(Credits: Far Out / Matt Gibbons)
Fri 13 June 2025 15:45, UK
Any artist should be looking to evolve whenever they pick up their instrument. It’s one thing to have a sound and stick with it, but if someone tries to play the same riff every time they pick up their guitar, there comes a point when they’re going to be stuck down in a rut and never find their way out. Eric Clapton knew the importance of keeping things fresh better than anybody, but he also realised that sometimes means going back to his roots to remember where he came from.
Throughout his career, Clapton made his entire living out of becoming a connoisseur of all kinds of electric guitar playing. Most people would have stopped once the girls started screaming, but as soon as The Yardbirds started to go in a poppier direction, Clapton knew that he would never be typecast. He wanted to make something new, and whether that was working with Cream of Derek and the Dominos, he was making sure that he kept pushing the guitar forward.
Did it always work? Not necessarily. There are always going to be those tunes like Cream’s ‘Wrapping Paper’ that fall on deaf ears, but when looking at his journey throughout multiple decades, Clapton always made sure to keep everything fresh, whether that meant getting into reggae, embracing his singer-songwriter side, or managing to disassemble his classic tunes when playing Unplugged.
Then again, Clapton could have probably stopped after 1973 and still have been considered a legend. Outside of introducing Jimi Hendrix to the British public with Cream, ‘Slowhand’ had the badge of honour of working with every single Beatle, whether that was playing on ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ or trading licks with George Harrison on All Things Must Pass. Of all the fairweather gigs with the Fabs, though, working with John Lennon in the Plastic Ono Band was bound to be interesting.
While people may have baulked at the idea of Lennon going solo and having Yoko Ono scream into the microphone beside him, Clapton knew he had a chance to do something different when they played the Toronto Peace Festival in 1969. Cream were already on the way out, and since the band didn’t have much rehearsal, it was easy for him to cut loose a bit more when making songs as simple as ‘Money’ or Lennon’s own ‘Yer Blues’.
This was playing for the sake of playing, and the material that Clapton came up with never truly got old to him, saying later, “It was really refreshing to do these songs because they are very simple and uncomplicated. John and I really love that music. That’s the kind of music that turned John on initially, and it’s the same for me. In fact, I could go on playing ‘Money’ and ‘Dizzy Miss Lizzy’ for the rest of my life.”
Granted, the latter song may give Clapton a bit more wiggle room than before. The entire track is based on one guitar lick in between the verses, so when you have one of the greatest living guitarists in the group, it’s much easier to find different extensions on that initial idea or have him play around with what the song is supposed to be.
More than anything, though, Clapton seemed to admire the Plastic Ono Band for the same reasons why Lennon put it together in the first place. They both had certain expectations from fans before they even played a note on their respective albums, but these shows were a blank canvas on which they could play anything they felt in the moment.
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