Eric Clapton and his music

Of the producers you've worked with, does anyone stand out as your favorite?
1 think Tommy Dowd is always the number-one man for me. Phil is a dif ferent kettle of fish. I love him, and he's a great musician also, so he's got another angle. If I could get the two of them to produce a record together [laughs], that would be it for me. They're my ideal producers.

Before going in to overdub a solo, do you ever plot in advance what you're going to play?
Yes, and it never fails to come off as miserable. If I start, I'll compose the whole solo, and it will turn into a sym phony. It's that whole Leonard Bernstein thing: If we start with a little motif and play it three times, and the third time we introduce a coda, and that coda be comes. . . . Suddenly, you've got a sym phony on your hands, which everyone can spot straightaway as being boring. And I'm not recognized for that; people don't like me to do that.

After you've played a spontaneous solo that's a keeper, do you then follow it pret ty much note for note onstage?
Sometimes. It's just a question of fa miliarity - finding a reference point to come back to that you've established, so you can go off and come back to that place again.

Cream's live version of "Crossroads" [Wheels of Fire] is often cited as one of the best live cuts - and live guitar solos - ever recorded. Was that edited from a longer jam?
I can't remember. I haven't heard that in so long - and I really don't like it, actually. I think there's something wrong with it. I wouldn't be at all surprised if we weren't lost at that point in the song, because that used to happen a lot. I'd forget where the 1 was, and I'd be playing the 1 on the 4, or the 1 on the 2 - that used to hap pen a lot. Somehow or another, it would make this crazy new hybrid thing -which I never liked, because it's not what it was supposed to be. What I'm saying is, if I hear the solo and think, "God, I'm on the 2 and I should be on the 1," then I can never really enjoy it. And I think that's what happened with "Crossroads." It is interesting, and every one can pat themselves on the back that we all got out of it at the same time. But it rankles me a little bit.

"Forever Man" has a fatter guitar sound than you've gotten in a long time.
I used a different Strat and put heavy strings on it, and I tuned it down two frets to D. Not an open D; just straight, but a whole step down from concert pitch, so I could play the riff as if I were in E.

Do you think your guitar playing is dis tinctly British?
Not at all. I think all of the members of my band, myself included, are Amer ican, musically. I can see it much bet ter in some ways than Americans can be cause I'm over there in England, look ing at it from a distance. I have a lot of inbred stuff that I heard as a kid, which I wouldn't have heard in America. Eng lish folk music is very much kind of in the back of my head, subconsciously. So, I suppose that comes out every now and then in terms of meter and length.

But it was your arrival - along with Beck and Page - that helped launch the concept of "English guitar playing."
It's that same thing about being able to listen from a distance. Perhaps the au dience needed to hear it coming from a long way away, although it's identical to what's in their backyard, really. For instance, Stevie Ray Vaughan is exact ly what 1 wanted to be when I was 16 years old. He's doing it right here, you see.

Stevie Ray has an abundance of that sort of youthful, aggressive one-upmanship.
Yes, I would imagine I'd be up against it if we got together. We just missed down in Texas - we were trying to connect. But I know if we'd gotten together, it would have definitely taken on those proportions.

Have you found yourself in those situ ations?
Oh yeah. See, what he's picked up is a genuine black attitude - which is great. Like Albert King. Buddy Guy is the same, but he's much more humanitar ian, let's say [laughs]. Not Albert or Freddie King. Freddie could be pretty mean, but subtle with it. He'd make you feel at home, and then tear you to pieces.

Obviously, your early playing was large ly defined by how aggressive and forceful it was, but did you have that killer in stinct, also?
Absolutely. And it's still there. I just don't get into a jamming situation very much these days. But if I do, yeah, it has to be there. What else are you going to do? You can't just sort of walk off. But there is a way of approaching it. There would always be a loudmouth in these situations - just like in samurai films. If you ever saw The Seven Samurai, the best swordsman of all gets into a situa tion where he doesn't want to fight, but he's up against this real bull of a man who's saying he's the best. The samurai finally says, "No, I won, but if you in sist, you can say that you won." That's what I do: I let the loudmouth, or the villain, mouth off, get it all out of the way, and then I just come in very qui etly like B.B., I would imagine. Just one note or something that will shut every one up - if you can find it [laughs]. It doesn't always work.

In the Movie Moscow on the Hudson, Robin Williams plays a Russian sax ophonist who gets blown off the stage by his idol of the sax. Did you ever have an ex perience like that?
I think I've had that several times, and every time it's been healthy, as well as very heartbreaking. When it's done to you by someone who you really hero-worship, the first thing you feel is real betrayal. The bottom line of all these re lationships should be a colleague feeling, and if that is taken away, you really feel like your father has just kicked you out or insulted you. That's very painful. At the same time, it teaches you to grow up very quickly and become self-reliant.

It must also feel weird to jam with your idols and smoke them.
Oh, yeah. That's also been possible. There have been times I've played with, for instance, B.B. or Freddie - Freddie and I did a lot of tours together - where the main contingent in the audience was my followers, who hadn't heard of Freddie King. So it would be possible for me to win in that situation just by be ing me - even if what 1 played wasn't better. You have to be aware of that, and not allow it to happen.

Did tiny of the ARMS [Ronnie Lane's benefit tow for multiple sclerosis] shows get into all-out shootoitts among you, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page?
It was very much there between me and Jeff, and I think it was also there between Jeff and Jimmy. But because I'm not familiar with Jim my's playing - never worked with him - we had no time to develop a rapport. So, as a three-part thing, it couldn't happen. I also think Jim my was pretty much under pres sure as it was, and to have thrown him more of that would have been unfair. He was very nervous about going out there. He needed to be sup ported, and not attacked from every angle. He was very frail.

Beck seemed to be the most blatant gun-slinger.
I think he is. And at that time, and for many months after that, I began to think of Jeff as probably being the finest guitar player that I'd ever seen. And I've been around. I still think that way, if I really sit down and mull it over. Carlos Santana, of course, is very high on my list; for pure spirituality and emotion, that man is number one. But there's something cool and mean about Becky that beats everyone else. I have to hand it to him in that respect. Although he was involved in that ARMS thing, he was pretty detached. He could have been anywhere; he was just going to play, and that was it - never mind what the whole thing was about. He does actually have that love for Ronnie [LaneJ as well, but when it came to playing, forget everyone else. For some reason, on that show, 1 couldn't do that. I felt like I was almost an organizer of the thing, so I couldn't actually get off the ground very much.

As a member of the Yardbirds, your role was basically to solo. Is it hard to car ry over that gunslinger, sharpshooter atti tude when you've got bigger responsibilities in your own group?
Of course it is. As a sideman, up un til that point where you come in for your solo, there's been no light on you, so you come in absolutely fresh, and that's your big moment. Whereas when you're in the front all the time, and you're singing one of your songs, it's all you;
so when you play the solo, it's still you [laughs]. There's no dynamics to it, in that respect. Yeah, that's a bit tough sometimes.

Do you think it actually affects what you play?
Yeah. I don't deliberately change the solos, but 1 think of devices, or ways of playing the solo, to make it more in teresting. I went through a period of trying to minimize everything - take shorter solos - and it was very badly re ceived. My idea at the time was that by minimizing it, I would make it more potent, but I didn't succeed at that. The audience was right in many ways. I was trying to look at it like I was B. B. King or J. J. Cale, but B. B. is B. B. and I'm me. It's no good adopting someone else's per sonality or philosophy.

/s there any one blues player who you think you're most similar to in terms of at titude?
I think Buddy Guy.

He's a lot wilder.' He sometimes bends up to God knows what pitch.
Yeah, that's where I stop [laughs]. I've seen him do some mad stuff, which is fantastic. But I take what I like, and then I stop there.

Who was the most stimulating guitarist you ever played with?
[Longpause.} I think of all the people I've ever played with, the most stimu lating in an onstage situation was Fred die King. That would closely be fol lowed by Carlos [Santana]. Because in both those situations, we had time to get to know one another - to know when to stop and let the other one play, or when to push or not to push. That takes time - the length of a tour. In a working band, 1 think Albert |Lee] and myself were the most stimulat ing pairing, but in a very different way - more camaraderie.

