Eric Clapton

Eric Clapton: You were at school and you were pimply and no one wanted to know you. You get into a group and you've got thousands of chicks there.

Eric Clapton: You know, that's it, there's no turning back because what it's made of is so fine. It's like crystal, you know, it's like the purest crystal.

Eric Clapton: You know why, I bumped into Long John Baldry very early on in those days and he was a big hero and there was a couple of other guys too that would play, once I started making excursions up to London a guy called Wess Jones and another guy called Buck, who all played country blues and folk.

Eric Clapton: Yeah, I wanted to know where they got it from, what it was all about, you know, and it seemed to strike something in me that was you know rearing it's head and I still don't know what that is.

Eric Clapton: Yeah, and I went straight into a fantasy world. Just stepped straight into the abyss. You know, I was gone and kids used to walk past my front room, cause I lived on the green.

Eric Clapton: When you came knocking on the door this morning I was quite happy playing the guitar, for fun, I mean and not practicing and I'll always be that way.

Eric Clapton: When I remember how infused and kind of single minded I was then. It setv me in good stead for all the years later.

Eric Clapton: When I first was aware of him, a little longer than that, I was into him, well into him. I was talking to Mark Knopfler about him. Mark said he'd been offered the job of producing Robert Cray and he wasn't that interested.

Eric Clapton: Very much like that, and very much a loner, do you know and I didn't fit really into sport or all kind of group activities as a kid, I couldn't find a niche. And music was not really part of the kind of village curriculum it would, you know.

Eric Clapton: his moment in time, on this tour, you know, I'm discovering a lot of new things. And to be 45 and doing that, it's a mixture of pleasure and pain, I can assure you.

Eric Clapton: They looked great, you know the drawings of the guys playing looked great and bits of string around their necks. So it didn't seem to be that difficult a thing to do, or that inaccessible.

Eric Clapton: The first one was quite cheap, but that was expensive for us. For my folks to buy on the Never Never. It was quite, you know, a rare object to have and I gained quite a lot of status by having this.

Eric Clapton: One summer I remember, I got exposed to Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly and Buddy Holly was a very very big, made a very big impression on me. Because of a lot of things, you know, the way he looked and his charisma.

Eric Clapton: Once I got into Broonzy, I kind of very, and I realized that Chuck Berry was black, I quickly switched off white players.

Eric Clapton: Oh yeah, I mean, it wasn't a very good guitar, most good guitars have got thrust rods in the necks that you can adjust or that'll keep them in shape, you know keep them straight. This one just, well it turned into a bow and arrow after a couple of months.

Eric Clapton: Leave bands, go back to obscurity if I choose to, without a great sense of loss of security because it's all been based on the fact that I did it on my own or was doing, enjoying doing it on my own in the first place.

Eric Clapton: It's very dependent on your state of mind. And your emotional state as well. And a lot of it comes pouring out, you don't really have that much control with it.

Eric Clapton: It was stumbling on to really the bible of the blues, you know, and a very powerful drug to be introduced to us and I absorbed it totally, and it changed my complete outlook on music.

Eric Clapton: It was a mystery to me, how the tuning was, or the style seemed to come out of nowhere, it obviously had roots in America going way back, there was nothing like it for me I'd ever seen before.

Eric Clapton: In your front room, yeah. It was terrible. Really wrong thing to do at the Albert Hall is to have a boxing match. It's got a very genteel, sophisticated and yet comfortable atmosphere. Like it is like a club.

Eric Clapton: I've got the god given talent or the god given opportunity better put, to let that out in a harmless way you know, and I don't know what it does to you, I don't really know.

Eric Clapton: I used to sit on the top of the stairs, so that you got echo, you know, to up, to down and got a good sound out of it. And also I tell you what encouraged me was there was a big skiffle boom happening, and you know there were ads for guitars, very cheap guitars.

Eric Clapton: I mean, it didn't matter to me that there were people, it didn't matter that I was shy. Just the sound was so captivating that it helped me to get rid of those inhibitions.

Eric Clapton: I mean I got very racist for quite a while about white musicians. And for instance when the people around Kingston at some point discovered Bob Dylan and it was a couple of before times are a changin' the freewheeling Bob Dylan became very popular.

Eric Clapton: I just managed to convince my grandmother that it was a worth while that was something to do, you know, and when I did finally get the guitar, it didn't seem that difficult to me, to be able to make a good noise out of it.

Eric Clapton: I don't have half the nerves there that I have anywhere else.

Eric Clapton: Although they can do it all the time, you know, they're far better than me, on a musically, on a theoretical music level. You know, they're out of my league.

Eric Clapton: A British pressing with a compilation of the best stuff really, I mean actually not only that but, these were all kind of semi hits for the people on it in America.

Eric Clapton: I just managed to convince my grandmother that it was a worth while that was something to do, you know, and when I did finally get the guitar, it didn't seem that difficult to me, to be able to make a good noise out of it.

Eric Clapton: I don't have half the nerves there that I have anywhere else.

Eric Clapton: Although they can do it all the time, you know, they're far better than me, on a musically, on a theoretical music level. You know, they're out of my league.

Eric Clapton: A British pressing with a compilation of the best stuff really, I mean actually not only that but, these were all kind of semi hits for the people on it in America.