John Watt
Member
If Eric Clapton and his British Invasion cohorts weren't shoving him in my face all the time,
I wouldn't be up, not in arms, but with my fretting fingers. Now he's in packs of Ernie Ball strings.
This is a video made in Copenhagen, Denmark, and is seen as the best reference for these times.
I saw Jimi Hendrix, George Benson and Deep Purple all in the same year,
where I'm coming from.
I was playing Cream and Blind Faith songs at the time because they were so easy.
When Jimi Hendrix first played in England, Paul McCartney taking Eric Clapton to see them,
the big story about Eric Clapton was how he stood there backstage shaking, as he said,
because he realized he wasn't the greatest electric guitarist on earth.
Eric Clapton talked about going home and doing heroin all alone for thirty days.
That's when stickers and advertising said "Clapton is God",
and the Cream were selling more albums than Holy Bibles were being sold.
Eric Clapton, like Jimmy Page, laid on his back onstage for his second North American Cream tour,
being the sad, rampant heroin addict he became.
When Cream could no longer function onstage as a band,
he became part of a "super group" that called themselves "Blind Faith".
When Blind Faith was playing a local concert, local for me, they left him behind.
He was in such rough shape a local husband and wife act who had a farm of their own,
Bonnie and Delaney, picked him up, hauled him off, and worked hard to help him recover.
That was more about Eric Clapton being "the fifth Beatle" than any Cream thing.
That's what we are seeing onstage here, and that's all I'm asking of you, not the entire video.
Bonnie and Delaney are getting some European gigs as far as having Eric Clapton onstage,
and George Harrison shows up and gets to be onstage with them.
Eric Clapton later takes their back-up band, the bass, drums and keyboards,
to be his new band, who he takes into the studio to record the album "Layla".
How's that for thanking Bonnie and Delaney for saving his life?
Layla is the name of George Harrisons' wife that Eric stole away from him.
I see that as being his own neurosis about fame and not being seen as a Beatle,
just like his experience with Jimi Hendrix made him name his first Stratocaster "Blackie".
And as far as the actual Layla album, it was Duane Allman who really played it up as hot guitar playing.
Eric Clapton doesn't even play the signature riff, starting with his "unplugged" album.
If you're a Beatles fan, a George Harrison fan, and a guitar player, this is invaluable as a lesson.
This is the longest and one of the only videos where they are onstage together.
This isn't a video made to be a video or part of a movie, it's a live concert.
Bonnie and Delaney stayed together, they kept their farm and came home, being good people.
The three Canadian members of "The Band", who recorded "The Night They Tore Dixie Down",
getting kind of rag-timey and Americana with it, having huge hits, touring with Dylan...
were also local with Delaney and Bonnie, and you can hear how they got influenced by them,
without ever returning to their roots or embracing them by hiring them as an opening act.
When Eric Clapton got back to being a touring act on his own,
playing a Stratocaster for songs like "Lay Down Sally" and "Cocaine",
he had to hire another guitarist to play exciting guitar parts,
and you could say these songs and songs like "I Shot The Sheriff",
are almost country songs in nature, also with the thin, clean tone he gets with his guitar.
Ginger Baker, the drummer for Cream, bragged about fathering over 2,000 children.
No matter what modern advertising that Eric Clapton pays for says,
he had a child in New York that he never visited after he was born.
When this child was unattended and fell to his death out of an apartment window in New York,
he wrote "Tears for Heaven" as a new blues song, making a fortune off this tragedy.
Other than the fact he is still alive, I have absolutely no respect for Eric Clapton,
as a musician, as a man, and as all the promotion and advertising he puts out.
He's going to be coming on to me out of his grave, a ghost of the British Invasion.
Here in the Niagara Peninsula, having lived in Queenston Heights, part of the British 1812 war,
there are enough English ghosts of dead soldiers walking around.
I don't need another one that carries an electric guitar.
This is not a statement of wordplay. Ghosts are a known and predictable occurrence.
And I know a dead man walking, talking, singing and playing guitar when I see and hear one.
I know too many of them. I could be making a living taking over from guitarists who had coke strokes.
I'm a life-long non-smoker non-drinker, putting together my own lefty guitars and getting inventive.
Can I put a band together at my age of 67 when I feel better than ever?
I'm too alone... buried under a North American music scene of sex and drugs without the rock and roll.
And that's not a grave of my own making.
Eric Clapton! Leave me alone. I don't want to see you or hear you or read about you.
