues discovering the music of Blind Lemon Jefferson, Son House and Skip James.

"I was playing guitar all the time, teaching myself things, learning from records. At first I played exactly like Chuck Berry." Then Eric got into the works of Robert Johnson and Blind Boy Fuller while he retained his love for Big Bill Broonzy. One of the first songs he learned was Broonzy's 'Walk Down The Lonesome Road.'

He also listened to Otis Rush and Blind Willie Johnson, then a friend played him an album featuring historic recordings by Robert Johnson called "King Of The Delta Blues Singers." Clapton was shocked by what he heard. "I couldn't take it. I thought it was really non-musical, very raw. Then I went back to it later, and got into it. At the first hearing thought, it was just too much anguish to take."

Finally he discovered B.B. King. Said Clapton: "When I came out of it, I was developing in a Chicago blues vein. But you can never reach the standards of the original, and after a while I knew I had to develop my own style. I would play something I heard on record and then add something of my own. Gradually my own things took over more and more."

The next step was to join a band and he teamed up with a newfound friend, guitarist Tom McGuinness, who would eventually achieve fame in Manfred Mann and went on to form McGuinness Flint.

They met at the Station Hotel Richmond, and formed a band called The Roosters. It was 1963 when Eric was just 18 years old. They started out playing at pubs and at parties for friends. The Roosters lasted from January to September and was probably the first full time British R&B; group. They used to play John Lee Hooker's 'Boom Boom' and Muddy Waters' 'Hoochie Coochie Man.'

Tom McGuinness recalls the pioneering days with great fondness. "The Sixties were a magic period for us. Pop music then was accessible to a wide age group. The Beatles appealed to all ages—until John took up with that Yoko woman!"

As R&B; began to challenge the dominance of pop music, there was some skepticism. Blues fans like Clapton and McGuinness were still in a tiny minority and most people had never heard of the original Black American artists they raved about.

Says McGuinness: 'I can remember when I wanted to go off and play R&B; these guys saying: 'You're mad, you'll be back in six months. No one wants to hear that sort of music.' I had to find other people who knew abut John Lee Hooker. I saw an advert that said: 'Pianist wants to join rhythm & blues band.' I wrote to him and met the guy. It was Ben Palmer, who was trying to get a band together with Paul Jones. We kept in touch, and meanwhile a girlfriend introduced me to Eric Clapton. Ben, Eric and I formed The Roosters which lasted about nine months."

The rest of the Roosters were Robin Mason on drums and Terry Brennan (vocals).

Tom was the second guitarist and says: "We never recorded and we couldn't find a bass player, which illustrates how few people there were wanting to play R&B; in 1963."

Eric made the switch from acoustic to electric to play with The Roosters and bought himself a Kay model guitar that he'd seen advertised. Eric had learned how to bend strings to alter notes and developed a "singing" quality by using very light strings. He kept breaking them during numbers and while he re-strung his guitar, audiences would begin a slow handclap, which resulted in his nickname "Slowhand Clapton."

The Roosters broke up due to lack of money and commitment from some of the band. Eric occasionally jammed with Alexis Korner at his Ealing Blues Club and then joined another group. Says Tom: 'Eric and I went to play with a guy from Liverpool called Casey Jones. That lasted only six weeks, then Eric joined The Yardbirds, and I got the call to join Manfred Mann on bass." Said Eric: "Casey Jones and the Engineers was a very heavy pop show and I couldn't stand that for very long. At that time I was such a purist and they were playing real top twenty stuff which was disastrous."

Eric's next move would help establish his name as a top lead guitar player, even though he wasn't entirely happy with the results.

The Rolling Stones had soared to ascendancy during the first frantic months of the R&B; boom. Then in 1963 they left the Crawdaddy Club, at the Station Hotel, Richmond, Surrey where they had built up a fanatical following. The Stones were destined for greater things, and were replaced by the Yardbirds, fronted by singer Keith Relf. The band had grown out of an outfit called the Metropolitan Blues quartet, made up of Kingston Art college students who played local pubs and clubs. They had made their debut as the Yardbirds at a unique venue, a hotel on Eel Pie Island, in the middle of the river Thames. The band's guitarist was Anthony 'Top' Topham and the rest of the group include Chris Dreja (rhythm guitar), Paul Samwell-Smith (bass) and Jim McCarty (drums). Anthony was replaced by Eric Clapton a few weeks after the band's arrival at the Crawdaddy Club. Eric went to see them and was pretty scornful of Topham's limited technique. "I was watching them one week and playing with them the next," he recalls.

Topham was a blues enthusiast but he found the role of lead guitarist too demanding and he suffered considerable parental opposition. When he quit, Keith 'phoned Eric, who he had known at art school. They had previously talked about forming a group together.

Eric came down for a rehearsal at the South Western Hotel and quickly fitted in with the band's blues policy. He was a much more advanced player than Topham and knew many more numbers. His arrival gave the fledgling Yardbirds a big boost.

Said Clapton later: "I had only been with Casey Jones & The Engineers for three or four weeks when the Yardbirds asked me to go along to the Crawdaddy to listen to them and have a chat. I'd heard the group were interested in me joining them, so I went to the Crawdaddy, looked in and thought: 'What's this?' They were playing things like 'Can't Judge A Book' like R&B; puppets. I thought it would be a cushy job, so I joined them. Eventually I got quite brainwashed with this commercial R&B.;"

Under the tutelage of a wild-eyed manager, Giorgio Gomelsky, the Yardbirds began a chequered but mostly successful and highly influential career. Giorgio was an emotional but enthusiastic man who loved the blues and encouraged his young charges. He was a Russian with a Swiss passport and spoke several different languages. He was a larger than life figure who recorded many of the pioneer British acts—often without their knowledge or permission—but he left a great musical legacy for historians.