What about musicians other than guitar players?
I think [guitarist/keyboardist] Steve Winwood is very high on the list. Also, harmonica players, like the guy that used to play with Muddy Waters - Jerry Portnoy. Saxophone players, as well. 1 once worked with King Curtis, and that was frighteningly good - some thing I wanted to repeat forever. He had exactly the same idea about what lines to play as I did. It was like another instrument with the same person playing it.

You've become a model for a whole gen eration of blues and rock guitarists. You must hear a lot of your own style in the work of other guitar players.
I do, and the funny part is, the parts that I recognize as being directly taken from my playing are the parts about my playing that I don't like. Funny enough, what I like about my playing are still the parts that I copied. Like, if I'm building a solo, I'll start with a line that I know is definitely a Freddie King line, and then I'll - I'm not saying this hap pens consciously [laughs] - go on to a B.B. King line. I'll do something to join them up. So that'll be me - that part. And those are the parts that I recog nize when 1 hear something on the ra dio - "That sounds like me." Of course, it's not my favorite bit. My favorite bit is still the B.B. or Freddie lines.

When you say you were copying various blues guys, you were still adding quite a bit of your own. For instance, your version of "Hideaway" [Blues Breakers] differs quite a bit from Freddie King's original.
Exactly. I was copying feel, I think, by that time, or atmosphere.

That's a hard concept for a lot of play ers to grasp.
I started working on what the guy would live like. I would picture what kind of car he drove, what it would smell like inside. Me and Jeff [Beck] had this ideal of one day owning a black Cadillac or a black Stingray that smelled of sex inside and had tinted windows and a great sound system. That's how I vi sualized these players living. That's what feel is all about. If I wanted to emulate somebody, I would try to picture what they would live like and try to live that way. You develop this kind of image.

So even if your image isn't completely ac curcite . . .
It helps you get to somewhere -which is another thing altogether.

Do you continually go back to the same sources when you need inspiration? Can you always get inspired by hearing Freddie King or Robert Johnson?
Or Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, yeah. And it's not so much technique that I listen for; it's content, really, and the feeling and the tone.

Is that what set Robert Johnson apart from the rest of the Delta bluesmen?
Yes, absolutely. It was so intense. It was difficult for me to take it when I first heard the album [King of the Delta Blues Singers\. A friend and I were both blues fanatics, and he was always a little bit ahead of me in discovering things. We went through Blind Blake and Blind Willie Johnson - working our way backwards, to the root of it - and he fi nally came up with Robert Johnson. He played it for me, and 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. First hearing it, it was just too much anguish to take on.

It's like hearing an exorcism.
Exactly.

Cream has been credited as the fathers of heavy metal, progressive rock . . .
This is what I'm beginning to find out [laughs]. Someone threw this at me two months ago, and it honestly nev er occurred to me until then. I always assumed that Zeppelin was the be ginning of it. I think you could actu ally say that there was a concept there that was picked up on maybe more than the music.

You did sort of legitimize jamming on stage.
Right. That's probably what it's all about - the lengthy guitar solos and im provisation. That may have been a step ping stone for a lot of the heavy metal things that happened.

Do you think the faster-is-better trend of younger players misses the point that you see as the purpose of guitar soloing?
Well, it's not the way I would ap proach it, but it's hard to form a judg ment on it when you don't know what it will turn into in the end. It may be that they're developing a whole new frame of reference. See, what may hap pen from that is a kind of rebellion in five or ten years' time that may take it back to where we recognize it. Or it may just become brand new. I would hate to say, though, that they're all missing the point.

Do you feel that there's a bond tying you with the generation of lead guitarists that followed you, such as Eddie Van Halen?
If Eddie Van Halen likes the way I play, then assumedly, he must like what I liked. But if he can recognize all of that and still do what he does, then we have to accept that he's onto something that we're not really clear about. Because he couldn't be doing what he does and recognize Robert Johnson without there being something valid going on. He is very fast, and to my ears, a lot of the time he kind of goes over the top. But that's because I'm a more simple player. Maybe 1 would play like that if I had the technique. I've heard that he slowed down records of mine to learn the solos. That's dedication! I don't know quite how to respond to that.

Did you ever slow down records to learn solos?
Not slow them down. Well, early on, I did that with Duane Eddy's records - singles like "Cannonball."

The guitarists who've played in your band have differed enormously. Is there a common prerequisite you look for?
With players, again, technique isn't as important as personality and feel. I can hang out with a guitar player for a very short time and either get a feeling from being with that person or not. I may get a feeling from being with that player, but I may not want to hang out with him. He may be dynamite - very aggressive and very to-the-front - to the point where I think, "I can't handle this more than twice a week." Every night would just be too much. It would be too demanding. Constantly having to prove yourself is not very relaxing; it frays your nerves. I always end up with people in my band who I can really get on with as people, and that is what they play like, as well.

Playing with someone as extrovert ed as Jack Bruce must have pushed you night after night.
Night after night, to the point where it was really just a battle, a war. I don't think he did it deliberately; it's just the way he is as a musician and as a guy. I mean, he has to clear a space around him, and you can't get very close a lot of the time.

In the video of the ARMS show in London, you switched to your Explorer when you did the slow blues. Do you still see the Gibson as your blues guitar?
In some respects, yeah. When I get up there onstage, I often go through a great deal of indecision, even while I'm playing. If I've got the black Stra tocaster on and I'm in the middle of a blues, I'm kind of going, "Aw, I wish I had the Les Paul." Then again, if I were playing the Les Paul, the sound would be great, but I'd be going, "Man, I wish I had the Stratocaster neck." I'm always caught in the middle of those two gui tars. I've always liked the Freddie King/B. B. King rich tone; at the same time, I like the manic Buddy Guy/Otis Rush Strat tone. You can get somewhere in the middle, and that's usually what I end up doing, trying to find a happy medium. But it's bloody anguish.

Is there any consistent setup that you try to have all your guitars conform to?
Yes, all of them need to be about 1/8" in the action, and I like it to be constant all the way down. I can't stand it if the nut is low, and the action gets higher as you go up the neck. I always take the wang bar off and have five springs, and just tighten the whole thing right up. I like frets to be generally somewhere between a Strat and a Les Paul. Les Pauls' are too thick, and Fenders' are sometimes too thin. The Fender Elite is very nice because it's a blend. The neck on Blackie, the Strat I play all the time, is probably my favorite shape. It's al most triangular on the back - V-shaped - with a slightly curved fingerboard, as opposed to the flat one. That, to me, is the best.

Is the Strat you use for slide set up dif ferently than Blackie?
Yes, it has a very high action with a higher nut and thicker strings. I always use Ernie Ball strings.

What year is Blackie?
I don't know, because it's made up of about three different guitars. I was in Nashville in 1970 with Derek And The Dominos, and I went into the Sho-Bud shop, and in the back they had a rack of Stratocasters and Telecasters and various Fenders, all going for $100 each. No one was playing them then. Everyone was going for Gibsons.

Because of you, largely.
Yeah, maybe [laughs]. Well, I wasn't alone. But Steve Winwood had kind of gotten me interested in them, because he was playing a blond-necked Strat. It sounded great. Then I thought, "Well, yeah, Buddy Guy used to play one," and I remembered a great picture of Johnny Guitar Watson playing one on the Gangster of Love album. So I just bought a handful of them and took them all back to England. I gave one to George Harrison, one to Steve Win-wood, and one to Pete Townshend. I kept three, and out of them I made one, which is Blackie. I just took the body from one, the neck from another, and so on. I have no idea what year the various parts are - so it's actually not a good collector's guitar at all. Well, it is now [laughs]. I feel that that guitar has become part of me. I get offered guitars, and endorsements come along every now and then. Strings & Things from Memphis tried to get me interested in a fairly revolutionary-looking guitar, the St. Blues. I tried it, and I liked it, and I played it onstage - liked it a lot. But, while I was doing that, I was think ing, "Well, Blackie's back there. If I get into this new guitar too deeply, it's tricky, because then I won't be able to go back to Blackie. And what will happen to that?" This all hap pens in my head while I'm actual ly playing [laughs]. I can be miles away thinking about this stuff, and suddenly I shut down and say, "This is enough. No more. Nice new gui tar. Sorry. You're very nice, but. . . ." That's when I drag the old one back on, and suddenly it's just like jumping into a pool of warm water.

