Clapton Week: How John Mayall Helped Eric Become ‘God’

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Clapton Week: How John Mayall Helped Eric Become ‘God’
December 22, 2010
by Russell Hall
Gibson.com


“Blues Breakers: John Mayall with Eric Clapton was the breakthrough album that really brought my playing to people’s attention,” writes Eric Clapton, in his autobiography. “I’d found my niche, in a band where I could remain in the background yet at the same time develop my skills ….” Indeed, with The Bluesbreakers, Clapton truly found his style.

By early 1963, when he was just 17, Clapton had already discovered the work of such blues masters as B.B. King, Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson. But he was still trying, in his words, “to find a phraseology that would encompass all these different artists.” When he joined The Yardbirds later that year, he was hopeful that he could at last forge something unique within the blues genre.

For a time it appeared The Yardbirds were a perfect fit, but soon the band succumbed to pressures to embrace a more pop-oriented sound. By the time the group recorded their #1 hit, “For Your Love,” in December 1964, Clapton was headed toward the exit. “… in those days I was a complete purist,” Clapton said, in Clapton! “If it wasn’t black music, it was rubbish.”

John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers provided the perfect fit. Twelve years older than Clapton, Mayall shared the younger guitarist’s fierce devotion to black music. The Bluesbreakers were pursuing an R&B-oriented direction at the time, but Clapton astutely recognized a kindred blues spirit in Mayall. Joining the band in early 1965, Clapton moved into Mayall’s home, where he immersed himself in Mayall’s spectacular blues record collection.

“Modern Chicago blues became my new Mecca,” Clapton later reflected. “It was a tough electric sound, spearheaded by people like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, and John Lee Hooker, who had come up from the Delta to record for labels like Chess. The leading guitar players … were Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, Elmore James, Hubert Sumlin, and Earl Hooker, to name a few.”

Mayall was a tough taskmaster, and Clapton soon found himself playing shows nearly every night. As his playing grew sharper, the phrase “Clapton is God” began appearing as scrawled graffiti on the walls of London buildings. Clapton was of two minds about the sudden acclaim. On the one hand, he was heartened that people were embracing blues music. On the other, he felt that such notoriety “would bring some kind of trouble.” “Apart from the famous blues guys, there were a lot of white guitar players who were better than me,” Clapton later wrote, citing Reggie Young, James Burton, and Albert Lee as examples. “Still, [the graffiti] gave me the kind of status nobody could tamper with.”

Within weeks of teaming with The Bluesbreakers, Clapton found himself in Decca Studios, where he and the band spent three days recording what was, in essence, their live set – with the addition of a horn section on some tracks. Covers such as Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say,” Mose Allison’s “Parchman Farm” and Little Walter’s “It Ain’t Right” were fleshed out with a smattering of Mayall originals. Noteworthy moments included a fiery rendition of Freddie King’s “Hideaway,” wherein Clapton’s deepening assimilation of Chicago electric blues was in full evidence, and a smoldering performance of Otis Rush’s “All Your Love,” which boasted a dual-guitar brilliance that clearly foreshadowed Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.

Most important was a cover of Robert Johnson’s “Ramblin’ on My Mind,” which saw Clapton capturing the subtle anguish and spooky ambiance that drove the original version. At Mayall’s insistence, Clapton took the lead vocal, something he had never done before. “This was against my better judgment,” Clapton later admitted, in his autobiography. “Most of the guys I longed to emulate were older and had deep voices. I felt extremely uncomfortable singing in my high-pitched whine.”

Because the album was recorded quickly, it retained the “raw, edgy quality” (Clapton’s words) of a live performance. That quality was deepened by Clapton’s insistence that his amplifier be mic’d in a way that captured his on-stage sound. The result was a unique sonic density that came to be associated solely with him. His instrument, a ’59 Les Paul Standard, figured prominently in achieving that sound.

“I was trying to emulate the sharp, thin sound that Freddy King got out of his Gibson Les Paul,” Clapton writes, “and I ended up with something quite different, a sound that was a lot fatter than Freddy’s. The Les Paul has two pickups, one at the end of the neck, giving the guitar a kind of round jazz sound, and the other next to the bridge, giving you the treble, most often used for the thin, typical rock ’n’ roll sound. What I would do was use the bridge pickup with all the bass turned up, so the sound was very thick and on the edge of distortion.”

Clapton continued: “I also always used amps that would overload. I would have the amp on full, with the volume on the guitar also turned up full, so everything was on full volume and overloading. I would hit a note, hold it, and give it some vibrato with my fingers, until is sustained, and then the distortion would turn into feedback. It was all these things, plus the distortion, that created what I suppose you could call my sound.”

In keeping with The Bluesbreakers status as a training ground, or temporary stop, for aspiring musicians, Clapton moved on in late 1965. Mayall and his band went on to serve as an incubator for the likes of Peter Green and Mick Taylor. Clapton, of course, soon co-founded Cream, drawing on his tenure with Mayall to produce some of the heaviest blues riffage ever committed to tape. In the decades that followed, both men remained vibrantly active, carving out their own, respective, potent niches in rock history. But that, as they say, is a whole ’nuther story.