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“Clapton is God.”
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From the desk of Contributing Editor, Eli M. Getson–
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Have you ever thought you had it all? Once-in-a-lifetime talent, looks, fame, adoring fans, beautiful women on your arms, private jets and chauffered cars at your beck and call. People hang on your every word, and yet, you have that nagging feeling something is not right. Is this it? Who am I? What purpose does my life have?
Then one day it hits you– hammers you actually. You get total clarity and begin to change everything you’ve known and held sacred. So it was when Eric Clapton heard The Bands Music from Big Pink. It was like all of a sudden he heard this record and said to himself, “Now this is what music should sound like.” For me personally– this has always been one of the most interesting moments in rock music history.
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1968, NY– Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce of Cream. –Image by © Michael Ochs Archives/Corbis
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Back in 1968, Clapton was leading Cream, playing to sold-out arenas, enjoying massive commercial success, and can sample all of the earthly pleasures that are thrown the way of a guitar god. Then he hears this album, by Dylan’s back up band no less, and decides Cream is done, and that the music he’s been playing is self indulgent crap. In a way it makes sense. By ’68 Clapton and Cream were so big, they could just show up and people would go crazy. It was probably becoming a little too easy to “mail it in” on any given night. Also, don’t under-estimate the power of ego– it always rears its ugly head. Clapton’s bandmates Jack Bruce (bass) and Ginger Baker (drums) were both virtuosos in their own right, and the competition to “out solo” each other at live shows probably got stale as well. Ultimately all this, and the loss of comeradery and togetherness, took its toll. Imagine taking a plane across the pond, then separate limos to different hotels, with each band member having totally different entourages to boot. It would soon spell the end for of one of rock ‘n rolls most spectacular trios ever.
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Robert Whitaker, Eric Clapton, 1967, © Collection Robert Whitaker.
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Ultimately, I speculate here, by ’68 Clapton may have felt he had scaled the heights as a guitarist– there was him and Jimi Hendrix and everyone else– and in his private moments he may have sat wondering what to do next. Like many of us he was looking for something to inspire him, to make him work at it. So when he put Music from Big Pink on his record player he listened once and was mesemerized, he listened a second time and may have been slightly confused (the vibe of the album makes it sounds like in could have been made in 1868), he listened a third time and began to feel that spark that every artist feels when they have a creative rush– and by the fourth listen Cream was done.
The Selvedge Yard 