Eric Clapton’s opinion on Oasis and Britpop

Although Eric Clapton was influenced by the older Blues legends in his early days as a musician and, of course, throughout the decades as well, he also paid attention to new bands during his career. He liked many newer artists, even if they came from completely different musical genres from the ones he was used to listening to and enjoying.

When asked about other groups, he always gave his honest opinion on them, and Oasis, one of the biggest bands to emerge in the United Kingdom over the past decades, was one he actually did not like at all.

Eric Clapton’s opinion on Oasis and Britpop

After Oasis had released their first four albums, which were extremely successful, Clapton was asked if he liked any of their records and he said: “No, because there’s something scornful, self-righteous about their music that nauseates me. 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 whole pop music scene is in a crisis, mainly in England. Today it’s more about advertising, fashion and image than it’s about music. If you wear a Nike training suit you have to listen to Prodigy. Where are the artists talking with their heart? Sad, when the philosophy of a band like Oasis is just “F*ck you”.”

“We (my generation) were naive and dumb. We thought we were part of a big revolution. It took more than 30 years and many deaths like Jimi Hendrix’s or Janis Joplin’s until I realised that I, as an artist, have a responsibility to society. I thought that young bands like Oasis had learned from our mistakes. Instead they are irresponsible and arrogant. They act like hooligans. They are a load of sh*t to me,” Eric Clapton told Stern magazine in 1998.

So besides not being a fan of their music, Clapton also didn’t like their attitude, since the Gallagher brothers, especially in the ’90s, were known for being very cocky at the time, always saying they were the best.

Eric Clapton said the Britpop movement thought they were on top of the world but they weren’t

In 1995 Oasis released “(What’s The Story) Morning Glory?”, which became their best-selling album, which sold an estimated amount of more than 22 million copies worldwide. That year, the record only lost to Alanis Morissette’s “Jagged Little Pill” (33 million) and Mariah Carey’s “Daydream” (25 million), who occupied the first positions. The album by the Gallagher brothers peaked at number one in several countries and reached the fourth position in the United States. Although those were really great numbers, they were not among the best-selling bands of that decade.

In 1998, after they had already released the follow-up “Be Here Now” (1997), which sold about 8 million copies, Clapton told Bob Mills he felt Britpop bands thought they were on top of the world, but that wasn’t true. “There is no one who set your soul on fire (right now),” Mills asked. Clapton said: “That’s not true, that are some (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’ and the structure of that song swept me away. It tuned me into what music is about. It made me think about like great classical music, opera. The structure of it and the singing is… I don’t really think that he works really hard but he’s got the gift.

He continued:

“The Brit Pop thing, I think became so self-important. I mean, what I would experience would be based on traveling. I’d go, 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 we think that London is the center of the world. Actually if you go 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’t 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). 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 who do.”

Eric Clapton continued:

“When you (the interviewer) said ‘I like Blur’, I thought ‘I got to be careful here’. Because I’m not mad about Blur, but in a way I got to respect what you feel about it. The other thing is I’m jealous, obviously, I’m 53 years old. I’m still very hungry for the life that I’ve always led, of a working musician. I really love what I do and I like to be involved in it.”

“That means kind of having to know what’s going on and looking at, listening to things. Being my age in this country, it’s quite a crippling thing because you’re not supposed to be a musician anymore when you’re 30, you know. It’s over, it’s a bit like being a sportsman in this country. You don’t even get much more than one album these days (in contracts). That’s your longevity,” Eric Clapton told Mills (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).

Clapton said he was scared and felt threatened by Britpop

Interestingly, many times when Clapton encountered artists or movements that really impressed him or represented a major change in music, he said he felt insecure or threatened. For example, when he discovered Stevie Ray Vaughan, he felt insecure after seeing how good he was. When Punk Rock emerged, he felt threatened by all the disruption those bands were causing in the music business. As he said in his autobiography, Britpop gave him a similar feeling.

“My absorption with the Blues project also blinded me to the whole revolution that was taking place in the English music scene. Britpop and DJs, jungle and drum and bass, it was all going on and I had no idea. Plus, from what I could gather from Francesca, who was deep into all of this. The culture was heavily fueled by Ecstasy and various other ‘designer’ drugs.”

“I felt very much the same as whenPunk had burst onto the scene in the eighties, scared and threatened. Because even though I didn’t view myself as ‘the establishment,’ I was fully aware that the punkers did,” Eric Clapton said.

Oasis is one of the best-selling bands from the United Kingdom, having sold an estimated amount of more than 75 million records worldwide. That makes them the most successful band from the Britpop movement.