Still got the blues - Eric Clapton at the Royal Albert Hall

Picture: ericclapton.com

On occasion I am inclined to regale anyone who’ll listen with my affection for and affliction to the area I grew up in, and to where I returned after galavanting around the world for two decades. This stems from the discovery, relatively late in life, that the south-west London suburbs of my origin actually had more going for them than I ever knew or even suspected as a child. I’ll spare you for another post, another time, the myriad musical connections to the area around Kingston-upon-Thames, but the one that always stands out is Eric Clapton.

Time’s mists have increasingly clouded the place Clapton holds in the pantheon of absolute rock legends, and while he is flesh and blood like the rest of us, the famous ‘Clapton is God’ meme, spray-painted onto an Islington wall somewhere in the mid-’60s - which may have been, then, just cheeky hype - was applied to a young man who, arguably, would turn British rock music on its head through sheer virtuosity alone. 

Clapton had barely left Surbiton’s Hollyfield School when he joined The Yardbirds in 1963, signing his contract in a now defunct pub in New Malden (actually, one once located just a mile from the house in which I was born). Having taught himself guitar, sitting alone on the village green of rural Ripley learning blues songs by the likes of Big Bill Broonzy, the teenage Clapton, armed with a Hoyer guitar bought from Bell Music in Surbiton, found an outlet in the riverside pubs of nearby Kingston. South-west London was emerging as the home of the English blues, with districts like Ealing and Richmond becoming a Mecca for young white locals channeling the music of America’s impoverished South. Within this realm, Clapton formed one corner of a triangle of Surrey-born guitar legends, being eventually replaced in The Yardbirds by Carshalton’s Jeff Beck, who in turn introduced another prodigy, Epsom’s Jimmy Page.   

By the summer of 1966 the 21-year-old Clapton had already been in two seminal bands (the other being John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers) when he joined a third, Cream, providing an excoriating platform for him to expand his God-given talent for blues-based rock guitar, becoming the most feted musician of his peer group, a friendly rival to the equally gifted Jimi Hendrix. Cream would last all of two years - the blink of an eye in musical history terms, but just as The Beatles were only an entity for, effectively, ten years, the legacy would last much longer.

That legacy was in effect last night at the Royal Albert Hall, the Victorian wedding cake that has effectively become Clapton’s spiritual home, having first played there in 1964 with The Yardbirds, and then memorably appearing there for Cream’s farewell concert in 1968. This was the fulfilment of a personal ambition of mine: year in, year out, tickets have gone on sale for Clapton’s May ‘proms’ at the venue only to see them snapped up in seconds, not helped by the old drum’s seating capacity of just over 5,000. And, yet, here is the guitarist that I desperately wanted to emulate, especially once I discovered his local origins. I even bought an Eric Clapton-signature Fender Stratocaster in the hope that it would make me play like him. But, strangely, in all my 54 years I’ve never found myself in the same space as the man himself. I wasn’t disappointed.

Opening with a gentle version of Gary Brooker’s Lead Me To The Water in tribute to the Procol Harum frontman, who died in February, Clapton and his now familiar band of supporting players (including singer and organist Paul Carrack, bassist Nathan East and keyboard player Tim Stainton), got straight into the blues with the Chicago standard Key To The Highway. In fact, this was to be, largely, a parade of Clapton’s best known songs - a funked up I Shot The Sheriff, followed by a personal treat for me, Cream’s White Room and, later, Badge and his signature interpretation of Robert Johnson’s Crossroads. 

Indeed, it was quite refreshing for Clapton to use the show - which had, like so many others, been postponed by Covid (and let’s not go near his apparent conservative views on that subject…) - as a run through of what the crowd, which appeared to be largely in the guitarist’s septuagenarian age group, had come for. More contemporary songs, like Pilgrim and River Of Tears provided textured reminders of Clapton’s writing skills (albeit both being co-written with Climie-Fisher’s Simon Climie), as well as his underrated, soulful singing voice, highlighting a point that he isn’t just a raucous blues soloist. Indeed, that became even more apparent with the mid-show acoustic set, drawing on the 1992 MTV Unplugged performance that brought Clapton a new audience (and gave a notable fillip to the acoustic guitar industry), with playful versions of Nobody Knows You When You’re Down And Out, accompanied by Andy Fairweather Low, and the old Charlie Chaplin/Nat King Cole chestnut Smile. Then the two highlights of that MTV special, the shuffle-arrangement of Layla and the still poignant Tears In Heaven.

