Guitar Legends: Eric Clapton – the birth of a legend
From upstart beginnings in the early 60s, Eric Clapton soon established himself as one of the decades’ most lauded players. Here’s a Part 1 guide to the man jokingly dubbed Slowhand.
Eric Clapton. Image: Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images
When it comes to breadth of influence in the world of electric guitar, there are few more powerful than Eric Clapton. Over a recording career which has spanned 56 years (he’s now 75 years old), Clapton has pioneered new guitar/amp combinations, named a specific tone, has his surname as descriptor for playing vibrato a certain way, set world records when selling his own guitars, set a record for Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame awards, equalled Grammy-winning hauls and more.
All that kerfuffle about the ‘Clapton is God’ graffiti in the 60s? Well, if a God is indeed omnipotent and influences the behaviour of all of us (guitarists), then maybe it’s not so ridiculous? If obviously very flattering.
Conveniently for this two-part overview, of EC’s sounds and style, Clapton’s mammoth career has unfolded in quite definable stages… as has his style and gear. From his first taste of a £2 Hoyer guitar and fandom of Bluesman Big Bill Broonzy, Clapton has immersed himself in his craft.
He once said he loved the blues as it mirrored his own feelings about his troubled youth. “It was always one man with his guitar versus the world. He had no option but to sing and play and ease his pain.”
Here’s to a lifetime of hurtin’, decades of playin’, and some Godlike gear.
In his own words
“Early in my childhood, when I was about six or seven, I began to get the feeling that there was something different about me.”
“I sought my father in the world of the Black musician, because it contained wisdom, experience, sadness and loneliness. I was not ever interested in the music of boys. From my youngest years, I was interested in the music of men.”
“When all the original blues guys are gone, you start to realise that someone has to tend to the tradition. I recognise that I have some responsibility to keep the music alive… and it’s a pretty honourable position to be in.”
Early beginnings…
Of when he got given that first Hoyer aged 13, Clapton’s since admitted he initially “got nowhere” on the guitar, saying, “I started when I was 13… and gave up when I was 13 and a half.” For a while, he became obsessed with cycling instead.
But Clapton cannily managed to sell the Hoyer two years later (for a fiver!) and replaced it a George Washburn Spanish acoustic and suddenly made progress. Coupled with hearing Robert Johnson’s King Of The Delta Blues Singers LP plus Muddy Waters, Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee and Big Bill Broonzy, at around the same age, Clapton was up and running. By early 1963, he’d fallen into an apprenticeship in local R&B band The Roosters, playing a 1960s double-cut Kay Jazz II his grandmother (‘mother’) Pat helped buy on hire purchase.
The Yardbirds and the red Tele
Soon he was asked to join The Yardbirds, where he started to really make his name. “There was only a handful of bands, and anyone that could play Sam & Dave, Stax and Motown was a master,” Clapton wrote in his autobiography.
He was then playing a red 1963 Fender Telecaster, with plenty of pickup power. But that guitar wasn’t even Eric’s – it belonged to the Yardbirds’ management, and after Eric had left the band, his replacement Jeff Beck played it prior to acquiring his fabled Fender Esquire.
Five Live Yardbirds is a crucial document of Brit R&B: it’s possibly viewed through rose-tinted glasses due to Clapton’s later stardom as it’s rough, raw and shoddy in places, and don’t expect perfectly-phrased soloing from ‘God’ at this point. But Clapton clearly had fire… even when playing in the wrong key. He became famous in his own right. As Yardbirds drummer Jim McCarty, noted, “Normally, everyone would go for the lead singer. It was different in our band.”
Clapton played a Gretsch Chet Atkins Model 6120 on Ready Steady Go! with The Yardbirds, but that wasn’t his either, nor in likelihood the Fender Jazzmaster he occasionally toted. Even back then, there were big flashy ‘video guitars’ that simply looked ‘better’ for the cameras.
