Dear Mr Clapton, I fear I have misjudged you ....

axisus

Late 70s/early 80s I discovered Cream, and I was a big fan. The music had amazing power and energy, just raw excitement. I followed up with a couple of Eric Clapton solo albums, and also his solo greatest hits and ...... I just found his solo stuff sooooooo boring. Since that time I have thought 'dull' anytime that Clapton gets mentioned. I never went out of my way to moan about him, but I had zero interest in him at all.

Anyway .... having said that, things have been really busy at work this year and I have rather enjoyed sticking live concerts on via YouTube as a bit of background entertainment. All sorts of stuff. For some reason yesterday, when I saw a Clapton 2001 concert in the side panel I thought, what the hell, stick it on, it's just background music. Well, I have to say that I was extremely surprised at how much I enjoyed it once he picked up his (very colourful!) strat and got stuck in. I fear that I misjudged and avoided him for much too long! 

If anyone is interested, this is the concert, you need to get about 40 mins in before he gets to heat up a bit with the strat. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FE70D5mRp0

DrCornelius

Went to see Clapton at Madison Square Garden in the mid 90s with my Mrs. She fell asleep mid gig, I mean fast asleep  - not dozing :-)

I've seen him twice and tbh I wasn't bowled over either time but think his 70s solo stuff is great particularly Slowhand,  461 Ocean Boulevard and Backless

sweepy

DrCornelius said:

Went to see Clapton at Madison Square Garden in the mid 90s with my Mrs. She fell asleep mid gig, I mean fast asleep  - not dozing :-)

I've seen him twice and tbh I wasn't bowled over either time but think his 70s solo stuff is great particularly Slowhand,  461 Ocean Boulevard and Backless

Your Wife has excellent taste

DrCornelius

sweepy said:

DrCornelius said:

Went to see Clapton at Madison Square Garden in the mid 90s with my Mrs. She fell asleep mid gig, I mean fast asleep  - not dozing :-)

I've seen him twice and tbh I wasn't bowled over either time but think his 70s solo stuff is great particularly Slowhand,  461 Ocean Boulevard and Backless

Your Wife has excellent taste in men 

I agree sweepy, thanks babe

JezWynd

DrCornelius said:

Went to see Clapton at Madison Square Garden in the mid 90s with my Mrs. She fell asleep mid gig, I mean fast asleep  - not dozing :-)

I've seen him twice and tbh I wasn't bowled over either time but think his 70s solo stuff is great particularly Slowhand,  461 Ocean Boulevard and Backless

I've never been a great fan of his music but 461 is exceptional, possibly due to his situation and state of mind at the time - it's a very emotive record.

DrCornelius

JezWynd said:

DrCornelius said:

Went to see Clapton at Madison Square Garden in the mid 90s with my Mrs. She fell asleep mid gig, I mean fast asleep  - not dozing :-)

I've seen him twice and tbh I wasn't bowled over either time but think his 70s solo stuff is great particularly Slowhand,  461 Ocean Boulevard and Backless

I've never been a great fan of his music but 461 is exceptional, possibly due to his situation and state of mind at the time - it's a very emotive record.

Yup, totally agree. He's a complicated fellow for sure.

rustneversleeps

Just nodded off

Funkfingers

Some Clapton music, I like very much. Other stuff, not at all.

When he is good, he is very, very good. When he is off, he appears to be sleepwalking through a bunch of set moves. 

I still enjoy the album Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs but, the older I get, the more this is because of Duane's contributions. 

Grangousier

Slowhand,  461 Ocean Boulevard and Backless

His famous Racist Drunk period?

JezWynd

Grangousier said:

Slowhand,  461 Ocean Boulevard and Backless

His famous Racist Drunk period?

Casting the first stone? Classy.

RustySpanner

Lots of very good guitarists out there that float my boat and don't happen to be racists. 

If he'd kept his drunken mouth shut and just played his guitar he'd be a hero of mine. 
But he didn't .

It says more about me than him and I'm sure many of my guitar heroes were far far more objectionable than he is, but I can't enjoy his music, purely because of that incident. 

