![\"Eric](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Eric-Clapton-Guitarist-1996-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Showtime Documentary Films)<\/p>\n
Sat 18 October 2025 13:00, UK <\/p>\n
Admit it: when you go to see a legend, you want to hear the biggest anthems, especially if they\u2019re ones you grew up on or have waited decades to hear live after perhaps accepting that maybe you never will. While there are many feelings it may bring up in the artist, for Eric Clapton<\/a>, he feels bad. <\/p>\n He\u2019s not alone in that fact, as there are plenty of artists who openly and loudly resent the pressure to play the greatest hits. If you call out for \u2018Creep\u2019 at a Radiohead show, prepare to be heckled out of the room by the band themselves. If you\u2019re going to see Bob Dylan, hoping to hear \u2018Blowin\u2019 in the Wind\u2019, prepare for disappointment <\/a>as he\u2019s one of the people taking the approach to just straight up deny his own crowd.\u00a0<\/p>\n It\u2019s a question of risk and a game of boldness, and that\u2019s the dilemma legends have to face. They either have to make a hard and fast break, deciding at one point to once and for all cut a certain track from their set list, or accept that it will be there forever, likely always as the final encore song that everyone is waiting for. <\/p>\n Some people didn\u2019t mind that, though. Take Prince as a perfect example, as the artist never once seemed to get bored of shredding his way through \u2018Purple Rain\u2019, always improvising a new bit or another, sometimes even extending it to way beyond ten minutes as if he couldn\u2019t get enough of it even years, decades, after it was released into the world. But for Clapton and his biggest hits, he quickly started to feel exhausted by them. <\/p>\n \u2018Sunshine of Your Love\u2019 was one of them but in that case, he made the decision to axe it quick. \u201cWe only did that a couple of times,\u201d he said in 1975 as he\u2019d quickly tired of playing the 1967 track. Throughout the \u201880s, it was a rare one to hear him play, but it seems that his feelings towards it have loosened again as in recent years, it\u2019s found itself firmly back on the setlist. <\/p>\n His other huge hit is still a rarity, though. \u201cI feel like I\u2019m compromising myself doing \u2018Layla\u2019 every night,\u201d he said to Rolling Stone back then, where his relationship towards playing the track live was already complex. It felt like a deal he was annoyingly tied into, and because he didn\u2019t want to play the older Cream song, he had to give the fans \u2018Layla\u2019 instead.<\/p>\n