GREG KOT - CHICAGO TRIBUNE | Posted: Saturday, August 4, 2007 11:00 pm
When he was just a directionless teenager at Kingston Art School in England during the early '60s, Eric Clapton began a passionate, long-distance love affair with Chicago. Upon hearing the blues of Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, Otis Rush and Hubert Sumlin on vinyl records, Clapton saw his future as a guitarist.
Since then, he's gone on to sell millions of albums, and become one of the touchstones of rock guitar. But he never forgot his Chicago connection, and remains one of the greatest champions the city's blues scene has ever had.
So it's only fitting that he returned to his spiritual birthplace as an artist recently to host his second Crossroads Guitar Festival at Toyota Park in Bridgeview, Ill. The festival was a benefit for Clapton's pet charity: the Crossroads Centre in Antigua, a clinic for the chemically dependent. It featured 22 artists and bands, including Jeff Beck, the Band's Robbie Robertson, and a Clapton reunion with Steve Winwood, partners in the short-lived '60s super group Blind Faith.
A few minutes after ending a rehearsal with his band before the festival, Clapton, 62, sat down for an interview with the Chicago Tribune. Dressed down in a white T-shirt and fraying jeans, the bespectacled guitarist was in a garrulous mood, clearly thrilled at the prospect of sharing the stage with some of his boyhood heroes.
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Kot: You have a blues holy trinity on this bill: B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Hubert Sumlin. But they're all very different stylists. What did you learn from each of themfi
Clapton: The first one who got to me was Hubert, by virtue of having the earlier records on Chess that Howlin' Wolf made, which Hubert was on. I'd never heard anything like that kind of guitar playing before. It seemed to me almost impossible to define how he was getting those effects. Buddy later came to London and I saw him play live, and got a whole other take of what Chicago blues was like live, and what kind of guitar player he was.
B.B., I got to later on. When I first heard him, for my taste it was a little bit too homogenized, it was commercial blues. He was coming from a whole other area: T-Bone Walker, Big Joe Turner, and Louis Jordan. I hadn't figured out how to get to Louis Jordan. I only got there later in my life, and began to understand where that sat in the history of it all. My interest came from country blues to Chicago, and my interests and tastes were defined by more primitive classics. Anything that smacked of production or background singers, even horns ... it took me a while to digest Bobby Bland and Little Junior parker, because they had orchestras. I was interested in Muddy's kind of thing, small combos, with two guitars, harmonica, bass and drums.
Then I started to see more and more of B.B. and started to realize that his proficiency on the instrument was probably far beyond anybody's reach. It was something else he was doing that these guys would attempt. Buddy would tell you that he grew up trying to imitate him. But I didn't realize that. None of these guys was doing the same thing when I first heard them.
It wasn't until you talk to these guys and set up a meaningful relationship, which is the only way you get them to talk about how they grew up and what they listened to. It was very good to know what they meant to one another, too. There wasn't any rivalry. Everyone seems quite happy to share their space. There's a lot of difference in their styles, but viva la difference.
Q: But there were the cutting contests in the Chicago blues clubs, and the showmanship came about because of this overheated environment where everyone was a great player. Did you have any sense of competition or rivalry with your peers on the British scenefi
A: I only got to know two or three guys that play that style. There was Peter Green, and I can't think of anyone else who played from the same origin, same root of influence as I did. The other guys mentioned like Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page were much more from a rockabilly sensibility. There were very few people drawn to Chicago blues and country blues the way I was and Peter Green was. I suppose because we were so rare, there wasn't a rivalry. It was more of a nurturing. We'd be starving, and if you run into another of your kind, it's something to feed on.
The head-cutting thing is an interesting phenomenon. I've been involved in it, where I've been on stage with lots of players and we try to expand what we usually do, just to make a statement. I never felt it to be anything other than that. Not hostile. I've never seen it done with any malice.