A quick reset of the stage, and we were back to the electric Clapton, with the aforementioned Badge leading into the tender Wonderful Tonight (references to drunken buffoonery not withstanding, this was a timely rendition for my wife and I to enjoy on our one-month wedding anniversary...) and then back on the heavy pedal for Crossroads and another Johnson song, Little Queen Of Spades. Some in the  venerable Albert Hall crowd must have had advanced warning as to what came next, as from our eerie we sensed something of a stage rush (though clearly slowed by hip replacements, arthritis and other advanced-year hindrances) which heralded a second performance of the night for Layla, played out in its full Derek and the Dominos form, replete with its freewheeling coda. With that, and an encore of the Joe Cocker song High Time We Went - voiced by Carrack (a welcome opportunity for him to demonstrate arguably the UK’s finest vocal cords), the 77-year-old Clapton was off. There was little ceremony and, as had been the case for most of the night, no great interaction with the audience.

That appears to have always been his MO. Apart from the occasional brisk “thank you!”, and shoutouts to individuals in the band, Clapton has, from those teenage performances in the pubs of south-west London, through his legend building to now, mostly let his fingers do the talking. Like many of his other peers still going, here was proof that age is, broadly, just a number. I’ll admit that, as the world came to a halt two years ago, I wondered how many of these legends I would ever get to see again live. Clapton himself had suggested as long ago as 2014 that he might retire, as nerve damage to his fingers as well as other age-related ailments started to make performing less enjoyable. There was nothing, however, in last night’s display to suggest that he’s about to pull the plug on his 60-year career. 

In my last blog post (several weeks and a wedding ago) I came to the conclusion that Genesis had, finally, come to the end of the road, with their visibly aged and ailing lead singer. At the Albert Hall was  a guitarist (and Phil Collins’ former mucker) nearing his eighth decade and showing every bit of the fretboard dexterity that first blew the London music scene away in The Roosters, The Yardbirds, the Bluesbreakers and then Cream before he’d even turned 21. 56 years on, that God-given talent is still there. Last night we cherished it.

Still dazed, but not confused: Led Zeppelin - The Complete BBC Sessions

There are many things to love about the BBC. I do, willingly, admit a bias on this, since dear old Auntie put a roof over my head from birth (my dad was a BBC studio cameraman at the time and remained with the Beeb until his retirement). I therefore have a close affinity with the organisation, as distinguished and grand a public institution as the National Health Service, and probably equally as flawed.

But despite all the things about the BBC you could probably fill an entire edition of the Daily Mail with (which they do), one of its finest traditions has been the curation of music, from pop to the Proms and all stops in between, recorded in its own studios and theatres, and during in-show sessions for programmes like John Peel's suspiciously titled Top Gear (nothing to do with motoring, folks...), Radio 1’s landmark In Concert broadcasts, and other specials over the last half century or more.

This incredible wealth of music history lying in the BBC's vaults writes the history of pop and rock, and many of the recordings have found themselves released by the bands themselves, often providing fascinating snapshots of bands in development. The two Beatles' Live At The BBC compilations, recorded in the early 60s for the BBC Light Programme (Radio 1's forerunner) are wonderfully reverent captures of a band in the initial throes of superstardom, while Bowie At The Beeb covers The Dame's emergence in the late 1960s, as he trod a line between progressive rock and the vaudeville of his Anthony Newley/Jacques Brel phase (it also includes brief but fascinating exchanges between Bowie and Peel, for example, introducing his "new" guitarist "Michael Ronson"). The recently released Yardbirds Live At The BBC double CD captures the raw energy of the band as it launched the British R&B boom, along with the careers of three Surrey guitarists - Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page. Amusingly, it includes interviews between the BBC's plummy-voiced Brian Matthew - whose corny questions and use of phrases like "hit parade" became ironically parodied years later by Smash Hits magazine - and Page, sporting a slightly Epsom-posh, high-pitched voice.