If you come across a creative block, and you've had Blackie in your hands for a week, can you pick up another gui tar and come up with a new idea?
Yes, it will happen like that. Usual ly, it happens with an acoustic guitar or a gut-string or, as was the case with the album, the Roland GR-700 [guitar syn-thesizerj. I got the pedalboard and the memory bank; the guitar is interchangeable. I bought the new model [guitar] and couldn't play it, because it kept sliding off my lap. So, I got one with the old Strat shape, and the electronics are more or less identical. And that in spired me, just picking it up and play ing a chord. But generally, see, I don't play the electric much at home. I usu ally play this acoustic - I got it from the Santa Cruz Guitar Company - because it's got a nice sound.

Even though you have Blackie, your fa vorite Stratocaster, do you still have the temp tation to shop around and collect guitars?
Yes, and there are still guitars that I want; they're like the Holy Grail for me. There's the fat-bodied guitar that Chuck Berry played in all the publici ty photographs of him duckwalking: a Gibson ES-350. It's got those black [P-90] pickups. I'm always on the lookout for a good one of those. They're actu ally very rare. I know of a couple, but the people won't part with them. Or if they do want to part with them, they'll quote such a high price, you say, "Well, no, that's actually silly." Because I won't play it; I only want it because it looks good. On the other hand, there will come a time when someone will walk into the dressing room with the guitar, and you don't know why - it just is magnificent - and then you have to buy it. It could be a Les Paul, an Explorer, a Stratocaster, but it's just so per fect. You can tell by the way it feels that it's been played. If you can pick up the guitar and tell that someone great has played it - you can actually tell that - then you want to take it and endow yourself with what the guitar's got.

Do you still have a basement full of guitars?
I've still got them all, but I turned the basement into a recording stu dio. So all the guitars were sort of delegated to people to look after for me, and there's a warehouse where we keep most of our equip ment. Some are with friends or my manager or in my house or with my roadie Lee Dickson, and [Who roadie] Alan Rogan has some that have drifted through his hands. They're scattered about. I actually don't know how many are out there, but I know I've got a good few. I love them all. The best Les Paul I ever had was stolen during rehearsals for Cream's first gig. It was the one I had with John Mayall, just a regular sunburst Les Paul that I bought in one of the shops in London right after I'd seen Freddie King's album cover of Let's Hide Away and Dance Away, where he's play ing a gold-top. It had humbuckers and was almost brand new - original case with that lovely purple velvet lining. Just magnificent. I never really found one as good as that. I do miss that one.

Judging by the sound you achieved on the Blues Breakers album, you must have been turned up to 10 on your amp.
Maybe it was. We'd gotten used to it, obviously. 1 remember reading an in terview with [engineer] Gus Dudgeon where he said that I put my amp in a cer tain place, he went over and put a mike in front of it, and I said, "No, put the mi crophone over there on the other side of the room - because I'm going to play loud." I think that sounds like it would be true. We all had a definite idea of what they were doing in Chica go when those blues records were being made. John Mayall had ascertained that you could tell by the sound, the com pression that was going on on the Lit tle Walter records, for instance, that maybe they were recording the whole bloody thing through his vocal mike. Because when he took his mike away from his face, the band would get louder - which was a great sympathetic thing to happen. Then when he'd start singing, they would die down. We had definite ways of thinking about how we want ed to be recorded. That still appeals to me a great deal - having one mike in the room and everyone arrange them selves around it to their satisfaction. So, yeah, I was probably playing full-vol ume to get that sound, and then I'd place myself in a way that it would be a good mix for the band. I was playing a Marshall 60-watt.

Your tone changed between the Blues Breakers album and Fresh Cream.
Yeah, we were using bigger Marshalls by then - 100-watts. And we used the stacks in the studio. Fresh Cream was done in England, and Robert Stigwood pro duced it. I don't know who the engineer was. Then we went to America to do the Murray The K [package] show, and while we were there, they invited us into the Atlantic studio, and I played with Tom Dowd, and Felix Pappalardi became our producer. So Tom Dowd was the one get ting the sound on Disraeli Gears.

It sounds like you're using fuzztone on tunes like "Outside Woman Blues" and "Swlabr" [Disraeli Gears].
There may have been. What we used to do was trip down to Manny's every day and pick up whatever was new. That's how I got my first wah-wah. Jimi [Hendrix] was knocking around New York then, too, and we used to trade things. I have no idea how many gadgets were passing through the studio then. But it may have just been straight, with the Marshall full up. In those days, it would get that quality.

Did you go straight from the Marshall amps you used with Cream to the Mu sic Mans you used in the 70s?
No, I was on Fenders for quite a while. Fender Showman was my number-one amp during Derek And The Dominos. When I got the Tulsa boys together, [bassist] Carl Radle came up with a Music Man, and I re ally got into them. The first ones were really great, but then I started blowing them up a lot, and they started sounding very thin. So I went back to Marshall recently. On the ARMS tour, I was using a little old Fender blonde Twin.

You've recently started using a chorus ef fect- for instance, on "Same Old Blues" [Behind the Sun].
I'm a funny person like that. If I like it, I'll forget it's there. I've got a pedal-board that was built for me by the man who works with Steve Lukather. It's got a bank of presets, but I just use the one chorus and then a deeper chorus. I sometimes put it on the minimal one and forget that it's on - just leave it. Then if I go back to normal, I think, "God, that sounds so straight." Very rarely now do I just play completely straight.

The story goes that between the time you left the Yardbirds and when you joined John Mayall, you locked yourself in a room in the country with nothing but your gui tar. Is that true?
Mmm, yeah, that's true, but they're missing something there. I actually stayed with a friend whose ideas had al ways interested me - Ben Palmer. His approach and philosophy of music - and life, too - were such that I re garded him as a bit of a guru. Through the Yardbirds, I was starting to feel very lost and alone. I was being made to feel I was a freak, and I started won dering if I was a freak. They all want ed the simple things of success and the charts, and what was wrong with that? "What's the matter with you? Why don't you want this?" And 1 be gan to think that I was really crazy. So I went off to see Ben Palmer, and it was just like, "Oh, yeah. Of course you've done the right thing." He immediately made me feel human again.

So the improvement in your playing was more a function of clearing your head than just woodshedding.
Clearing my head and playing the gui tar as well. He made me feel normal again, and 1 wanted us to form a band together, but he was off the music scene. \Ed.. Note: Palmer later played piano on the Eric Clapton & The Powerhouse ses sions, and became Cream's roadie.] He didn't want to get involved again. So I just hung out for about three or four weeks with him and we played togeth er, and 1 got strong again, really. Strong in my ideas and my feelings and my self-confidence in what I was doing.

Once you eventually did achieve enormous success, with all its attendant problems, did yon long to be just a sidernan again?
Yeah. I'm still not absolutely sure about this, but it feels to me like you can only really do exactly what you want when there is no pressure to be what you've become popular for. When you play a concert, there's so much pressure on you to do old things, new things, what the audience wants; and when you become successful, you've got to bow to that to a certain extent. That cuts off a lot of your creative energy; it's quite limiting.

When you first got interested in blues, what was the scene like in London?
Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies were already going before I played guitar - or while 1 was doodling. I'd go see them, and the Stones were forming - it was very stimulating. There was something about seeing a band play live what you'd only heard on records - it was fantas tic. The first person 1 ever heard in Eng land bend notes was called Bernie Wat son. He was in the original Cyril Davies band. Their hit was "Country Line Spe cial." The story on Bernie Watson was that he was a classical guitar player who liked to do this for fun. He was the orig inal one who sat down with his back to the audience. Never stood up. And he was the first one I saw play a twin-cut away Gibson semi-acoustic. He was re ally a bit of a cult hero. He was a very mysterious man. I never spoke to him.