It's incredibly shallow minded of me, a prejudice I can't seem to shake. 
Massively hypocritical on my part, I admit,  but I just can't rationalise it. 

Sorry. 

I'm going to listen to the concert posted above. 
I hope it changes my mind. 

DrCornelius

Grangousier said:

Slowhand,  461 Ocean Boulevard and Backless

His famous Racist Drunk period?

Watch the documentary A Life in 12 Bars and you’ll have a different viewpoint I hope.

He was in a really bad place at the time - depressed and suicidal and  rejecting and alienating everything and everyone he held dear.
He was constantly choc full of booze, drugs and self loathing and could barely function.

He hated himself for huge periods of his life possibly due to childhood  rejection by his mother and tbh I’m really surprised he made it past middle age.

Some of his best friends were black musicians and he did more to champion the original blues men than most. These guys forgave him because they knew how totally f——d up he was at the time. If you watch the clip where he talks about the incident you can see how distraught he is about it.

He has gone on to open and fund a hugely respected rehab facility which has cost him millions. It’s in Antigua too which would be an odd choice for a racist to pitch up.


 

ICBM

^ This. For a very long time I felt uncomfortable liking Clapton, and especially the Racist Drunk period - which is actually my favourite in many ways, I’ll add There’s One In Every Crowd and Another Ticket as albums worth listening to - partly because I grew up in the Rock Against Racism era which was directly inspired by him.

But having watched A Life In 12 Bars I feel I had misjudged him - which is what I thought this thread would be about. He appears ashamed and remorseful about what he did, and not looking for an easy excuse. Alcohol played a huge part, and seemed to have taken him to a very dark place - I’m honestly surprised he survived.

Grangousier

Yeah, that was a mistake, I'm sorry - snappy one-liners seem like a better idea late at night, but they're really not. I mean, I think that period in his life can be described that way. What I was thinking was that it was interesting that the best music came when he was the worst person - on the one hand you have the great records, on the other you have a disaster of a human being. I'm not sure that it's a contradiction - look how many great records were being made during the late 70s by severely fucked-up people. 

(I don't think you have to be a disaster of a human being to make a good record. I am, and I never have. )

There was a lot of that around at that time: in the 60s they'd taken these very young men, from very small worlds (what were the realistic aspirations of someone growing up lower middle-class in England during the 1950s and 1960s), and then put them in a world with no limitations, and then by the late 70s even the ones from cosy middle-class backgrounds like Roger Waters were going mad. I find it extraordinary that so many of us thought that it was a life to be aspired to. 

Clapton is too easy a target, and it was stupid and lazy of me to take aim - I suspect many of us have got drunk while we were in a bad way and said or done something stupid or vicious just for the catharsis of it, it's just that most of us don't do it in front of several thousand people and representatives of the entire music press. The need for that catharsis is more significant than the act itself. 

(Yes, I should probably wait until I've had coffee before I type anything at all.)

DrCornelius

Grangousier said:

Yeah, that was a mistake, I'm sorry - snappy one-liners seem like a better idea late at night, but they're really not. I mean, I think that period in his life can be described that way. What I was thinking was that it was interesting that the best music came when he was the worst person - on the one hand you have the great records, on the other you have a disaster of a human being. I'm not sure that it's a contradiction - look how many great records were being made during the late 70s by severely fucked-up people. 

(I don't think you have to be a disaster of a human being to make a good record. I am, and I never have. )

There was a lot of that around at that time: in the 60s they'd taken these very young men, from very small worlds (what were the realistic aspirations of someone growing up lower middle-class in England during the 1950s and 1960s), and then put them in a world with no limitations, and then by the late 70s even the ones from cosy middle-class backgrounds like Roger Waters were going mad. I find it extraordinary that so many of us thought that it was a life to be aspired to. 

Clapton is too easy a target, and it was stupid and lazy of me to take aim - I suspect many of us have got drunk while we were in a bad way and said or done something stupid or vicious just for the catharsis of it, it's just that most of us don't do it in front of several thousand people and representatives of the entire music press. The need for that catharsis is more significant than the act itself. 