By the time he played at the BBC with The Yardbirds in 1967, Page was already a seasoned 23-year-old session guitarist, having recorded with The Who (augmenting Pete Townshend on their first single, I Can't Explain) and The Kinks, played on Van Morrison/Them's Baby Please Don't Go and Here Comes the Night, and on Petula Clark's Downtown. In 1968, The Yardbirds' Keith Relf and Jim McCarty left, leaving Page to recruit replacements for a tour of Scandinavia. The musicians he brought in were vocalist Robert Plant, drummer John Bonham and another prolific session musician. John Paul Jones. And thus was born "the New Yardbirds", until a Keith Moon quip about a "lead Zeppelin" brought about another change of name: Led Zeppelin.

Ten years after Zeppelin formally broke up in the wake of Bonham's death, Page took on the role of band curator, overseeing a series of CD remasters of the original studio recordings. However, despite being one of the greatest stage acts in rock history, there had been a paucity of official Led Zeppelin live recordings to work on, despite the 1970s vogue for live albums. The one exception had been the soundtrack for The Song Remains The Same, the critically flawed concert film recorded over three nights at Madison Square Garden, and added to with bizarre fantasy sequences, such as Plant in soft focus rescuing a castle-bound maiden while in search of the Holy Grail. No, me neither.

For the rest, however, Zeppelin fans had to make do with myriad bootlegs, many of which had been poorly recorded on dictaphones smuggled into venues. This has long irked Jimmy Page, believing that fans have been denied access to the full power of the band live. So, on November 11, 1997 (coincidentally, my 30th birthday folks...), Led Zeppelin released BBC Sessions, a CD package containing BBC recordings from 1969 for the likes of Peel and Alexis Korner's Rhythm And Blues show, as well as exclusive BBC gigs between 1969 and 1971 during which early versions of Dazed And Confused (which Page had first performed with The Yardbirds), Communication Breakdown and the Whole Lotta Love medley, a staple of their later tours, were premiered.

The BBC Sessions package - which included a limited edition version containing band interviews - was a masterpiece. Coming more than 20 years after The Song Remains The Same, it gave fans a chance to hear Zeppelin in their raw state, capturing in sessions often recorded in small radio studios the energy that would later expand into the arenas that became their domain in the 1970s. Of note, however, was the quality of the recordings: in 1997 the CD was still in its infancy, along with digital media in general, but fans were amazed by the detail in the recordings, such as the squeak of Bonham's hi-hat levers going up and down on one of the Dazed And Confused performances.

"The BBC really had very well trained engineers who would have done orchestral sessions, jazz sessions, folk, rock - even skiffle at one point," Page told Johnny Walker last week during a Facebook Live interview to promote the reissue of the BBC recordings - The Complete BBC Sessions, which was released on Friday. "These engineers did a terrific job, considering [most sessions] were recorded for just one broadcast. But to go in with something this avant garde for them to listen to...we were absolutely fearless!".

BBC engineers were products of highly respected training centres, such as the BBC technical college at Wood Norton, near Evesham in Worcestershire. For Page - who, on top of his experience as a session musician, was already a skilled hand in the studio - the BBC's staff responded to the challenge of Led Zeppelin's loud, raucous blues. "[The BBC] didn't know what they were going to be confronted with. For instance, with the Dazed And Confused recording we went in with that and the shorter Communication Breakdown to give two sides of the coin of what we were doing. But there were also usually three, maybe four, songs on the session, but we also used to make up songs on the go, like Sunshine Woman, The Girl I Love and Travelling Riverside Blues. We were creating music so freely and these songs were just in the moment."