Were there any seminal inspirational records yon heard in your formative years?
Both of the Robert Johnson albums [King of the Delta Blues Singers, Volumes 1 and 2; Columbia] actually cover all of my desires musically. Every angle of expression and every emotion is ex pressed on both of those albums. Then Ray Charles Live At Newport album [At lantic, reissued on Ray Charles - Live, Atlantic], B.B. King's Live at the Regal (MCAJ, The Best of Muddy Waters [Chess], the Howlin' Wolf album with the rock ing chair on the cover - hasn't got a ti tle [Howlin' Wolf, Chess, out of print] - Jimmy Reed's album Rockin' with Reed [Veejay], One Dozen Berries by Chuck Berry [Chess, out of print], the Freddie King album with "I Love the Woman," Freddie King Sings [King]. Those were the formative ones.

When you need to be inspired, do you still turn to old records?
I can get stimulated by new things, too, but to retap the root of what I'm doing it for and what started me off, then I would need to go back to an old record. The first thing I'd think of then would be something like the Blind Willie Johnson album where the interview is on one side and then him playing "Nobody's Fault But Mine" [Blind Willie Johnson - His Story, Folk ways]. That's probably the finest slide guitar playing you'll ever hear. And to think that he did it with a penknife, as well [sighs]. Of course, if I come up to date, Stevie Wonder or Carlos are always great. We had a funny confrontation. When Carlos was Devadip and I was heavily into the booze, we met up in Chicago, and he said that he would like to get me interested in his guru [Sri Chinmoy]. He took me to his room, and he had this whole assembly for the prayer - a little shrine and candles and incense. I said, "Well, I can go for all this - if you'll do my trip with me, which is we'll drink a bottle of tequi la together." He agreed. So I went in and meditated, and I thoroughly enjoyed it - because of the way Carlos present ed it as truly spiritual, not a cloak or an act. I got a lot from it. And I almost felt funny about having to then take him the other way. But he went for it. We sat and listened to Little Walter and a bunch of blues records and drank tequi la all night - got smashed and very sil ly. To this day, I've heard reports that he enjoyed that part of it more than he did the meditation [laughs]. The spiritual thing never overcame him or converted him into anything oth er than what he already was - a very sweet, beautiful man.

On the first Yardbirds album re leased in America, For Your Love, which cuts did you play on, and which featured Jeff Beck?
I'll have to think. I'm on "Sweet Music," which was produced by Manfred Mann, "Got to Hurry," "I Ain't Got You," the middle of "For Your Love," "1 Wish You Would," "A Gertain Girl," and "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl." I'm not sure about "I'm Not Talking" or "My Girl Sloopy." That's Jeff on "Putty" and also playing slide on "I Ain't Done Wrong."

You're quoted as telling Paul Samwell-Smitli to promise never to play lead guitar again after the first time you saw him on stage with the Yardbirds.
[Laughs.] Well, I'll tell you one thing, to give you an idea of how different we were. I remember him arriving at re hearsal one day saying, "I heard a great record today." I said, "What's that, Paul?" "It's called 'The Elusive Butterfly of Love.'" Does that give you an idea of how different we were [laughs]! He was pure folk-rock. They approached me to play on the Box of Frogs album [reunit ing several former Yardbirds], and I would have done it if I hadn't been working; I was in the studio myself. But I'd love to guest with them.

On "I Feel Free" [Fresh Cream], are you playing in the same key as the rest of the hand? I don't mean that to sound critical ....
[Laughs.] No, I know what you're saying. I think I was inspired by Jack's kind of dadaist way of thinking. That was a really weird song to do. But he want ed to have a double standard going; he wanted the band to sound straight but with a kind of weird twist to it. So he wanted to make a pop single that was just not quite what it seemed to be. When 1 got to my solo, I thought, "Well, I'll play a solo that sounds a little off the wall, as well." So I chose the lines to be sort of third harmony

Was it the personal duties of the three of you that made Cream so much different than just a blues band?
I think it was the sense of humor; it wouldn't allow us to be any one par ticular thing. If it got too much into a straight rendition of anything, one of the members would have to sort of elevate it from just being repetitious or stereo typed. One ingredient would become par ody, and then it would become some thing original. We were also very, very image-conscious. We were trying to do something totally original.

Your image now is pretty laid-back. But even the existence of Cream would suggest a much cockier side.
The cockier side is still there - and always has been there - under a disguise. It's just that if you put yourself up for trouble all the time, it's easy to see what your moves are - if you've got a po tential enemy, where he can hit you. My whole thing has been to be aggressive with my playing underneath a disguise of being laid-back. So when it comes, they're not expecting it.

During the Beatles' " White AIbum " pe riod, you and George Harrison were obvi ously influencing each other, and he made great strides as a guitarist.
Well, he was very much held down by the others. When we met up, I was trying to boost his confidence a lot and tell him that he was great, because he was great. It was just that he was in a pow erhouse band where everyone was fight ing to get to the front - and they really did fight. There were the most cruel confrontations going on all the time. Then he got outside the group and came across Delaney & Bonnie, and they re ally wanted to hang out with him, not just because he was a Beatle, but because he had great musical ideas. A real mutual admiration society built up between us.

How did the slow coda at the end of "Layla" [Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs] come about?
Jim Gordon wrote that and had been secretly going back into the studio and recording his own al bum, without any of us knowing it. And they were all love songs com posed on the piano. And we caught him playing this one day and said, "Come on, man. Can we have that?" So he was happy to give us that part. And we made the two pieces into one song. That's Duane [Allman] on slide on the ending.

Is he playing the high melody in the head fretted or on slide?
Both. Well, he played in standard tuning, so he could do both whenever he felt like it. He could start a line fret ting it and end it on slide. I can't play slide in standard tuning; I'd really like to be able to. I use open A - like open (G a step up [EA EA C# E].

When you perform "Layla" onstage, von sometimes play the high part ami sometimes play the low part. Who did which on the record?
Well, Duane and I played all of it together. We found that whenever we were going to do an overdub, neither of us would do it alone. We'd either do it in unison or in harmony. So we did all of it together.

All artists aspire to really make a state ment, a masterpiece. Having done that with "Layla," what sort of pressure does that create?
Within, a great deal. But that's pres sure mainly caused by fans or managers or record producers. It's always so sub tle, you begin to wonder if it is just you who's making it that way. The greatest things you do are always done by mis take, accidentally. I had no idea what "Layla" was going to be. It was just a dit ty. When you get near to the end of it, that's when your enthusiasm starts building, and you know you've got something really powerful. You can be so-so about it as you're making the track, singing the vocals, but if as you start to add stuff and mix it, it becomes gross, then you really are in charge of something powerful. What I'm saying is, when I started to do that, it didn't feel like anything special to me. If you try to write something that's already got all of that, it's impossible. You just try to write something that's pleasing, and then try to get it to that

Your fans' image of you as a guitar hero has often almost eclipsed their perception of what made you a guitar hero - your tal ent. Did that ever cause an identity crisis?
Yes. Quite a lot. I fall for the same thing. What they base that on is very much a kind of Western - I mean, wild West - gunslinger image. And that ap peals to me, as well. The crisis comes when I find that I'm not the fastest - or that, in fact, that isn't the important part. When the crisis comes, you have to sit down and think about it serious ly - if your music is suffering because of how potent your image is.

How do you focus back on the essence?
You just have to stop, really. It's like doing anything over and over again. It becomes meaningless; it's just repetition - until you deliberately make yourself stop because you're fed up and it's making you depressed. You go away from it, have a breather, and come back. I find that if I ban myself from playing the guitar for about a week - that's the longest I think I could ever do it - when I pick it up again, 1 have an idea. You've gone to the guitar because you've got an idea- a line or a riff - but you don't do that; you do something completely different that you had no idea you were going to do. Something inside you that is uncontrolled wishes to ex press itself, and that's where you begin- you look at that. Then, of course, the minute you start to polish it and hone it and take a look at it too much, it's gone again. You need to - I need to, anyway - stop and let the thing express itself without controlling it. It's all that outside influence and self-con scious approach to your playing that ac tually ends up destroying it.

Do you often surprise yourself with something you've played?
Yeah. It usually is when you've made a mistake or you're not concentrating, or when you're just having too much fun. You try something, or you just go to the wrong fret, and you suddenly are doing something that you didn't want to do, but you like it. Then you try to repeat it, and you get back into that polishing syndrome again, and it will be come boring. It's usually when you're making mistakes that you find out there are other places to go that you hadn't planned out.

