Q: I watched your rehearsal last year with The Crickets at the House of Blues in Hollywood, and smiled as one of your daughters danced and hopped up and down while her dad was playing. I know that you have also performed at your older daughter's school. Do you have any sense of what your children know your profession is and what they think about it?
CLAPTON: Yes, I think they do. I think they know what I do. But I think they put it in a kid's perspective, which is amazing, because it's only a little part of their daily life. I haven't yet seen them react or respond to how other people view me, (and) I think that confuses them sometimes. That instance at the House of Blues was interesting, because then they were able to see the other musicians when they come to rehearsals. But I don't think they figured out what the audience is about.
Q: Did they happen to see you perform at the Hollywood Bowl the night before?
CLAPTON: They were there, in fact, and they have been to see me play in London, but I'm not sure if they can really comprehend what's going on.
Q: Do you have them wear earplugs or any other protection for their hearing?
CLAPTON: I don't, and that was a concern for me. But I always trust my wife's judgment about that. If she feels like it's getting too loud, I know she'll take them out (of the venue).
Q: With the exception of the song "Run Home To Me," most of the guitar solos on "Back Home" are short and concise, and all of them are very tasteful. I get a sense from this, and from your previous studio albums, that you enjoy placing yourself in a tightly arranged musical context where you need to make your statements on guitar in a careful, well-chosen manner, rather than just having the band vamp and you blow at length. Is that correct? And is it more challenging for you to play within that kind of a format, instead of something more loose and open-ended?
CLAPTON: Yeah, that's something I've always strived to do. You can only really stretch I can only do that now in concert. I think, on record, it would throw everything out of proportion if one song had a really long solo and the others didn't; the over-all picture gets redefined. If it's an album of songs, then that has to be the priority.
Q: The song "Lost and Found" has a very abrupt ending, in the middle of your solo, and I wonder if that was deliberate?
CLAPTON: Yeah, it was an homage to this thing D'Angelo did on his "Voodoo" album.
Q: Well, I'm sure D'Angelo will be please to know you're an admirer of his work.
CLAPTON: (Laughs) He knows I'm a fan of his. It was from his "Voodoo" album, a song that was very Prince-like, and he ended it the same way.
Q: B.B. King once told me that, until the mid-1960s, when various rock bands in England began singing his praises, he thought of himself as a singer who played guitar, but that now he thinks of himself as a guitarist who sings. How do you think of him, and does the constant focus on you as a "legendary guitar hero" diminish the fact that you are also a gifted and soulful singer?
CLAPTON: Well, I've always thought of B.B. as a singer who played the guitar, too. But really, I think when I heard his early stuff it seemed the guitar playing was just to compliment the vocals. Then I heard his live albums, like "Live At The Regal," and realized it was a whole different ball game. Finding out what people are like live, when you see some of the great R&B and blues people live, you get a different picture, and sometimes it's more accurate. And it's the same for me. When I'm making a record, we're trying to preserve the perspective of the piece that's the most important prerogative. On stage I have a much more open approach to it; it can go anywhere and I think it needs to go anywhere. When the audience is sitting in front of you, it doesn't show any respect to them to confine it like the record. And that's the point, on stage, where we become musicians, when we learn to play off the songs and off each other.
Q: About 10 years ago I asked B.B. King, who was then 70, if he contemplated slowing down, and he smiled and said he was thinking of cutting back his touring schedule. When I asked him to elaborate, he said he thought maybe he'd just do 200 dates a year instead of 250! Beyond his obvious love of the music, what do you think drives him to maintain the pace he does?
CLAPTON: Ah, I think it's just who he is now. I think he probably wouldn't be able to live without it.
Q: How about you?
CLAPTON: No, I couldn't do it (tour that much). I have too much invested in being home a lot of the time. If I was on the road all the time like B.B., I'd always be on the phone calling home to see how everything was.
Q: Ray Charles once told me that, when he was considering covering songs by other artists, he felt he had earned the right, artistically, to make any musical changes he wanted. But he also felt that if he couldn't connect immediately with the lyrics on an emotional level, then he wouldn't bother. What is your criteria for picking songs to cover by other artists?
