Slowhand

On Robert Johnson "His music remains the most powerful cry you can find in the human voice, really seeming to echo; something I had always felt"

"Slowhand" originates from the audience breaking into a slow hand clap while Eric changed broken guitar strings on stage

In October 1963, Eric joined The Yardbirds, a blues-influenced rock and roll band, and stayed with them until March 1965.  Synthesising influences from Chicago blues and leading blues guitarists such as Buddy Guy, Freddie King, and B. B. King, Clapton forged a distinctive style and rapidly became one of the most talked-about guitarists in the British music scene. In the mid-1960s, Eric left the Yardbirds to play blues with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers.  Immediately after leaving Mayall, he joined Cream, a power trio with drummer Ginger Baker and bassist Jack Bruce in which Eric played sustained blues improvisations and "arty, blues-based psychedelic pop".  Cream became a commercial success, selling millions of records and playing throughout the US and Europe.  They redefined the instrumentalist's role in rock and were one of the first blues-rock bands to emphasise musical virtuosity and lengthy jazz-style improvisation sessions.  Their US hit singles include Sunshine of Your Love (#5, 1968), White Room (#6, 1968) and Crossroads (#28, 1969) – a live version of Robert Johnson's "Cross Road Blues". Though Cream was hailed as one of the greatest groups of its day, and the adulation of Eric Clapton as a guitar legend reached new heights, the supergroup was short-lived.  Drug and alcohol use escalated tension between the three members, and conflicts between Bruce and Baker eventually led to Cream's demise.  Eric's next group, Blind Faith (1969), was composed of Cream drummer Ginger Baker, Steve Winwood of Traffic, and Ric Grech of Family, and yielded one LP and one arena-circuit tour.

Reproduction of painting by Emile Théodore Frandsen de Schomberg, titled "La Fille au Bouquet"

Derek & the Dominos was formed in 1970 with the intention of counteracting the "star" cult faction that had begun to form around him, Eric assembled a new band composed of Delaney and Bonnie's former rhythm section, Bobby Whitlock as keyboardist and vocalist, Carl Radle as the bassist, and drummer Jim Gordon, with Eric playing guitar.  It was his intention to show that he need not fill a starring role, and functioned well as a member of an ensemble. Eric was influenced by The Band and their album Music from Big Pink, saying, What I appreciated about The Band was that they were more concerned with songs and singing.  They would have three- and four-part harmonies, and the guitar was put back into perspective as being accompaniment.  That suited me well, because I had gotten so tired of the virtuosity—or pseudo-virtuosity—thing of long, boring guitar solos just because they were expected. The Band brought things back into perspective.  The priority was the song. The band was originally called Eric Clapton and Friends.  The name Derek and the Dominos was a fluke that occurred when the band's provisional name of Del and the Dynamos was misread as Derek and the Dominos.  Clapton's biography states that Tony Ashton of Ashton, Gardner and Dyke told Clapton to call the band "Del and the Dominos", since "Del" was his nickname for Eric Clapton.  Del and Eric were combined and the final name became Derek and the Dominos.

Pattie Boyd, the frowning muse, as Layla

Eric's close friendship with George Harrison brought him into contact with Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd, with whom he became deeply infatuated.  When she spurned his advances, Clapton's unrequited affections prompted most of the material for the Dominos' album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (1970).  Heavily blues-influenced, the album features the twin lead guitars of Duane Allman and Clapton, with Allman's slide guitar as a key ingredient of the sound.  Working at Criteria Studios in Miami with Atlantic Records producer Tom Dowd, who had worked with Eric on Cream's Disraeli Gears, the band recorded a double album. The album features the hit love song Layla, inspired by the classical poet of Persian literature, Nizami Ganjavi's The Story of Layla and Majnun, a copy of which Ian Dallas had given to Eric.  The book moved Clapton profoundly, as it was the tale of a young man who fell hopelessly in love with a beautiful, unavailable woman and who went crazy because he could not marry her.  Clapton and Pattie Boyd were married in 1979.  However, they were unable to conceive children (even trying in vitro fertilisation in 1984).  They divorced in 1988. Eric followed, through the following decades, with many personal challenges (romantic longings along with drug and alcohol addiction) that often challenged his career.  However, with songs like: After Midnight; I Sot the Sheriff; Lay Down Sally; Cocaine and Wonderful Tonight; Eric continued to record and sell hit records all around the world.

Wanderin' Spirit
November, 2014
"Slowhand"

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