A lot of guitarists talk about this sort of zone they get into on their best nights when the guitar almost seems to be playing itself. When does that take place?
For me, it comes from outside as much as inside. I'm very, very influ enced by the band. If everyone is play ing really well, you can't help being in spired by that, and that drives you on, and suddenly you get to this point where you know that everyone, in cluding you, is having a great time - and you're at the front of it, having the greatest time of all. You get to what seems like a peak. But suddenly you start thinking about what a great time you're having, and then it's gone. Or what I always do, without fail, is hit a bum note. I'll really be out there flying - I think, "God, I'm flying!" - then [hums a sour note], and it's all over. [Laughs.] Everyone in the band just goes, "Aw, man!" You look around, and they're all smiling. But if you can get to that, you can get back up there within the space of a few minutes.

Did those nights happen more often when you were a certain age or with a cer tain band?
I think with Mayall's band it was al ways very easy. With all the bands I've been with, I've found that time and place where you could just fly. Blind Faith was so short-lived, we didn't ever real ly groove. When we were rehearsing and hanging out before we ever toured, we did a lot of great stuff.

What's your objective when soloing?
It's almost like a samurai, again, in the pacing. I really want to hit everybody, but it's got a lot to do with timing and space. The objective, really, is to make everyone feel like they've just been struck by a bolt of lightning. And that's very difficult to do [laughs], time after time. It's the whole thing of construc tion and pacing and maybe making them wait - which I don't do enough; 1 really would like to perfect that. Make them all wait for the first note of the solo, and then hit exactly the right note so they're all satisfied. You only do that every now and then - I do, anyway. I see guitar players who seem to know ex actly what they're doing and set it all right. For myself, one night a week 1 may get all of them like that, and then the rest of the nights I may get one solo ex actly right. It all depends on how you start the solo - if you start it wrong, you've really got no chance.

If you're not getting the tone you want, it must be hard to overcome that.
That's the hardest one of all - if the guitar doesn't sound good. I've got a lot of problems at the moment because the guy who mixes the sound and I have to make a compromise. He puts delay or re verb or whatever on the board, because if I put it up onstage, he has problems, and it gets very "washy." So I'm stand ing on the stage hearing it dry. I have to live with that - and I want to hear that ambience. That dry tone can be uninspiring, so you have to be double-positive about what you're feeling.

Are there physical or technical tilings that you used to be able to do at, say, 22 that you find harder now?
No, because I was never involved in pyrotechnics or gymnastics. I'm very lucky in that way. I never set myself too high a goal. It was always tone and feeling, for me. Now, sometimes 1 can find it difficult to reach that because you can get jaded a lot easier as you get old er. A lot of the fire is gone, so you have to stop and take a breather - even when you're onstage, you can do it. But because I never really went full-out for technique, I never set myself up for something too hard to keep up.

What, if anything, would you like gui tarists to have learned from you?
I think exactly that: the economy. There's a certain construction that's based upon the feeling controlling the technique. I think that has to be the case - not the other way around. If you re ally want to do something tricky, just do that once - don't keep repeating it. It has to be an expression of feeling.

At what point did you feel that you'd graduated from being a disciple of the American blues greats to being a peer?
I've never really felt that. It's almost like a generation gap. Those guys are my heroes, and they'll never stop being my heroes. They'll always be ahead of me, because they were to begin with, and you can't change that. I'll never overtake them.

Does that have anything to do with the sociological functions of blues - their being black Americans and your be ing a white Englishman?
Yeah. It's absolutely real. You're saying that the music should be able to transcend that? I think there's a happy medium somewhere that can be worked out, but to forget all the sociological things is a mistake.

Hut at some point, did you feel that you were transcending the process of pulling influences from different blues players and creating a personality of your own on guitar?
I don't think I started to feel like that until I was with Derek And The Dominos. All through John Mayall, I was actually copying - consciously copying, although sometimes it doesn't sound like it. All through Cream, I was lost, really, trying to find an identity but not really knowing whether I had one or not. It wasn't until I formed Derek And The Dominos and we played live that I was aware of being able to do exactly what I wan ted and was happy with it.

With each band, did you have a change in musical philosophy?
Yeah, I think so. Even now, I get flashes, or upheavals, and in the mid-'70s I was having them quite a lot. The end of the Dominos came too soon, and that left me very high and dry as to what 1 was supposed to be. I'd been this anonymous person up until that time. It was difficult for me to come to terms with the fact that it was me, that 1 was on rny own again.

After the Dominos, you went on the mad billed simply as Eric Clapton. Was that a big step?
I think it was a massive step, which really shook me. Because then I had to come to terms with the fact that I was also regarded as a pop musician, as well as a rock and roll musician, as well as a blues musician. So I had to present, and contrive in some way, an image that suited all of these categories without disowning any part of my audience. My ego wants to please all these areas. At first, I actually went onstage starting with an acoustic set - did three or four songs with a Martin - then got into some rock and roll and a few blues. All the '70s were like that in one way or another - try ing to find my way. Later, I went through a period of thinking maybe I'd just do blues and R&B all night. But you can't ever satisfy everybody, or even your self. Because if you do all blues, then you'd like to do "Let It Rain" or "Badge" because they're lighter and fun to play. So now I'm coming to terms with the fact that I've got enough material under my belt to do exactly what I'd like: maybe one or two blueses a night, a few more on some nights.

Your stage shows have always been completely devoid of theatrics, yet you've openly admired people like Jitni Hendrix and Pete Townshend, who are just the opposite.
I think that was very shrewd on my part to choose a role that I could be fulfilling at the age of 60 [laughs]. I was reading where Sting said that he was go ing into films because he didn't want to be like Mick Jagger, cavorting around the stage at 40. Well, I've never done that, so I don't have to worry. I can do what I've been doing all my life.

What do you see yourself doing ten years from now?
More or less the same thing. Turning 40 was the nicest thing to happen to me in 10 years. I had a great time in my twenties, but I was very serious. Anyone who knew me then will tell you I was the straightest person that ever lived. Be cause of my attitude towards playing mu sic, getting high was out - no time for that whatsoever. When I turned 30, I did all of that, as much as I could. It got me into a pretty bad way. By the end of my thirties, I was really fed up. When I turned 40, I felt a lot more relaxed - because I didn't think I was going to live through my thirties. Drugs, music, religion -everything was tugging and pulling me in different directions. Whatev er i got into, 1 was desperate to be the best, to get it right. Now, that kind of need isn't there.

Did your drug period and your reli gious period overlap?
Yeah, they did. They were all kind of caused by the same thing, which was a desperate need to tran scend something or to become some thing other than what 1 was. I find I'm not so manic about that now. I'm a lot happier with what I am, even though I don't know what that is. But I can accept it more. I don't want to be somebody else.

Do you feel like you now know where you're at spiritually?
Yeah, I do know where I'm at. I sup pose I'm kind of a casual Christian. I be lieve that if I pray for something, then it may come along; if I don't, then 1 don't get it. You know, it's just good to be good, if you can be good.

You've always been perceived us a mys terious, enigmatic figure. Do you see your self as a paradox?
I am that. Very much so, to myself. I've had a long time to get used to it, and I am very much a chameleon. I can be altered and changed beyond recognition by something that no one else can un derstand. It's very difficult to live with me because of that. My moods change a lot because of something I've imagined has happened. Yeah, I really don't un derstand myself very well at all, but I'm not unhappy with that. I'm quite used to it, and I accept it, and I know the warning signs, so I can avoid head-on collisions. As far as the changes in my appearance, they were gradual, actual ly; it's only when you see pictures side by side that they look shockingly con trasted. They coincide with gradual shifts from one way of thinking to an other. But my deepest wishes to play are basically still motivated the same way. The music or the playing at the bottom stays the same.
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Gene***
По-моему, на английском Амазоне Blind Faith давно продается.

2Alex Red:
>По-моему, на английском Амазоне Blind Faith давно продается.
http://www.amazon.co.uk
Release date: May 30, 2005. Not yet available: you may still order this title. We will dispatch it to you when it is released by the studio.