Eric Clapton, in stereo, leave me alone.
I wouldn't be up, not in arms, but with my fretting fingers. Now he's in packs of Ernie Ball strings.
This is a video made in Copenhagen, Denmark, and is seen as the best reference for these times.
I saw Jimi Hendrix, George Benson and Deep Purple all in the same year,
where I'm coming from.
I was playing Cream and Blind Faith songs at the time because they were so easy.
When Jimi Hendrix first played in England, Paul McCartney taking Eric Clapton to see them,
the big story about Eric Clapton was how he stood there backstage shaking, as he said,
because he realized he wasn't the greatest electric guitarist on earth.
Eric Clapton talked about going home and doing heroin all alone for thirty days.
That's when stickers and advertising said "Clapton is God",
and the Cream were selling more albums than Holy Bibles were being sold.
Eric Clapton, like Jimmy Page, laid on his back onstage for his second North American Cream tour,
being the sad, rampant heroin addict he became.
When Cream could no longer function onstage as a band,
he became part of a "super group" that called themselves "Blind Faith".
When Blind Faith was playing a local concert, local for me, they left him behind.
He was in such rough shape a local husband and wife act who had a farm of their own,
Bonnie and Delaney, picked him up, hauled him off, and worked hard to help him recover.
That was more about Eric Clapton being "the fifth Beatle" than any Cream thing.
That's what we are seeing onstage here, and that's all I'm asking of you, not the entire video.
Bonnie and Delaney are getting some European gigs as far as having Eric Clapton onstage,
and George Harrison shows up and gets to be onstage with them.
Eric Clapton later takes their back-up band, the bass, drums and keyboards,
to be his new band, who he takes into the studio to record the album "Layla".
How's that for thanking Bonnie and Delaney for saving his life?
Layla is the name of George Harrisons' wife that Eric stole away from him.
I see that as being his own neurosis about fame and not being seen as a Beatle,
just like his experience with Jimi Hendrix made him name his first Stratocaster "Blackie".
And as far as the actual Layla album, it was Duane Allman who really played it up as hot guitar playing.
Eric Clapton doesn't even play the signature riff, starting with his "unplugged" album.
If you're a Beatles fan, a George Harrison fan, and a guitar player, this is invaluable as a lesson.
This is the longest and one of the only videos where they are onstage together.
This isn't a video made to be a video or part of a movie, it's a live concert.
Bonnie and Delaney stayed together, they kept their farm and came home, being good people.
The three Canadian members of "The Band", who recorded "The Night They Tore Dixie Down",
getting kind of rag-timey and Americana with it, having huge hits, touring with Dylan...
were also local with Delaney and Bonnie, and you can hear how they got influenced by them,
without ever returning to their roots or embracing them by hiring them as an opening act.
When Eric Clapton got back to being a touring act on his own,
playing a Stratocaster for songs like "Lay Down Sally" and "Cocaine",
he had to hire another guitarist to play exciting guitar parts,
and you could say these songs and songs like "I Shot The Sheriff",
are almost country songs in nature, also with the thin, clean tone he gets with his guitar.
Ginger Baker, the drummer for Cream, bragged about fathering over 2,000 children.
No matter what modern advertising that Eric Clapton pays for says,
he had a child in New York that he never visited after he was born.
When this child was unattended and fell to his death out of an apartment window in New York,
he wrote "Tears for Heaven" as a new blues song, making a fortune off this tragedy.
Other than the fact he is still alive, I have absolutely no respect for Eric Clapton,
as a musician, as a man, and as all the promotion and advertising he puts out.
He's going to be coming on to me out of his grave, a ghost of the British Invasion.
Here in the Niagara Peninsula, having lived in Queenston Heights, part of the British 1812 war,
there are enough English ghosts of dead soldiers walking around.
I don't need another one that carries an electric guitar.
This is not a statement of wordplay. Ghosts are a known and predictable occurrence.
And I know a dead man walking, talking, singing and playing guitar when I see and hear one.
I know too many of them. I could be making a living taking over from guitarists who had coke strokes.
I'm a life-long non-smoker non-drinker, putting together my own lefty guitars and getting inventive.
Can I put a band together at my age of 67 when I feel better than ever?
I'm too alone... buried under a North American music scene of sex and drugs without the rock and roll.
And that's not a grave of my own making.
Eric Clapton! Leave me alone. I don't want to see you or hear you or read about you.
Eric Clapton, in stereo, leave me alone.