For all his faults, which included driving cars the wrong way along one-way streets and talking anyone within earshot into the ground, he pushed the nervous suburban youths into achieving their musical potential. It was his ambition to make the Yardbirds even bigger than The Stones and for a while it looked as if they might succeed.

As well as producing hits like 'For Your Love,' 'Heart Full Of Soul' and 'Evil Hearted You' the band also became known as the hothouse that nurtured three of the greatest rock guitarists of all time, Clapton, and his successors Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. The Yardbirds propelled Clapton into the limelight and got him on record and out on tour. However, he always felt ambivalent about his role in the band. He enjoyed the attention during his first year on board. Apart from the Stones and Manfred Mann, the Yardies were one of the most successful bands of the period. Yet he became unsettled about his own playing and doubts began to creep in. Sometimes he was so shy about his guitar playing he wouldn't take any solos and would try to hide behind his amplifier. Then as his experience and technique improved, so did his confidence.

I met Eric for the first time in October 1964, not long after I joined the Melody Maker. An interview was scheduled for The Yardbirds and we assembled in the Kardomah coffee bar in Fleet Street. It was the first occasion I'd talked to a full group in-person, and quickly learned it was a bad idea to try and interview five people at once. They distract each other, indulge in in-jokes and badinage, and there is always one who is too shy to talk, and probably has the most interesting things to say, while the noisiest make mock of the whole ordeal. Then there is the usual problem of their insulting waitresses and creating "a scene."

In fact The Yardbirds were generally pleasant and well behaved, although I noticed that Eric was the most sensible and tended to smile at the exuberant prattle going on around him. The band had just released their second single 'Good Morning Little Schoolgirl' (a follow up to "I Wish You Would") and The Yardbirds were nervous about the effect having a hit single might have on their credibility with blues fans. The headline on the subsequent piece was "Oh No! Not A Hit Disc" It was just the "angle" the MM wanted, although it probably gave the band's management and record company palpitations.

The story ran: "A successful future is staring The Yardbirds right in the face—and it worries them! They're worried about losing the thousands of faithful rhythm and blues fans they have attracted—without the aid of a single hit record."

It was true the band a few problems. Their singer Keith Relf had recently collapsed with a perforated lung and the band had been out of action for months. The single had been recorded the previous March. But they had kept a grip on their all-important fan following as Eric was keen to explain: "Club audiences are very possessive and when records start selling the kids come up to you and say: 'We've lost you.' We left the Crawdaddy for a while to do a tour with Billy J.Kramer. When we played the Crawdaddy again it wasn't quite the same. Now we play at The Marquee and it's a complete rave. But we are worried like hell that we'll lose R&B; fans if we get a hit record. We like pop fans, but we want both. We would look upon it as our biggest achievement if we could be the most popular band in the country without a hit record. But we are tired of the snobs who say they don't like an artist any more because he has a hit record. Why is it criminal to be successful? People actually say they don't like Chuck Berry any more because everybody else likes him—they've got to like somebody else. They don't like Hambone Willy Kneebone anymore—everybody has heard of him—so they say they like Rabbit Foot Walker instead!"

I liked all of the Yardbirds, particularly the frail and overwrought Keith Relf, but Eric was the one who gained most people's respect. He was both witty and charming and it was sad to see his early enthusiasm for the band eroded.

I went to see them at the Marquee—it may have been the same day of the interview—and saw the crowds of fans lining Wardour Street. Their performance was a flurry of shaking maracas, yelling blues vocals, and frantic drumming, while Eric's guitar was used to build up a crescendo of noise on a long version of 'Smokestack Lightning,' in a style known as "a rave up,' a precursor of the freak out, when all inhibitions are lost in a maelstrom of noise and rhythm. The excitement the Yardbirds created at The Marquee was partially captured on their album Five Live Yardbirds (Columbia), recorded in March 1964, and released in January 1965. They had actually recorded an earlier album, with authentic American blues singer Sonny Boy Williamson, at the Crawdaddy club, in October 1963, but it was not released until a couple of years later in January 1966. It was Giorgio's idea to lumber the Yardbirds with old Sonny Boy who drank lots of whiskey and terrified the English lads. He later went back home and told how none of them could play the blues. At least they could all play in the same key together.

The Yardbirds had indeed won a fanatical following during their early years and Eric Clapton's reputation as a star soloist spread across the country. His solos on such driving tunes as 'I Wish You Would' caused a sensation. But the rest of the Yardbirds, notably Paul Samwell-Smith the bass player wanted the band to move on from the blues to experiment with song writing and new recording techniques. Eric never seemed to share this enthusiasm and became a somewhat enigmatic figure as far as the rest were concerned. When the band wanted to wear long hair, he kept his short. While the others smiled cheerfully in photographs he scowled at the camera. He was constantly changing his image. One minute he was a mod and wore bouffant hair-dos. Then he become a moustachioed beatnik. It certainly helped to keep people guessing and ensured his photo file was invariably out of date.

I went to watch them recording 'For Your Love' at IBC Studios. London in December 1964. It was the first time I'd been in a recording studio. In those days this was the equivalent of gaining entry to Buckingham Palace or the inner sanctums of the BBC. It was fun to watch them devise 'For Your Love' with organist Brian Auger playing harpsichord and Denny Piercy adding bongos. It was a clever imaginative pop production, but Eric grew increasingly uncomfortable with the direction the band was taking. The Yardbirds were always arguing and resented their manager treating them like naughty children.

Eric confessed later: "Playing with The Yardbirds put me in a very strange frame of mind. I was all screwed up about my playing and I'd lost a lot of my original values. My attitude within the group got really sour and it was kind of hinted that it would be better for me to leave. I was withdrawing into myself, becoming intolerable, really dogmatic."