The musical environment Eric Clapton grew up in didn’t really cater to having a ton of friends.
He knew from the beginning that this was a business, and he was going to need to conduct himself as a maverick if he was going to have any chance of keeping his head above water. But after years of slogging away trying to outdo every other guitarist in England, there was bound to be some friends out there for him once he found the right kind of people to play with.
And while The Yardbirds were far heavier than any other British invasion act at the time, ‘Slowhand’ did at least have a decent reputation throughout the club scene. The band may have been good enough to land a spot opening for The Beatles, but it wasn’t until Clapton got to talking with George Harrison that he started to learn what musical friendship could be. Harrison was simply another nice guy making music, and even if it wasn’t Clapton’s cup of tea all the time, there was at least some mutual appreciation there.
While ‘Slowhand’ first saw them as a teenybopper act, their transition into the greatest musical minds of the 20th century was a lot more interesting for him to witness. Not many people get a front row seat to see how tracks like ‘All You Need is Love’ or ‘Here Comes the Sun’ was created, but Clapton was nothing more than a fan when he was asked to perform on ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’.
No one had even tried playing on a Beatles record in that capacity, but he managed to deliver the kind of solo that the band needed. It may have soon been dwarfed by what Prince would do with the solo decades after the fact, but it was clear that Harrison was using him as a way of keeping the rest of the band on good behaviour so he could finish his tune.
But if the band were already frustrated with each other making the rest of The White Album, that rage went into overdrive once Harrison found out that Clapton had been playing the record before it was even out. While everyone is clamouring for any type of musical leak from their favourite artists today, Harrison felt completely betrayed by Clapton for keeping a version of the record with him while he went to America.
According to Clapton, he remembered being absolutely mortified once Harrison discovered what he was doing, saying, “While I was in LA, I had been playing some of the songs on the album to various friends when I got a phone call from George. Word had got back to him that I was playing the album around town, and he was furious. I remember being incredibly hurt because I thought I’d been doing a grand job of promoting their music to really discriminating people. For a little while, I steered clear of him, but in time we became friends again.”
Then again, when Clapton did eventually make up with Harrison, he ended up getting a little bit too close for comfort. His relationship with Patti Boyd was already inappropriate when she was still married to Harrison, but when he eventually got married to Boyd, Harrison even found it in his heart to forgive his old mate and was level-headed enough to attend the wedding with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr.
So with all that in mind, it’s pretty clear to say that Harrison was one of the most easygoing people in the world when it came to Clapton. He had been stabbed in the back more than a few times by him, but it takes a true friend to be able to see past all of the window dressing and be cool enough to refer to him as a ‘husband-in-law’.