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ROLLING STONE INTERVIEW
(August 25, 1988)
BY DAVID FRICKE

ERIC CLAPTON WAS STROLLING DOWN A NEW YORK CITY street one day when a guy walked up to him and said, "You're Eric Clapton, right?" Clapton said, yes, he was. To which the guy replied excitedly, "You're history!"
"He meant it in the nicest possible way," Clapton says with a bemused grin in his manager's London office, "but he didn't realize what he was saying. Can you imagine how it feels to be referred to as a legend while you're still alive?"
Such are the perils of being one of rock's most enduring superstars. Clapton's reinvention of the electric guitar with his blues-obsessive image in the Sixties was equaled only by that of his good friend and soul mate Jimi Hendrix. With Cream, Clapton set new standards in rock for free improvi-sational daring and electric blues thunder. With Derek and the Dominos, he combined stunning instrumental technique, rich melodic invention and striking lyric portraits of romantic bliss and trauma to create one of rock's great in-and-out-of-love song cycles, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. While his subsequent solo outings have been comparatively low-key explorations of rootsy Americana and pop craftsmanship, Clapton has a continuing stream of good-groove hits to his credit (his inspired make-over of Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff," "Lay Down Sally," the recent "Forever Man"), and in concert he is still quite capable of setting his six strings afire.
Any remaining doubt diat Eric Patrick Clapton, 43, has a right to walk through the Portals of Immortals has been erased by Crossroads, the Biograph-style boxed set released this spring, which chronicles his first quarter century in rock in exhaustive detail, beginning with his first demo recordings with the Yardbirds. But Crossroads - thanks to producer Bill Levenson's scholarly diligence and musical good taste - doesn't mummify Clapton's legacy. It is the vivid portrait of a man searching for identity, physical release and a little peace through music. It's all here - his ambitions, his weaknesses, his phobias - fleshed out with a wealth of previously unissued live recordings and studio outtakes that highlight particularly enigmatic chapters in Clapton's life, like Derek and the Dominos' descent into drug oblivion, unwittingly captured in the five unfinished tracks from the band's star-crossed second LP.
Clapton got the chills when he listened to that material recendy. It was the first time he had done so in over fifteen years. "It got too much for me," he says. "Old memories started coming back; old issues raised their head. I think of the people in that band and what happened to them. It is strange to know that I was part of that band."
Clapton had no part in the track selection for Crossroads. Nor did he want any. "It would have been an egotistical thing for me to do. I find it difficult to see it in perspective, but it's nice that someone feels that way about my work."
During the two extensive sessions that took place for this interview, though, Clapton - modestly dressed in a black shirt and black trousers, often stroking his beard absent-mindedly as he tried to recall a certain anecdote - amiably walked down Memory Lane using Crossroads as his map, talking with clarity and candor about every stage of his career. Between cigarette puffs and sips of hot tea, he discussed his blues apprenticeships with the Yardbirds and with John Mayall, relived the glory days of Cream, crawled through the wreckage of Blind Faith, rued his reoccurring drug and alcohol lapses of the Seventies, divulged his secret preference for romantic ballads over smoking guitar solos and admitted that being called God in the Sixties really wasn't such a big deal
"It was just graffiti," he says, dismissing the mythic anxiety that supposedly dogged him after the phrase "Clapton is God" started appearing in London subways during his tenure widi Mayall. "It didn't have any deep meaning. It was just a kind of accolade. They could have said anything. Clapton is fantastic.' It was nice, and I didn't argue with it I have never yet understood what the fuss was about"
To Clapton, Crossroads is not the entire book of his life, just an overview of some of the most significant chapters. The day before the first session for this interview, he completed a new soundtrack for the upcoming film Homeboy, starring Mickey Rourke and Christopher Walken. In June, Clapton temporarily joined Dire Straits for a string of reunion shows, capped by a top-o'-the-bill set at the Nelson Mandela tribute concert at Wembley Stadium. Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler is returning 'the favor by joining Clapton's band for a US concert trek, opening September 1st in Dallas. Add to that the usual load of guest session work and a new album projected for 1989. "God" and his guitar aren't exactly lying around gathering dust.
"Why can't I have another box in another twenty-five years' time?" he asks, only half-kidding. "It's a long time, but maybe ni make it Of course, it would be a pretty thin box."

You've spent much of your career trying to reconcile musical ambition with superstardom. Doesn't 'Crossroads' actually aggravate the problem? It is certainly the ultimate compliment - you're a certified living legend - but the set's emphasis on your past implies that your best work is behind you.
The most difficult part for me to accept is to still be coming out with product, up-to-date material, and it won't be treated with the same kind of respect as the stuff that is in that compilation. It's almost as if it's two different people living with my name. I run into people who say, "Aw, yeah, you were in Cream. What a great band." And it's like nothing has happened since.
I don't worry about it that much anymore. I'm probably better off making records for people who haven't heard me before, because they'll hear it with fresh ears, than I am making records for people who've heard me over all those years, constantly comparing me to the past You can sometimes improve on the past, but you can't recapture it And there are always going to be people saying I was better then.
Was there a time when that kind of criticism really hurt you?
It caused me to lay off a lot in the Seventies. I lost confidence because I thought I'd done it all. People were really infatuated with Cream, and that, for me, was just a passing stage. That's why I didn't play as much lead guitar on those albums in the Seventies. I was very, very nervous that I'd said it all.

The chronological sequencing of 'Crossroads' highlights the contrast between your blues obsessions in the Sixties and your later emphasis on song and studio craftsmanship, which isn't nearly as adventurous.
That's quite correct. But it's not as black-and-white as that for me. I'm still really concerned with pushing forward, but a lot slower and a lot more gradually than I used to. And I don't see myself tied to any particular music form anymore. I enjoy things on a far broader spectrum. I was an intensely dedicated musician in my early twenties. It was something I wouldn't care to live through again, because I missed so much of the rest of my life. And I'm enjoying that now. Music can become an obsessive thing with me, really obsessive. A lot of that has since dropped away. Whether my music has suffered or not is not the point My life is a lot better for it

'Crossroads' starts at a very appropriate place, your fast demo recordings with the Yardbirds in late 1963. Do you remember anything about the sessions?
It was the first time I ever heard myself played back, and that was a shock. You realize how clumsy you sound. What feels so sophisticated and smooth as you're doing it sounds so rough on playback. We were very, very nervous.
I remember time passing and doing some more sessions. I remember doing "I Ain't Got You" and thinking, "Well, this is just like falling off a log." In the short amount of time that passed between those sessions, we really got polished very quick.

What ambitions did you have as a guitarist at the time?
I don't think my ambition had formed itself then. I was in that state of mind where I didn't know what I liked, but I knew what I didn't like. I was shy of all pop music. I was becoming a blues purist, and I was really working with the Yardbirds to work on my craft, to find a way of making money through music. But I hadn't really decided what I wanted to do.
Leaving the Yardbirds was a perfect example. I didn't want to be part of a group that was going to be on TV doing Tin Pan Alley songs. So when I walked out of the band, I was suddenly skpped in the face by myself I walked straight out of the band into nothing, It was about then that I started to get an idea of what I really wanted.

What was that?
I was preempted. Before I'd even made up my mind, I got the call from John Mayall. I had a fantasy about a blues trio, which was what Cream was gonna be. And I started to think of myself as being the leader of that band. I had no qualifications whatsoever. That proved itself when Cream was formed. The more powerful personality of Jack [Bruce] got to the forefront.

Did you actually play on the Yardbirds' "For Your Lave"?
There's a middle eight in there that has a little riff in it, a little blues riff in it, which is me. That was my concession to being in the band. It was the day after that session that I left.

Were you, aware of any gathering acclaim for you as a guitarist during your Yardbirds days?
You can count on one hand how many white guitar players were playing the blues at the time. I'm not going to say Keith Richards and Brian Jones weren't doing it, but they were more into Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley. I wanted to be more like Freddy King and B.B. King. So I had no competition.

You were number one in afield of one.
Exactly.

Yet by the time you cut the 'Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton LP, John Mayall was giving you star billing, which he never gave later guitarists like Peter Green and Mick Tay lor. Didn't you have any sense of impending fame?
Very much so, and I used it to my advantage a lot The reason John acquiesced so much was the pressure I put on him, in terms of what material we could do. I'm not saying it was an aggressive thing on my part. Being a bandleader for so long and making all those decisions, it was refreshing for him to hand it over to someone he could trust musically to come up with something new.