(Yes, I should probably wait until I've had coffee before I type anything at all.)

Classy response sir, well handled ! 

ten77guitar

I watched Life in 12 Bars. It gives you some more insight but I don’t think it lets him off the hook personally. “He was drunk, he had a hard childhood” etc, etc. Yeah so did a lot of other people and much worse than him. I’ve got drunk and said stupid things before. Strangely enough though it never involved going on a racist, fascist-supporting tirade agains immigrants. Maybe I’m just odd. And the argument that he can’t be a racist because he supported black artists is weak. So what? You can be racist against specific groups of people and not others.

Having said that it wouldn’t put me off listening to his music. I still still listen to Led Zep even though Jimmy Page is a paedo (allegedly), or Bowie or Pete Townsend for that matter. I’d draw the line at Gary Glitter and Lostprophets though, but that’s mainly because they’re shit.

DrCornelius

ten77guitar said:

I watched Life in 12 Bars. It gives you some more insight but I don’t think it lets him off the hook personally. “He was drunk, he had a hard childhood” etc, etc. Yeah so did a lot of other people and much worse than him. I’ve got drunk and said stupid things before. Strangely enough though it never involved going on a racist, fascist-supporting tirade agains immigrants. Maybe I’m just odd. And the argument that he can’t be a racist because he supported black artists is weak. So what? You can be racist against specific groups of people and not others.

Fair enough

What I will say is him being drunk wasn't an excuse but he used drink and drugs to cope with far deeper shit going on in his head.  His mum left him at a young age and that trauma deeply affected him. Plenty of people can ride that sort of start in life out and sometimes use it as motivation, for others it can dominate every aspect of their life going forward.

Most of his rant at the gig was against 'wogs' and 'blacks' and slurring that England should be white. So the argument about being racist to certain groups doesn't hold up to me as he was good mates with BB King and Jimi Hendrix to name just two black artists.

I think the guy has been battling MH issues for his entire life and I'm not about to crucify him for some horrible drunken racist comments which afaik were out of character and isolated.

ten77guitar

DrCornelius said:

ten77guitar said:

I watched Life in 12 Bars. It gives you some more insight but I don’t think it lets him off the hook personally. “He was drunk, he had a hard childhood” etc, etc. Yeah so did a lot of other people and much worse than him. I’ve got drunk and said stupid things before. Strangely enough though it never involved going on a racist, fascist-supporting tirade agains immigrants. Maybe I’m just odd. And the argument that he can’t be a racist because he supported black artists is weak. So what? You can be racist against specific groups of people and not others.

Fair enough

What I will say is him being drunk wasn't an excuse but he used drink and drugs to cope with far deeper shit going on in his head.  His mum left him at a young age and that trauma deeply affected him. Plenty of people can ride that sort of start in life out and sometimes use it as motivation, for others it can dominate every aspect of their life going forward.

Most of his rant at the gig was against 'wogs' and 'blacks' and slurring that England should be white. So the argument about being racist to certain groups doesn't hold up to me as he was good mates with BB King and Jimi Hendrix to name just two black artists.

I think the guy has been battling MH issues for his entire life and I'm not about to crucify him for some horrible drunken racist comments which afaik were out of character and isolated.

I’m not crucifying him. I like him and I own most of his albums. It’ll always be in the back of my mind though.

The racist rant was against a certain demographic - poor, black immigrants moving to the UK in large numbers. Successful, rich black artists wouldn’t be included in that because he would have viewed them as equals (quite a common attitude among racists).

axisus

Personally I don't think you can hold that sort of thing against someone for their whole life. If he had constantly supported those views then yes, but he has done the opposite. There has to be the option of asking for, and receiving forgiveness in life. 

 

Mark1960

Check out "Riding with the King". A collaboration with BB King. Some top class blues guitar on that album, without getting too serious! On of the best blues string benders IMHO.

steven70

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