Q: Cream was about three guys pushing each other, and the "Layla" sessions were about you and Duane Allman pushing each other. Do you feel pushed to another level when you're in the company of people who aren't going to back down from youfi Does your own playing benefitfi
A: Yes. It's the difference between being a bedroom guitar player with your headphones and computer to being out in the marketplace, out with the big boys. There's nowhere to hide. I have to step beyond what I've been practicing. I have to go beyond what I know.
It's a gamble. Unless you have a great deal of faith and confidence in yourself, it's tough to step from the known into the unknown, because anything can happen. The guys we admire that made music such a great thing, the history of music, is about going into the unknown. The great players, they like it out there.
Q: It takes you out of your comfort zone.
A: Yeah. Ever since I was inspired by the guys I heard on record, it was my ambition to meet them and play with them in person. One by one, those guys who were my heroes would eventually be in the same room with me.
I can remember meeting Mike Bloomfield, even before I met (Jimi) Hendrix. The guy in America at the time was Mike Bloomfield. There was no one else. You know whyfi He was serious. There was no bull involved. He was an academic musician, he knew his stuff, he knew his roots, he knew where it came from and he knew where he belonged in it. It didn't have anything to do with being on TV or show-biz or commerciality or popularity. He knew about me too.
So from the beginning it was about meeting people that I admire and getting up into a place where I thought, "This is it." What do we dofi We just play, play our hearts out. And I've done that now with just about anyone I've ever listened to. I'm a very fortunate man. I enjoy being in that arena, where we just have to make it up.
Q: Blind Faith is one of the great unrealized chapters in your career. Why return to it nowfi
A: I like the music. Everything was going so fast (38 years ago). We weren't really ready to be a band. We were in the same boat, and the next thing we knew we were playing stadiums across America. The management was nuts and wanted to reap (the money). We were just pushed out there too soon. ... We made one album, where we were just beginning to scrape the surface of our creativity and I was gone, off joining (the American rock group) Delaney and Bonnie, and having fun.
The thing with the corporate commercial enterprise is that the fun can get kicked to death very quickly, and it did. We were snowed under with our obligations. And I've always yearned to renege that, try to get back (to that original idea). Because from Day One, Steve has always been a huge hero of mine. I've always looked forward to seeing him play. There has always been a great deal of affection between us. And that was a sad event, and it took a while for us to trust one another, or for him to trust me, because I was the one who abandoned it.
We enjoy country pursuits as well. We fish and do those kinds of things together. We played a show about two months ago where we did the songs just to see if it would be OK, and it was great. And he is a remarkable guitar player, too. He should have been at the first guitar festival (in Dallas in 2004), so now I am trying to redress that and bring him, and see what happens.
Q: What was the goal with Blind Faithfi
A: My approach was that I had been very inspired by the Band, and Traffic too. Both had been based on a principle that Steve talked about, which is "unskilled labor." Everyone would carry the weight. People would take turns singing, trading instruments, and Blind Faith was a beginning attempt at that principle of making music for fun on a much more amateur scale. It was a reaction to the pseudo-virtuosity that had been laid on Cream.
The supergroup thing had had its day for me, and the expectations were boring. There was only one thing people wanted: drum solos, mad psychedelic solos. And I wanted to be in a band where we could just establish grooves. It might have been that we were influenced by Booker T, the Meters, those groups that played for the love of the groove.
We had a fairly good run-up to it, and then the notion of how to make that marketable, of where you go to play it, what sort of venues, we handed over control of that to management, and we should have applied our creativity to the whole thing. We went straight into world tours playing in massive stadiums of 20,000 people. You play a set, and it's impossible to create a really intimate atmosphere. There is nothing like playing in a club the way you just throw everything in the air and improvise as much as you can. You need that to be in a smaller venue.