There was one iconic guitar he did buy back then, though, even if it was more often seen in the hands of bandmate Chris Dreja: a cherry red 1964 Gibson ES-335. It was essentially the ‘genuine’ version of his early Kay II, and would rise to the top later…
British blues and the Beano burst
Clapton didn’t hang around long in The Yardbirds, famously turning his nose up at the ‘commercial’ direction of the psych-pop banger For Your Love. Ahh, the unwavering principles of youth. No matter, as it was best for both parties.
With incomers Jeff Beck (then Jimmy Page), The Yardbirds would blossom into a great hard psych-rock band: Clapton sought solace and purist knowledge with Brit blues elder John Mayall. “John Mayall wanted me to play in the clubs, in his blues band, with no mention of any TV or records or none of that,” Clapton remembered approvingly.
But Eric was already well-known enough to get named billing on the LP sleeve and Blues Breakers Featuring Eric Clapton quickly became known as ‘The Beano Album’, due to the comic book Eric was holding on the cover photo.
It was The Bluesbreakers that Clapton delivered his first major contribution to modern guitar 101: plugging a Gibson Les Paul Standard into a Marshall combo. The ‘Beano’ LP was Clapton’s first fully realised album as a blues player and also a seminal blues album of the 1960s. This is the real beginning of the Clapton legend. EC’s Les Paul itself was later stolen but from Clapton’s memories of it’s “very slim” neck it’s assumed it was a 1960 burst, and the impact of the album itself has added much to the folklore of ’58-’60 bursts.
Clapton’s tone on the album remains a benchmark in electric guitar over half a century on, and all blues rockers in its wake – from Peter Green to Joe Perry to Gary Moore to Joe Bonamassa – would be bowled over. Fledgling producer Jimmy Page worked on some Bluesbreakers B-sides, remembering, “When Eric was with the Bluesbreakers, it was just a magic combination. He got one of the Marshall amps, and away he went. I thought he played brilliantly then, really brilliantly.”
Clapton’s influence persuaded Gibson to reintroduce the singlecut LP from 1968 (from 61 to 68, they were only making SG ‘Les Pauls’ – a guitar Les Paul himself wasn’t particularly fond of, and from which he had his eventually name removed).
The big win was the t-o-n-e. Les Paul humbuckers were high output in comparison to the competition, and the Marshall itself was a 45-watt 1962 model 2×12 (JTM 45). It had UK-made KT66s output valves, which have a more refined mid-range and clearer top end than more regular EL34s or 6L6s: the modification was first made by Marshall to reduce costs. Learn some more about valves here and here.
Eric mostly recorded at full stage volume, even in the studio. When engineer Gus Dudgeon complained everything was simply too loud on the ‘Beano’ sessions, Eric simply replied: “That’s the way I play.” Clapton eventually had to be baffled into his own booth, with blankets, pillows and a grand piano cover as insulation. According to Mayall, “Even then, his playing made everything in the studio rattle.”
A fool and a firebird – Cream rises to the top
Despite Mayall providing Clapton with fame, encouragement and access to his own extensive blues record collection, the then 21-year-old guitarist remained restless. As with the Yardbirds, he again left after just one album. He now wanted to reach new musical lands, but his next outfit Cream was always going to be a difficult vehicle to travel in. The trio loved jamming together, but were they a ‘real’ band?
Things didn’t look promising when they couldn’t even decide who should sing – not because they were fighting for the spotlight, but because none of them wanted to! It didn’t help that there was open hostility between Bruce and Baker.
Named as they were “the cream” of mid-60s London’s musos, a “sensational groups’ group” according to Melody Maker, the alliance of Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker soured after 30 months, in what Eric later called a “shambling circus of diverse personalities”. They all knew it from the get-go. Baker later noted: “There were problems very early on. The only thing that held the band together was its success.” But when Cream did successfully gel, they were immense.
Eric’s Bluesbreakers Les Paul was stolen from an early Cream rehearsal, never to be seen again (not for definite, anyway) but Andy Summers – then of Zoot Money’s band – sold him a replacement.
Clapton also had what’s known as the Bigsby ‘Burst, another Les Paul, but this guitar seems to have been borrowed albeit on a long loan. The Fresh Cream