Jimi Hendrix’s opinion on Eric Clapton

Jimi Hendrix is considered one of the most influential guitarists of all time and after years of playing as a sideman with American artists, he was discovered by The Animals’ bassist Chas Chandler, who took him to England and helped him form his own band. One of the first artists he met and had the chance to play with there was Eric Clapton, who was already considered “God” by local fans. During his short career, Jimi sadly only had the chance to hear Clapton’s early work, but he got to know him and his playing quite well, having  shared his opinion of him as a guitarist.

What was Jimi Hendrix’s opinion on Eric Clapton

Although Jimi Hendrix was American and had spent much of the 1960s playing as a sideman across the country, everything took off when The Animals bassist Chas Chandler saw him performing in a club, invited him to come to England to record and became his manager. Jimi already knew Eric Clapton’s guitar playing and was a fan, but it was then that he finally got the chance to meet him. One year later, while talking about the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s first album, he praised the British musician. He said that he was really surprised when he first heard him.

“What I’ve seen (in England) it’s pretty good. I thought it could be a whole lot of cats who could play it but not really feel it. But I was surprised, especially when I heard Eric Clapton, man. It was ridiculous. I thought, ‘God!’ Every time we get together, that’s all we talk about, playing music,” he told Steve Barker in 1967. In the next year, when Jimi Hendrix Experience were working on their third album “Electric Ladyland”, the American musician was asked which guitarist he admired the most and his answer was Clapton and Albert King.

He said:

“Well, it’s very hard to say. But as far as the Blues scene goes, some of the things that Albert King and Eric Clapton do are very good. I don’t have any favorites. It’s very hard because there are so many different styles. It’s so bad to put everybody in the same bag. (Comparing me to Clapton) that’s one thing I don’t like. First of all, they do that, and then they say, ‘O.K. now, Blues first of all’. And we just say,’ We don’t want to play Blues all the time.’”

“We just don’t feel like it all the time. We want to do other things, do nice songs or different things. But, like, the blues is what we’re supposed to dig. But, you see, there are other things we can play too. And we just don’t think alike. Sometimes the notes might sound like it. But it’s a completely different scene between those notes,” he said in an interview with “Jazz & Pop” magazine.

Interestingly, as quoted in the book “Starting at Zero: His Own Story“, Hendrix thought Clapton and King had a similar sound. “The first time I played guitar in England I sat in with Cream. I like the way Eric Clapton plays. His solos sound just like Albert King. Eric is just too much. And Ginger Baker, he’s like an octopus, man. He’s a real natural drummer.”

When Jimi Hendrix joined Cream and left Eric Clapton mesmerized and nervous

In 1966, after being in London for just one week, Jimi Hendrix went to a Cream show and asked to jam with Clapton on stage. They had heard about him before but never really listened to him playing. As recalled by bassist and singer Jack Bruce, “I mean, only a very brave person would do that. As far as I remember, he plugged into my bass amp, did a version of ‘Killing Floor’ and blew us all away, of course.”

“He just played his ass off, basically. I mean, the first time that I saw Eric I thought ‘Oh, there’s a master guitar player.’ But Eric was a guitar player, Jimi was some sort of  force of nature. I know (that moment) had a tremendous effect on Eric,” Jack Bruce said in an interview for the BBC documentary Seven Ages of Rock (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage). In the same conversation The Animals bassist and former Hendrix manager Chas Chandler, said that when he went backstage after the performance, Eric was with his hands shaking and trying to light up a cigarette. Eric reportedly said: “You never told me he was that f*cking good.'”

That show took place at Regent’s Polytechnic, where Roger Waters, Nick Mason, and Richard Wright studied. They were in the audience that night and later told Bruce that the show was one of the main things that inspired them to form Pink Floyd.

Jimi Hendrix said he would like to have written Cream’s “White Room”

Hendrix became good friends with the members of Cream afterward. Having moved to London, he became increasingly close to musicians from the city’s music scene. When the British trio was recording their classic song “White Room” at Atlantic Studios in New York City, Jimi visited them and had the opportunity to hear the track. Hendrix reportedly said that he wished he had written it.

“He came to the sessions when we did ‘White Room’ in New York. (Jimi) was very encouraging about the song. He came up to me and said: ‘Wow, I wish I could write something like that.’ I said: ‘Jimi, what you’ve got to realize is that I probably nicked it off you,'” Jack Bruce told Classic Rock in 2008. Curiously, Jack Bruce later said that Hendrix’s approach to playing was what inspired that track.

When Jimi Hendrix asked Eric Clapton to tune his guitar in a concert after covering The Beatles (McCartney was in the audience)

There were many historic moments in Rock and Roll involving Jimi Hendrix and some of England’s greatest guitarists. They would often go to see him perform and one particular night that went down in history, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend and Paul McCartney were in the audience. Since The Beatles had recently released Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Hendrix decided to pay tribute to them by covering the album’s title track. However, his guitar went out of tune and he began looking for Clapton in the audience to ask him to tune it for him.

It was Paul McCartney himself who recalled this incredible moment. “It was at the Saville Theatre in London. I was there, Clapton was there, Townshend was there. (We) all come to see this new guitar God. He played a great version of it (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band). He had this vibrato on. You know the bigsby arm on the guitar, the whammy bar, call it what you will. And he’s going (imitates guitar sound) and we’re going ‘wow, great, great’. But we knew ‘Now he’s out of tune’ (laughs).”

“If you stretch the strings in those days that would send you out of tune. So it’s his first number, we were looking (and thinking) what he’s gonna do?’ So he starts looking for Eric Clapton in the audience. He says: ‘Eric’s out there, man?’ Eric is there, but Eric is hiding (laughs). Jimi (then) spots him and says ‘Hey man! Will you come up here and tune this thing for me?'” (Did Clapton go there and tune it?) “No,” Paul McCartney said in an interview with Stephen Colbert in 2019  (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

Eric Clapton’s favorite Hendrix song

Eric and Jimi remained friends until the musician’s tragic death in 1970 at the age of 27. Shortly before Hendrix’s passing, the British guitarist had even bought a guitar that he planned to give him as a present. Sadly, he never had the chance to do so. When asked by BBC Radio segment “My Hendrix Rock” a couple of years ago, to pick his favorite song by the musician, he chose his cover of “Killing Floor”, which was the song he played on stage with Cream in 1966.

“The first time I met Jimi, he came to see Cream play. (It was) at an early Cream gig when we were playing universities and stuff like that. (This one was at) the Cambridge May Ball. He came to the London Polytechnic and we were playing there. We got up on stage, Chas Chandler came up and said, ‘I’ve got this friend who would love to jam.’