Q: Which is why you switched to Delaney and Bonniefi
A: Yeah. Blind Faith had been smaller scale. But we bought into this financial dream of it, too, and that went big. And here's Delaney and Bonnie and no one knows who they are, and the anonymity of it attracted me as much as anything. I dived into that tide. I could become a sideman. I really love standing next to the bass player and drummer. I like that more than standing up at the microphone. I really do.
Q: You've always considered your singing voice secondary to the guitar. But you're a pop star, and your voice is really well known. Did you ever get comfortable with your singing voice and playing that rolefi
A: I think I deliberately sold out a couple of times. I picked the songs that I thought would do well in the marketplace, even though I didn't really love the song. But that's been kind of limited. I feel I've been very true to my principles, even the way I sing. I've always been aware that the best way to cover that slot is to do it yourself, rather than get a singer.
I'm not a big fan of lead vocalists, people who sing but don't play. I never wanted to be in a band where the guy who was up front just sang. I've always thought it better when one of the musicians sings, like Steve Winwood. And Delaney was one of the first people to say to me, "You can sing, you should sing." So, what I've tried to do is get to the point where it's barely satisfactory to myself. I'm competently doing it to the best of my abilities. But I've never really worked on being a singer.
Q: When did you find your voice on guitarfi
A: When I was in the John Mayall band (Bluesbreakers, 1965-66) I really found my stride. I knew I was playing with my own resources and not piecing together other people's stuff, not just emulating someone.
Q: You did a lot of woodshedding during that time. Do you still work on your guitar playingfi
A: I did more of that in the '90s than I'm doing right now. I just don't get the time right now. I'm a new father, with a young family who at this stage of the game require quite a lot of my attention, and deprive me from any kind of rehearsing. Anytime I pick up a guitar, I'm a source of amusement for them. They try to take it away from me, or tell me to shut up, or make me play things that they can dance to. My time is not my own.
Q: You have three young daughters.
A: All under the age of six. I also have an older daughter who is 22, and she's fine, established in her life. And these young ones, they are very angelic and they are very distracting. For this festival, they left me alone for two weeks, home on my own so I could work on stuff. Beyond trying to play anything coherent, I just sat there with an electric guitar and practiced bending (the strings). Because otherwise I don't play at home unless I'm amusing them.
Q: Did you enjoy "The Last Waltz" (the Band's farewell concert in 1976, in which Clapton, Bob Dylan and a host of greats performed)fi
A: I did, yeah. A fantastic event. I loved it.
Q: The backstage scene must have been unbelievable.
A: Unbelievable. The wildest party I'd ever seen. And everybody there was the right people to be there. There wasn't anybody there where you went, "Who invited himfi" Most of the things I've been to, there are maybe two people I want to see, and there are a lot of people I want to hide from. But everybody there... it was great, great meeting.
Q: Was the music up to snufffi
A: For me, Muddy (Waters) and Van (Morrison) steal the show. Van doing ("Caravan") with the leg kicks. Some of the greatest live music you'll ever see.
Q: You brought Cream full circle (with the 2005 reunion tour). Is there anything more going on with you and that bandfi
A: I never close the door on anything. There is always going to be a valid reason to re-approach things, as long as everyone is alive. What if I went bankrupt and I was on the skidsfi I'd kind of hope that one of those two guys would say, "Let's put together a benefit for Eric." So there's always going to be a reason to go back to it.
Q: But you don't see any new music being done with Creamfi
A: No, I don't. Because my selfish reasons are that after doing this here in Chicago, I don't want to do anything for a while. Robbie and I will probably kick some things around. And that probably won't even start till next year. I really want to be with my family for a couple of years. And if I've got something left to say ... I'll probably go on the road again. But I don't want to make any plans now.
Q: You titled one of your albums "Journeyman," which is a modest way to look at your role in all this. Do you believe thatfi
A: Yes, it's comfortable. I'm just a water carrier. I like that. It makes sense to me. It's more fun, the responsibility is a little less severe. I'm just trying to turn the light on.
This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page C5.