CLAPTON: I think I probably am more influenced by the over all groove of the track, not even the song. If we pinpoint the songs I've done on this album, they were really more about the overall feel of the record than the lyrics. I mean sometimes I don't even know what people are saying when they sing. When I was younger, it was phonetic; I liked the sound of the words much more so than the words.
Q: I remember when I was in high school and the rock band I was in would replay an album over and over to try to make out the lyrics, back in the vinyl records era. Years later, I discovered that sometimes we got the lyrics very, very wrong. When you were young, did you learn the lyrics to songs by Robert Johnson by replaying his album over and over?
CLAPTON: Yeah, I had no idea what they (the lyrics ) were. I only know now.
Q: So did you find that you got them wrong back then?
CLAPTON: (chuckles) Yeah, that's what happened.
Q: This is kind of a left field question, but when I look at photos of you from 1964 with the Yardbirds, when you wore a sharp suit with a skinny tie, I think of the way the Modern Jazz Quartet used to look on their Atlantic Records' album covers. Was your fashion sense at the time influenced by jazz in any way?
CLAPTON: That was the idea then. My state of attire in those days was Ivy League, and I was a big jazz fan. And buying albums by Lee Morgan and (John) Coltrane, and seeing some of the album covers and the way those guys got dressed up on them, was very powerful for me.
Q: I know from talking to Nathan East that you are a jazz fan and an admirer, as you just mentioned, of Coltrane and Lee Morgan, as well as Thelonious Monk. But I've rarely seen you discuss the music and its impact on you, perhaps because no one's asked. How do you feel jazz has shaped the music you make, directly or indirectly?
CLAPTON: Growing up, I was listening to them, blues and jazz, at the same time. I remember going into a record store in Richmond, outside London, and they only had blues and jazz, no pop records at all. So I'd be buying an acoustic album by John Lee Hooker, alongside albums by Monk or Clifford Brown. And, to me, listening to it, I couldn't actually make any distinction between the two things. I had no real idea that there was supposed to be any division between the two things. And the way the music scene existed here (in England), people would play in the same clubs. Ronnie Scott's (jazz club in London) would have Rahsaan Roland Kirk one week, and then Sony Terry and Brownie McGhee the following week, so it seemed like the same tree to me, or, rather, it sounded like different branches on the same tree.
Q: Could you talk about the musical impact of jazz on your own playing? Obviously, you couldn't run the changes the way Coltrane did on the saxophone. But how did hearing him influence what you did on guitar?
CLAPTON: I think just the atmosphere and the spontaneity, the creativity of it, was kind of what we drew from when we got on stage in Cream, (with) a lot of that free-form stuff, although it was still pretty limited in its tonality. And everything I was playing was only coming from the blues scale and moving out of blues and rock phrasing. But the atmosphere and intention was to try and escape (the confines of blues and rock). And a lot of that came out of the listening I did to early Coltrane. I bought a few Red Garland albums recently, with Coltrane on them. He was young and was playing like a lunatic; he was wailing and it was almost ugly and showing off, and I don't think that was his intention. But he just couldn't contain himself. It was crazy playing, but it was something akin to what we did in Cream.
Q: I read recently in a British newspaper that Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker said that, at the time, they thought of Cream as a pop group channeling the music of Ornette Coleman, but never told you that you were Ornette. Is that true?
CLAPTON: (laughs). That sounds like Jack. No, they never told me that, but that sounds quite appropriate.
Q: When someone buys one of your albums or a ticket to hear you perform, what do you want to give them in return?
CLAPTON: The truth. Just an honest performance, really. I always look forward to playing, and the only time it becomes a chore is if I'm sick or tired, or not feeling well. With each show, I'm always convinced this will be the best one ever.
Q: Who do you work with that you can rely on to tell you when something you do just isn't cutting it, musically? Would that be Simon Climie, your frequent musical collaborator? Or put another way: Do you have people who won't blow smoke up your ass and aren't afraid to be candid with you to your face?
CLAPTON: I don't have anybody who does blow smoke up my ass; they won't last long around here if they do. But it could be Simon, and often would be Alan Douglas, who works with us and is an incredibly skilled engineer. He works on all the albums and organizes everything and is a great live recorder, if you were using an orchestra or full band. And he isn't totally unbiased. So they'll tell me, with care, obviously.
Go to page 3
