Eric Clapton always tried to be a professional whenever he got onstage.
There were often moments when his demons got the better of him whenever he got up to the microphone, but whenever he shut up and played his guitar, it was hard to deny that he was always one of the finest blues troubadours rock and roll had ever known. But all great blues come from sadness, and ‘Slowhand’ had his fair share of moments that were too much to bear.
Because outside of the more nefarious parts of his personal life, Clapton already knew a thing or two about tragedy before he started out making music. His troubled home life was already bad enough for him to deal with, but when he first got turned on to the guitar, he found a refuge for him to pour out all of his pain. Even if he was copying his favourite Albert King licks, it was easier to hear the emotion behind every bend that he made.
But for all the talk around being a musical ‘God’ in many respects, Clapton never forgot to keep his ears open. He knew as well as anyone that there would always be a guitarist better than him or a young kid looking to take the crown away from him, but when he jammed with people he respected, it was never out of jealousy.
There’s a good chance that he never thought about upstaging Duane Allman when playing in Derek and the Dominos, and if you see his face whenever he jammed with artists like Mark Knopfler, he’s looking at his playing the same way a proud older brother watches his younger siblings take off. As long as it’s about bringing good music into the world, that was all that mattered, but that makes it all the more tragic when a talent is gone too soon.
While the 1990s started off tragically for Clapton when he lost his son, Conor, his musical brother Stevie Ray Vaughan was also a heavy blow to his professional life. Vaughan was clearly the best blues guitarist of the next generation and would have gladly pushed the guitar into the future, but once he went down in a tragic helicopter crash after playing with ‘Slowhand’, the guitar legend remembered being in shambles trying to make his way through the next gig.
It may have been the only way for Clapton to process his grief, but he admitted that it wasn’t any easier for him to go through, saying, “If we packed up and went home, the whole thing would just be unbearable. So we went to… I think it was St Louis, or somewhere in the Middle, and we were almost in shock. I could hardly remember any of the words. I don’t know how we got through it. But it was the best tribute I thought that we could do – to carry on and let everybody who was coming to let us know that it was in honour of their memory.”
Then again, being onstage and sharing that grief with the people is often the best way for musicians to heal. The music has always been an innate part of their lives and often used as an emotional translator half the time, so there’s a reason why legends like Keith Richards eventually went onstage even when he was dealing with the same kind of tragedies that Clapton had gone through.
And even if artists need some more time away than what Clapton did when honouring Vaughan, it’s not hard to see why Foo Fighters and Queen put on tribute shows when they lost one of their own. The fans are grieving just as much as the people onstage, and it would be considered rude if they simply bypassed the fact that a very important person isn’t there anymore. Emotions demand to be felt, and the most important part of those shows is about everyone being in one place to cry, laugh, and remember the good times that they had.