Did the musical and emotional impact of blues icons like Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters represent an attainable goal for you as an aspiring bluesman?
They were the real thing, and I was the imitator. That's fine as long as you keep it like that But as soon as you start to do the real things yourself and try to compare it, you see how far behind you are. That is the difficult part That is what made me give up trying to be the 100 percent bluesman. Because I realized I would always be that far behind my ideal.

Was that a contributing factor in your decision to leave Mayall?
Don't forget that at that point I was only turning twenty-one. You had this dichotomy of a guy who was a serious blues musician and was also a very wild
young man. There was this adolescent side of me that wanted to get out and see the world. So I was split down the middle. If it hadn't been for that, if I'd been totally dedicated to the band, I might very well still be with him. As it was, I was feeding on a lot of other directions, and I started to look at the whole Mayall thing as a dead-end street And dial's when Cream started to be an appealing idea. It was the complete freedom of starting something that had no bounds.

Given that you quit the Yardbirds over "For Your Love," it seems a little contradictory that Creams first single in 1966 was "Wrapping Paper" a piece of Jack Bruce-Pete Brawn pop faff that showed none of the group's blues or jazz prowess.
You get a recording studio, put a group in it, and you'll never fail to be surprised by what comes out of it The way Jack kind of introduced it to us was as very avant-garde, because it was so opposite to what we would be expected to do - "No one's going to get this." And that was part of our attitude, that we would cock a snoot at the world. They were expecting heavy rock, well, we won't give 'em that We'll give 'em a nice little sophisticated dance-band tune.
Sure enough, it flopped. But it shocked everybody. It was the last thing they wanted to hear. But if they came to see us at a gig, they got what they wanted.

How much did the emerging San Francisco rock aesthetic affect the jamming aspect of Cream? Jack Bruce has said thai playing at the Fillmore far the first ime in 1967 was a revelatory experience, because here an audience that just said, "Hey, play anything!"
With Cream, any one of us could have played unaccompanied for a good length of time. So you put the three of us together in front of an audience willing to dig it limitlessly, we could have gone anywhere. And we did. Maybe we should not have been allowed that much luxury. We probably started burning out at that point. We were just going for the moon every time we played, instead of confining it and economizing.

The acclaimed live version of "Crossroads" on 'Wheels of Fire' was edited by engineer Tom Dowd from a much longer performance. How much longer was the original?
It may have been eleven minutes long. God knows. And I don't understand that either. There's a couple of big myths about me. This thing about God and this thing about "Crossroads." I think that's a terrible solo. I saw a thing with Joe Walsh the other day, talking about that sola I really appreciate that respect for it, but I can't figure out what the hell they're talking about.

What's so terrible about it?
It's messy! I admit it's got tons of energy, but that alone doesn't make it. I don't like it Isn't that funny?

How was "Sunshine of Your Love" written?
We'd been to see Hendrix about two nights before at the Saville Theatre, in London. He'd been here for about six months, and he played this gig that was just blinding. I don't think Jack had really taken him in before; I knew what the guy was capable of from the minute I met him. It was the complete embodiment of the different aspects of rock Si roll guitar rolled up into one. I could sense it coming off the guy. Jack took a little longer to realize what was happening. And when he did see it that night, after the gig he went home and came up with the riff. It was strictly a dedication to Jirni. And dien we wrote a song on top of it

That riff was Jacks? Everyone identifies it with you.
No, I don't take the credit for that

What part of the song did you write?
The turnaround in the chorus. And some of the lyrics too.

You said you originally envisioned yourself as the leader of a blues trio. Do you think Cream might have survived its personality problems if you had asserted yourself more?
It was not possible to do. I did not have, nor do I have now, the amount of personal power or aggression to keep the other two guys in place. And I wouldn't want to. It wouldn't have been right to try and exercise authority over them. Jack is a far superior musical brain than I am, and he could argue his way out of anything I could insist on. Ginger [Baker] would simply not accept it It would be too much of a battle for me to take it on.
Cream was a shambling circus of diverse personalities who happened to find that catalyst together. And when it burned out, it burned out We couldn't save it And probably didn't want to, until later. We all had regrets over the years. I miss those good times, the companionship. I have never been, since then, with two other guys that I felt so completely akin with. I also got hurt quite a lot in that band, really badly hurt And ever since then, I have managed to keep a certain amount of distance between myself and the other musicians I've worked with. I don't let anyone get that close to me anymore.

Your next band, Blind Faith, was probably the most aptly named combo in rock history. Were you or the others - Baker, Steve Winwood - prepared for the overexpectations that greeted you?
I think Steve felt more unprepared than I did. I wasn't that far out of Cream when we started Blind Faith. It wasn't a big deal for me to go and play for those kinds of audiences. And I remember being concerned about Steve's anxiety. When we started touring, what was wrong was that we weren't ready. We weren't committed enough to each other to survive it

What do you think of the 'Blind Faith' album in retrospect?
I think it's a lovely album. I like its looseness. It's like a supersession record, except it's got a little something more than that. You can feel there's a lot of longing in the band.

"Presence of the Lord' was your first serious stab at song-writing. Why didn't you sing it on the 'Blind Faith' LP in stead of Winwood?
I couldn't make that key. I wrote it in C, which is pretty high for me. Also, I was very overwhelmed by Steve's presence as a singer. I don't think I could have stood out in the studio and sung it while he was there. I was totally without confidence at the tune as a singer.

Were you feeling particularly religious when you wrote it?
It was a true statement of what was happening in my life at the time. I had somewhere to live. I was actually having a good rime after leaving Cream, feeling very secure. I was in a great frame of mind.
That was just a song of gratitude. I'm not a religious person, never have been. But I've always found it very easy to say thank you to God, or whatever you choose to call him, for whatever happens, which is nice to me. It's no problem for me to be grateful.

How much say did you really have in the making of'Eric Clapton' your first solo album? It's got your name on it, but it's more like a Delaney and Bonnie record in terms of sound and style.
Absolutely. In a way, it was a vehicle for Delaney's frustrations with himself. He may have been projecting himself on me a lot And that comes across a lot on the record. I don't mind it at all. I enjoyed it and learned a lot in the process.
He was prepared to be my coach, and no one had ever offered that to me before. He was the first person to instill in me a sense of purpose. And he was very serious about it. He was a very religious person, saying things like "You've got a gift If you don't use it, God will take it away." It was quite frightening when I looked at it that way.

The hit single "After Midnighf marked the beginning of your].]. Cale fixation. How did you first hear about him?
Through Delaney. He was an old friend of J.J.'s. He played me the original version of "After Midnight," which isn't dissimilar from the one on the Eric Clapton record. But it wasn't until later on that I really became an appreciator of J.J.

Did you consciously try to sing like him?
I never thought I did. His style is so difficult. It's actually harder to sing quietly, almost whispery, like he does and get it right. You can make a lot of blunders. So I tried to get somewhere in the middle. But I was definitely trying to get something out of myself that was similar to JJ.

Your first record with Derek and the Dominos, the original single of "Tell the Truth," produced by Phil Spector, was killer stuff, full of screaming guitars and wild vocal harmonies. Why was it recalled so soon after its release?
I don't remember. I remember it didn't do well.

It wasn't out long enough to do well!
Perhaps. I've never had a handle on the business. I just do not understand it all. Don't forget that Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs died the first time out I don't understand that either. I don't even know what made it sell later. Did it sell on merit? Or because they found out it was me? I have no idea. I'd rather not know.

Looking back now at the power and musical clarity of 'Layla', it's hard to believe it was recorded amid such heavy drug consumption. Didn't your habit get in the way?
We were very fit We would have saunas, go sunbathing and swimming during the day and then go to the studio and get loaded. It didn't affect the playing or the sessions. But as is the way with drugs, it would catch up later.

Did touring aggravate the Dominos' drug problem?
Yes. We scored a massive amount of coke and H [heroin] before we left Florida and took it on tour. I don't know how we got through it with the amount we were taking. I couldn't do it; I would die now. Even the idea of it frightens me. But it definitely wore the band down and introduced a lot of hostility that wasn't naturally there. It drove a wedge between each one of us.