Some of those 'made-up' songs didn't appear on the original BBC Sessions CD package, something Zeppelin fans have been known to growl about, feeling that they'd missed out on unheard songs from the canon. "20 years ago a lot got left off because of the amount of space you get on a CD," Page explained to Walker. To this end, the 'new' BBC set contains all 20 tracks from the 1997 release along with nine previously unheard performances from a 'lost' session. These include two more versions of Communication Breakdown and What It Is And What Should Never Be, another version of Dazed And Confused, the semi-improvised Sunshine Woman, and the instrumental White Summer (which appeared as a track extra on the 1990 CD reissue of Coda).

For those who missed the 1997 release, The Complete BBC Sessions is a terrific and thoroughly worthy indulgence - available in three options: an eight-disc (five vinyl and three CD) package containing a 48-page book, an individually-numbered, limited edition luxury print and access to high-definition digital downloads. A five-disc 180g vinyl package is also available, along with a CD-only version containing all 33 tracks on three discs. And, as if that wasn't enough, all versions come with comprehensive sleeve notes by Dave Lewis, editor of the long-running Led Zeppelin magazine and the fan site Tight But Loose, as well as author of several highly informative books about the band.

That The Complete BBC Sesssions just covers the period between 1969 and 1971 shouldn't mean that fans should clamour for more. The 1971 recordings were their last for the BBC, perhaps marking the moment that, with their fourth album, they were propelled into the superstar period of their career, spending the next nine years as their original line-up marauding across the world - and especially North America. Some will say, with some justification, that Led Zeppelin became the perfect example of bloated stadium rock (I will always disagree), but the thing that makes The Complete BBC Sessions so engaging is where the band were, musically, at the outset of their journey.

This was the dawning of the rock era and Led Zeppelin were, arguably, the vanguard, bridging that period between pop's maturing and British rock's transatlantic dominance. By 1969, Page had, in just a few years, gone from suburban Epsom to playing on Petula Clark and Tom Jones as a teenager, and then on to founding one of the most notable - and notorious - bands. At the BBC, though, you can hear Led Zeppelin, as a collective, playing with, toying with the blues and finding the voice that would eventually be branded "heavy rock". Most amusingly, however, is the idea that BBC engineers - whom, it seemed from my visits to Television Centre with my dad, were mostly called Brian and wore cardigans - were studiously, scientifically even, recording Robert Plant's overtly sexual singing, Bonzo's simply enormous drumming, Jonesy's measured, cultured bass and keyboards, and Page's incredible guitar work for posterity.

On this new collection there are also lighter moments - the Isleys' It's Your Thing as a bolt-on to Communication Breakdown, for example, plus a far greater array of experimentation than Zeppelin usually gets credit for. There is little wastage, either. "John Paul Jones and I had both been session musicians ourselves so we were used to working under very controlled conditions, where every second is literally costing money," explained Page in the Facebook Live session. "We were always very efficient - ruthlessly efficient."

Without getting into the marketing economics of the Led Zeppelin reissues - with middle aged, credit card-burning fans like me clearly the target demographic - they are clearly a labour of love for Page, and his earnestness at curating the Zeppelin legacy shines through. "With the renaissance of vinyl it was crying out to do this, and to put it in context of the reissues of the studio albums," Page explained to Walker. "This is a historical document. There wasn't anywhere else in the world that was like the BBC. It's a great time capsule. You can hear the band progressing from 1969 to 1971 - only two years!"

The process has also been rewarding, but highly time-consuming for Page: "The BBC Sessions are 'complete' as the name of the package says! I've been doing this a long time - you have to listen to everything in real-time. There are no short cuts," to which he added "Now it's time to dust down the guitar!", pointing to his eagerness to get on with a new project - with, or probably, without Plant.

Breaking blues - the buddhas of suburbia

I had a somewhat low opinion of my surroundings growing up in the south-west London suburb of New Malden. It just wasn’t exciting enough, although that, I suppose, can be said of suburbia anywhere.

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.

But even with Blues Breakers working its way into the album charts, Clapton already had his eye on the next thing. Inspired by Chicago’s Buddy Guy and his trio, Clapton accepted an invitation from Ginger Baker to join with Jack Bruce (a onetime Bluesbreaker) to create another short-lived venture that would have a long-lasting impact on rock music: Cream.

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.