Rock and Roll Garage

In the music business since the 1960s, Eric Clapton was first part of many incredible bands such as The Yardbirds, John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers, Cream, Blind Faith, and Derek & The Dominos before focusing solely on his solo career. He had the chance to witness the evolution of Rock and Blues up close, and unlike many artists from his era, he always listened to new bands and had a clear sense of the music scene in every era. In the 1990s, many successful and influential bands emerged in the United Kingdom, and Clapton shared his opinion on some of them, including Radiohead. Eric Clapton's opinion on Radiohead and Thom Yorke Eric Clapton likes Radiohead and praised the band a couple of times, especially during the 90s. "That are some (Britpop bands that I like). I mean, I'm with everybody else on Radiohead. I'm really with that and I heard that, without knowing much, I heard 'Paranoid Android'. The structure of that song swept me away. It tuned me into what music is about. It made me think of like great classical music, opera. The structure of it, the singing. I don't think he (Thom Yorke) really works very hard, but he's just got the gift," he told Bob Mills in 1998 (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage). In that same year, he revealed to Stern which were some of the new bands he was listening to at the time. One of them was, of course, Radiohead. "I like bands like Radiohead or Tricky. But when I just want to feel good or need some comfort I'm almost solely listening to modern rhythm'n'blues by Puff Daddy or Babyface." The song praised by Clapton "Paranoid Android", mentioned by Clapton, was part of Radiohead's acclaimed third studio album OK Computer, released in 1997. The band, formed in Abingdon, Oxfordshire, England, in 1985, only had the opportunity to release their debut album in 1993. Their first three records included hits such as "Fake Plastic Trees", "Karma Police" and "Creep". The latter of which was accused of plagiarizing the famous Hollies song "The Air That I Breathe". Curiously, Clapton was once quoted by Alan Parsons (Sound Engineer) of saying that the first note of the Hollies track had more soul that anything he had ever heard. Their line-up has been the same since the band was formed: Thom Yorke (Vocals, guitar, piano), Jonny Greenwood (Lead guitar, keyboards and more), Ed O'Brien (Guitar), Colin Greenwood (Bass) and Philip Selway (Drums). So far the band has released 9 studio albums and sold more than 30 million records worldwide. Like Thom Yorke, Eric Clapton also wasn't a big fan of Brit Pop Although some people wrongfully classify Radiohead as part of Brit Pop, they were quite far from that movement, which was highly connected to bands like Oasis, Blur, Suede and Pulp. In fact, the frontman Thom Yorke actually hated that new genre. “The whole Brit pop thing made me fucking angry. I hated it. It was backwards-looking, and I didn’t want any part of it,” he told Rolling Stone in 2017. Like Yorke, Clapton also did not enjoy Britpop much, as he told Bob Mills in 1998. The guitarist and singer believed that the movement was not as significant as the bands involved in it imagined. "The Brit Pop thing, I think became so self-important. I mean, what I would experience would be based on traveling. I'd go way, say, if I went to America or I went to some other part of the world... As I do quite frequently, I love traveling." "But I would come back to England and think there is a lot of conceit going on here that that we think that London is the center of the world. Actually if you to America the people who are really big here don't have much on an international level. It doesn't add up to a great deal. What I'll hear when I'm in London for a while is that 'Oh, the Americans haven't got this yet. They haven woken up to the London, English gift yet, you know'. You think, wait a second' it's not quite like that (it's all hyped up)." Eric Clapton continued: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHiGbolFFGw&list=RDfHiGbolFFGw&start_radio=1&pp=ygURcGFyYW5vaWQgYW5kcm9pZG-gBwE%3D "We are talking about all those bands that are really self-important and kind of blasting their way to the top. I don't like a lot of them, but there are people that (like them). You (the interviewer) are one of them. When you say you like Blur, I thought, well I've got to be careful here. Because I'm not mad about Blur but in a way I've got to respect what you feel about it," Eric Clapton said. Radiohead's most recent album is A Moon Shaped Pool, released in 2016. Since then, the members have toured and collaborated with other artists in the studio, as well as released their own solo records.

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