By the time of the Dominos' 1971 sessions for the aborted second album, were you past the point of no return?
Money and dope and women were getting so far involved with our nucleus thrat we couldn't communicate anymore. I remember it came to a crunch when one day Jim [Gordon] was playing the drums, and he heard that I'd made some remark about a drummer in another band. I don't remember making the remark, but he got up from behind his kit and said, "Why don't you get so-and-so in here? He could play it better than I could!" and walked out. Or maybe I walked out. Somebody walked out And we never went back into the studio again. It was that dramatic.

There is something very dark and haunting about those unfinished tracks on 'Crossroads,' of something falling apart, poisoned beyond repair.
There was a feeling of real sadness there, of futility. The tapes stayed in the studio. I never went back. Nor did the others. The fact that the tracks are out now is fine. But it was a closed book. There was no going back. It was time to move on. Or time to just go and hide and rest

How does it feel playing "Layla" now, almost twenty years later?
I'm incredibly proud of that song. To have ownership of something that powerful is something I'll never be able to get used to. It still knocks me out when I play it

It's one of the few rock songs that can truly be described as "majestic"
You know what? That riff is a direct lift from an Albert King song. And I don't have to pay royalties because . . . [He hums the riff] Hmmm, maybe I do [laughs]. It's a song off the Born Under a Bad Sign album ["As the Years Go Passing By"]. It goes, "There is nothing I can do/If you leave me here to cry." It's a slow blues. We took that line and speeded it up.
I've tried to re-create the sense of that again and again when I've done albums. And it cannot be done. It pales in significance. I've realized it's pointless. Just leave it be.

Did you fall out of love with the guitar in the Seventies? The emphasis on LPs like '461 Ocean Boulevard' and 'Slowhand' was more on laid-back grooves than torrid solos.
For most of the Seventies, I was content to lay back and do what I had to do with the least amount of effort I was very grateful to be alive. I didn't want to push it
I was also tired of gymnastic guitar playing. And not only was I tired of it in myself, it seemed the advent of Cream and Led Zeppelin had woken up a whole specter of guitar players who just wanted to burn themselves into infinity. The more I heard about that, the more I wanted to back off. I started to identify with like-minded people like J.J. Cale. When I listened to J.J. Cale records, I was impressed by the subdety, by what wasn't being played.

You also showed a heretofore unknown taste for romantic ballads - ''Let It Grow," "Wonderful Tonight." Was this a secret passion of yours?
I think it's a big challenge to write a love song that isn't all soppy. "Wonderful Tonight" has a little bit of irony in it I didn't write it in a particularly good mood. I wrote it because- my wife was late getting ready to go out I was in a foul temper about it
But there was an album I had very early on by Chuck Berry, One Dozen Berrys, and there were a couple of songs in there that were ballads, which almost knocked me out more than the rock & roll stuff. Because they seemed to represent him more, when his guard was down.
I think it's the same for a lot of musicians. When you see them relax and they pick up a guitar, the first thing that comes out is a really nice ballad, the softer side, because they're so fed up with putting on this big facade.

What do you think of those Seventies and early-Eighties solo albums today?
I can't look at them in a nonrelative way. If it was me now, in a fit, clear state of mind, I would have to say that I could make them better, without a doubt But when I look back and see the state I was in - emotionally, physically, the amount of substances I was consuming - I can't see how they could be any better. I know people who even now go into a studio and don't get that much done and don't consume half of what we were consuming. So we did pretty well [laughs]. Every one of those records has an ingredient of some kind that can move me. And the tracks diat embarrass me I don't play.

On your stronger efforts, the ratio of your musical success seems directly related to the quality of the players pushing you from behind, like the Albert Lee-Ry Cooder band on 'Money and Cigarettes' and Phil Collins on 'Behind the Sun.' What do you look for in collaborators?
I'm a very passive reactor. If there is a forceful character in the mix, I will let it come out rather than try to alter the direction of things so I'm in the front. I don't like to compete musically. If you put me onstage with another guitar pkyer and he starts showing off, I won't compete. I'll let him go. When it's my turn, I'll play what I'm going to play anyway. That's how it is in the studio. At the end of the day, people will say that Behind the Sun and August are really Phil Collins records. Fine, if that's all they can hear, they're not listening properly. I'm in there with as much as I got, but not in a competitive way. If I did, it would be a mess. It works pretty good for me to allow people to be themselves rather than trying to lay down the law.

How did it feel touring with Robert Cray last year? Not only is he a genuine rarity - a young black blues guitarist - but he takes as much inspiration from your early work as he does from that of the great black players like Albert and B.B. King.
The hardest thing for me to come to terms with was that Robert Cray was an intelligent young black man who wasn't interested in making contemporary bkck music. He was more interested in preserving die blues form and enlarging on it
Once I accepted that, it was pretty easy for me to accept the rest And it was fantastic to find out that he did -know about my work and liked it as well as Hendrix and the Kings. The sides to that guy are phenomenal. You should hear his Howlin' Wolf impersonation; he can make your hair stand on end. I've heard people say he sounds just like Albert King or so-and-so. Well, if you really heard him do those people, he really does sound like them. If he wants to impersonate someone, he's got it down. But when he gets onstage, that's Robert Cray.

What's left for you to learn as a blues guitarist?
Simplicity. Roughing it up, cruding it up. That's why I like to go without playing for a while. If you're actually physically incapacitated a bit, it can make it sound nice and rough. Or you go for the more obvious things. And if you play a lot, you tend to avoid the obvious, and that's when sophistication creeps in. The last thing I want to be is sophisticated.

What role does the guitar play in your current sound? It's not the primary vehicle now as it was with Cream or the Dominos.
It's still my voice. When-I hear a piece of music in my head, I don't hear a song. I hear the guitar part So I write words to that and sing it The guitar is first and foremost in my head.
Once it's done that in my head, I use the guitar to embellish the voice. It'll always be there. I'll always try to play with the most amount of soul through the guitar. I can't do that through my voice, because I don't have that ability as a singer. I have to shift that emphasis at some point to the guitar.

The one jarring thing about 'Crossroads' is that it ends with the remake of "After Midnight," which you did for a Michelob-beer commercial. Didn't you see anything contradictory in a former alcoholic doing a beer ad?
You can say that again. Listen, man, I was a practicing alcoholic when I made that commercial. By the rime it came out, I was in treatment; This was December of '87. I was actually in treatment in Minnesota when that came on the TV. I was in a room full of recovering alcoholics, myself being one of them, and everybody went, "Is that you?" I said, "Yep." What was I going to say? It was me when I was drinking.
I don't know if it was offered to me now whether I would do it. But then again, I'm not a preacher. I'm not one to say whether people should be drinking or not. Otherwise, I'd have to come down on all my mates, like Phil, who does it as well. I can only speak for myself. I don't drink anymore, and I'd rather not drink ever again.

'Crossroads' is an exhaustive summary of your entire career, the valleys as well as the peaks. What have you ultimately learned about yourself from it?
The biggest thing I've found is I've gotten near to what I wanted a lot of rimes, but I've never done it That isn't necessarily a good advert for the record [laughs]. I know what I'm capable of, but I don't think I've ever done it
I was reading an interview with Chet Atkins, and he said that he'd been trying all his life to get the sound right and he hadn't yet That blew my mind. And I found it very encouraging that someone that proficient was still discontent with the way he sounded. For me, it's the same thing with this boxed set If I go through and listen to each track, I still would find some way to say, "Well, it could have been better."
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2john lee hooker:
Мы говорили об ЭТОЙ серии...
У меня не все, что есть в их каталоге, но обложку все-таки не нашел...

SergeK -
спасибо, попробую не утонуть :-)

Alex Red -
увы :-(

Blind Faith DVD put on hold
The Blind Faith DVD "Hyde Park 1969" has been put on hold for a temporary period. Sanctuary Visual Entertainment has said that as soon as they are in a position to confirm the new release date, a press release will be issued.

http://www.noblepr.co.uk/Press_Releases/sanctuary/blind_faith.htm