Apart from the twin office blocks by the station appearing in the sitcom Bless This House as a scenery backdrop, and that the mum of Mud’s bass player, Rob Davis, worked at Sainsbury's (he would go on to write Kylie's Can't Get You Out Of My Head and Spiller's Groovejet...), the “village”, as my dad called it, didn’t offer much to get wild about.
Much later I would discover that my musical hero John Martyn was born in New Malden, and that one of its pubs would have been the location of a pivotal meeting in rock music history. But until then I had to make do with the not-exactly shabby news that Norbiton, our uninspiring north-westerly neighbour, had been the birthplace of The Yardbirds, the blues and R'n'B band that played a significant early role in Britain’s dominance of global rock music over the last 50 years.
The Yardbirds formed in May 1963 when guitarist Anthony "Top" Topham and his Surbiton-born schoolfriend Chris Dreja (with whom I share a birthday) met up with singer Keith Relf, bassist Paul Samwell-Smith and drummer Jim McCarty - all from the Richmond area - at Norbiton's Railway Hotel. Succeeding the Rolling Stones as the resident band at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond, the still-young Yardbirds built a solid following in the West London blues scene. However, in October 1963 and after just five months, the 16-year-old Topham left under parental pressure to focus on his schoolwork. His replacement was an 18-year-old local guitarist by the name of Eric Clapton, who was offered the gig after seeing the band at the Crawdaddy.
Clapton had grown up in Ripley, the quaint Surrey hamlet (where, today, Paul Weller bases himself) but had gone to school in Surbiton, an hour away by bus, followed by an ignominious term at art school in Kingston-upon-Thames. He had taught himself blues guitar by learning Big Bill Broonzy records note-for-note while sat on a bench on Ripley Green, in the process developing a unique interpretative feel for the music of the mighty Mississippi. Still just in his mid-teens, Clapton hawked his talents around the riverside pubs of Kingston and elsewhere in the area, at one point forming a duo with Hawkwind founder Dave Brock, and later in bands such as The Roosters (the result of a meeting in a New Malden pub between Clapton and local music face Tom McGuinness).
Quite what drew these teenage, Surrey suburbanites to music forged in the searing heat of the Tennessee cotton fields before migrating north to Chicago and a rougher, amplified sound, is still not fully understood. But throughout south-west and west London, amid the red tiles of semi-detached Ealing, Kew, Kingston and Surbiton, venues like Twickenham's Eel Pie Island and Richmond's Crawdaddy provided the foundation for music careers that remain revered today. Clapton provided some explanation in his 1999 autobiography, revealing that, at the time, The Beatles were in the ascendency, but their pop pushed him further into the blues: “The gradual increase in popularity of the Mersey sound forced people like me to go underground, as if we were anarchists, plotting to overthrow the music establishment".
By 1965, however, The Yardbirds were moving beyond R'n'B and into more commercial pop. They had a hit with For Your Love (written by Graham Gouldman, later of 10CC), but this proved too popular for Clapton's blues purism and he decided to leave. The Yardbirds would only last until 1968 (but would remain a potent force - just listen to the superb BBC Sessions album just released). But in their five short years, they launched the career of Eric Clapton, his replacement - another local discovery, Jeff Beck from Wallington - who would in turn recommend as his replacement a teenage wunderkind from Epsom, Jimmy Page. Perhaps it is something in the water: as Beck has remarked himself, within the so-called 'Surrey Delta' and "a 20-minute bus ride of each other”, three of the greatest rock guitarists of all time had been produced by one band.
There may have been a brattish petulance about Clapton’s departure from The Yardbirds (and he says in his book how hard a decision it was, given that For Your Love had been a hit), but it was clear that his extraordinary talent as a soloist and his desire to play a heavier blues needed a more fitting home. Thus began another brief but historically significant association: in April 1965 Clapton joined John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, attaching himself to a musician who was - and remarkably, still is - regarded as the godfather of British blues. Mayall and his wife took the guitarist in, perhaps providing the father figure he’d missed out on. “Modern Chicago blues became my new Mecca,” Clapton recalled in his book. “It was a tough electric sound, spearheaded by people like Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters and John Lee Hooker, who’d come up from the Delta to record for labels like Chess”. More importantly, with Mayall being 12 years Clapton’s senior, he provided a degree paternal steerage as well as further education.
