Eric Clapton | The Selvedge Yard

Sept. 7th, 1976 — Joe Esposito (Elvis Presley’s Memphis Mafia buddy) wearing a Led Zeppelin 1975 Tour T-shirt at the Holiday Inn hotel with Elvis in Pine Bluff, Arkansas.

I Was There. And more… as told by Elvis Presley’s step-brother

“I was 14 years old when Led Zeppelin came to Memphis in 1969. As the youngest step-brother to Elvis Presley, I was living at the Graceland Mansion. My divorced mother Dee Stanley married Elvis’s widowed father Vernon Presley on July 3, 1960. Anyway, I went to the concert with a friend and was blown away. John Bonham playing his solo on Moby Dick, Jimmy Page stroking his Les Paul with a fiddle bow, John Paul Jones laying down heavy bass, and of course the driving voice of Robert Plant. While growing up as Presley’s step-brother I was no stranger to great music. But it was Led Zeppelin that became MY MUSIC while growing up the King.

I started touring with Presley in 1972 when I was 16. I always had Zeppelin’s music with me. In 1974 while at the LA Forum Led Zeppelin came to see Elvis. Later that night after the show Robert, Jimmy and John Paul came to Elvis’s suite at the hotel across the street from the Forum. I met them as they came off the elevator and walked with them to Elvis’s room. I introduced myself, shook their hands and got their autograph. Of all the people I met during my life with Elvis, it was only Led Zeppelin’s autograph that I asked for.

Continue reading →

“Clapton is God.”

From the desk of Contributing Editor, Eli M. Getson–

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.

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.

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.

Continue reading →