From his fingertips came some of the most dynamic British blues ever heard
Since the words ‘Clapton is God’ rst appeared as spray-painted gra ti across a wall in Islington, London, in the mid-’60s, it’s been painfully apparent that as far as amalgamating rock and blues together via six-strings, few have done it better than Eric Clapton. When those sacred words rst immortalised Clapton as a halcyon deity amongst mere mortals, it was during his John Mayall and Cream era, when some of the most dynamic British blues ever heard were emitted from his ngertips and reverberated from his strings, which, at the time, were usually adhered to a 1960 Gibson Les Paul known as the ‘Beano’ guitar, and a ’64 technicolour Gibson SG known as ‘The Fool’.
From the first ‘Clapton is God’ sighting in ’66 onward, such proclamations were scrawled across bathroom stalls and construction sites, and in rock’s back pages. That shouldn’t surprise anyone given the sounds Clapton was creating. In retrospect, albums like 1966’s Blues Breakers With Eric Clapton and anything he did with Cream were damn shocking at the time. Before Clapton – and a few other British souls – the idea of electric blues was more in line with the likes of Buddy Guy, B.B. King and Albert King, but Clapton changed the game. With a Les Paul in hand, which Clapton plugged into a ’62 Marshall Bluesbreaker, he created songs like Steppin’ Out, and Hideaway with John Mayall, and Sunshine of Your Love with Cream. Not too shabby. If you’d like to give it go, it’s important to remember that while Clapton picked up a Strat in the ’70s, as we alluded to earlier, in his ’60s blues days he was a card-carrying Les Paul lover. So, if you want to dig into his blues roots, you’ll want to keep that in mind from the jump.