Still only 20 years old, it was around this time that Clapton’s reputation was sealed by a notorious piece of graffiti on a wall at Islington Tube station declaring “Clapton is God”. Soon, the dawbing was being replicated throughout London. Clapton himself found it “really quite nice”, as you’d expect with an ego at that age. The Bluesbreakers had already been going for a couple of years before Clapton joined, adding to a flexing line-up that included Hughie Flint on drums and John McVie (later to provide the ‘Mac’ of Fleetwood Mac) - on bass. They gigged relentlessly which was how it was done then - there was no X-Factor to create instant fame.
However, by mid-summer Clapton and five friends broke off to form a band called The Glands. Returning in October, he found that he’d been replaced by Peter Green, who would later join McVie and Mick Fleetwood in Fleetwood Mac. Clapton’s dismissal didn’t seem to permanently harm his relationship with Mayall. The following April, a week or so after turning 21, he joined Mayall and the Bluesbreakers in Decca’s Hampstead studios to record an album of mainly blues and R&B covers, like the Otis Rush/Willie Dixon classic All Your Love, Ray Charles’ What I’d Say, and Robert Johnson’s Ramblin’ On My Mind, with Clapton on vocals (still, today, a staple of his live shows). It was a crucial album, with Clapton’s distinctive, heavily distorted guitar work pointing to what would follow with Cream, even forming a key component of Jimi Hendrix’s musical education. It was, and remains to this day, a brilliant blues album, but it played an even bigger role in cementing Clapton’s god-like status.
Released 50 years ago today, the album was notably entitled Blues Breakers - John Mayall With Eric Clapton. In just three years, Clapton had gone from suburban pub busker with a Mod haircut to sharing billing with one of the most formidable characters in British music, and he was still just 21. Clapton knew his power: for the album’s cover photograph - an arduous task for him at the best of times - Clapton sat reading a copy of the Beano comic, “To annoy everybody”. In the process, he ended up contributing - albeit somewhat petulantly - to one of the most iconic album covers of the period, with the record being known to this day as “The Beano Album”.
The cover art and joint billing notwithstanding, the Blues Breakers album was an important milestone in the evolution of British rock. Though artistically eclipsed by other albums released that year like Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde, The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds and The Beatles’ Revolver, Eric Clapton used this affectionate collection of Blues standards to establish a style of overdriven, heavily amplified guitar that would redefine how rock guitarists and wannabe rock guitarists would want to play for the next two decades, just as Scotty Moore and Hank Marvin had done a decade before.
Up to a point, Blues Breakers went some way to create a new form of blues. He may now be best known for playing a Fender Stratocaster, but on this album he matched a Gibson Les Paul with a Marshall amp. While that may not mean much to those who don’t play an electric guitar, it was enough that everyone else wanted to copy it. His work on Steppin’ Out, in particular, points to much of what Jimmy Page in Led Zeppelin and even Jimi Hendrix would become acclaimed for.
Just two weeks span the period between Blues Breakers’ release and Cream’s first gig, with their seminal debut album Fresh Cream landing only five months later. Cream came about less than three full years since the young Clapton had joined The Yardbirds in Richmond.
Time, in this period of music history, was clearly compressed. Careers and intervals between albums which today stretch out of years were then changing shape on a near-weekly basis. Indeed Cream, arguably the world’s first supergroup, would eventually split up just two years after Fresh Cream was released.
By then Clapton had progressed beyond simply a piece of iconic graffiti.Despite his earlier indifference towards the Mersey sound, he and George Harrison had been friends since The Yardbirds and The Beatles shared the bill at the London Palladium in 1963. Harrison had co-written the Cream single Badge with Clapton, and in return, Clapton provided the brilliantly inventive phased solo on Harrison’s While My Guitar Gently Weeps, one of the four non-Lennon/McCartney songs on the White Album. Clapton had become a firm fixture of rock’s royal circle, appearing in a makeshift band - The Dirty Mac - with John Lennon and Keith Richards in The Rolling Stones Rock And Roll Circus TV special. Blind Faith, Derek & The Dominos and a further 40 years of solo success would follow.
Eric Clapton is now 71 and winding down his performing career. Nerve damage to his fingers - no doubt the result of playing all those blinding solos over six decades of touring and recording - is taking its toll. You can’t blame him, of course, but on this, the 50th anniversary of Blues Breakers - John Mayall With Eric Clapton coming out, it’s an album well worth listening to, either again or even for a first time, if only to hear for yourself how it helped shape the rock era, and all from a precocious talent that had been forged in the leafy avenues of suburban London.
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