I'm down on Clapton right now, man. Still like Jack Bruce, though 
.
and I'll tell you exactly why I think Clapton is a bastard.
1.) Layla is an overhyped album with about 6 or 7 decent tracks. The rest is pointless whining between him and Bobby. The "Little Wing" cover makes me want to blow up a school.
2.)Enter 1968 Rolling Stone interview:
Interviewer: What do you think about Jimi Hendrix?
Clapton: I don't really want to be critical about it. I think Jimi
can sing very well; he just puts it around that he
can't sing and everyone accepts it. I think he can
sing very well. I don't think he's a great guitarist. I
don't like to watch him too much 'cause I prefer to
listen to him.
When he first came to England, you know English
people have a very big thing towards a spade. They
really love that magic thing, the sexual thing. They
all fall for that sort of thing. Everybody and his
brother in England still sort of think that spades have
big dicks. And Jimi came over and exploited that to
the limit, the fucking tee. Everybody fell for it. Shit.
I fell for it. After a while I began to suspect it. Having
gotten to know him, I found out that's not where he's
at, not where he's at all. That stuff he does onstage,
when he does that he's testing the audience. He'll do
a lot of things, like fool around with his tongue and
play his guitar behind his back and rub it up and
down his crotch. And he'll look at the audience, and
if they're digging it, he won't like the audience. He'll
keep on doing it, putting them on. Play less music.
If they don't dig it, then he'll play straight 'cause he
knows he has to. It's funny. I heard that here he
came on and put on all that shit in his first set and
people were just dead towards it. And in his second
set he just played, which is great.
He had the whole combination in England. It was
just what the market wanted, a psychedelic pop star
who looked freaky, and they're also still hung up
about spades and the blues thing was there. So Jimi
walked in, put on all the gear, and made it straight
away. It was a perfect formula. Underneath it all,
he's got an incredible musical talent. He is really
one of the finest musicians around on the Western
scene. If you just scrape away all the bullshit he
carries around you'll find a fantastically talented guy
and a beautiful guitar player for his age. I just can't
take it all, all the plastic things.
3.) I read in a biography that Eric Clapton was jamming somewhere in England, and Jimi had the gumption to sit down with him and strum (which nobody did, since EC was the perceived king of the Blues Guitar over there). About 20 minutes later, Clapton just got up and left, cursing and shit.
now, while a lot of this is pretty cool, some of it is just plain jealousy shining through. This was hard for me to see, too, because I own about 10 Clapton-related albums (Slowhand, 461 Ocean Boulevard, Layla and other assorted Love Songs, Fresh Cream, Live Cream I, Live Cream II, Disreali Gears, Wheels of Fire, and Goodbye.)
I am definately going on a break from him for a while, though.
Resist Much. Obey Little
-Walt Whitman
<span style=\'color:gray\'>"As through this life you travel, you meet some funny men
Some rob you with a six-gun, some with a fountain pen
As through this life you ramble, as through this life you roam
You'll never see an outlaw take a family from their home"
-from Pretty Boy Floyd
(W. Guthrie)</span>
