During the past six decades, Eric Clapton has become one of the most influential guitar players of all time and has helped to popularize the Blues around the world. He is always featured on lists of the greatest players, but many other guitarists are often overlooked in those rankings.
Stephen Stills, known for his work with Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, is one of them. Over the decades, Clapton has shared his opinions on many of these underrated musicians, including the American guitarist.
Eric Clapton’s opinion on Stephen Stills
Eric Clapton is a big fan of Stephen Stills as a guitarist and also liked Buffalo Springfield, the band in which Stills first achieved fame alongside Neil Young. He really enjoyed their song “Bluebird,” and it was because of that track that their friendship began. Clapton even admitted that he “copied” that song when creating “Let It Rain,” one of his greatest solo tracks. “We went to L.A. with Cream. I hadn’t been there more than about an hour. There’s a knock on the door and Stephen Stills was there with a guitar, you know. He just came in, took his guitar out of the case and said: ‘I hear you like this’ (and played Buffalo Springfield’s ‘Bluebird’),” Clapton said in the documentary “Echo in the Canyon” (2018).
During the recording of that documentary, Bob Dylan’s son Jakob Dylan (of The Wallflowers) re-recorded some of the biggest classics by artists who were part of the Laurel Canyon movement in California. One of the tracks he covered was Buffalo Springfield’s “Questions,” and he invited Clapton and Stills to play on it. The British musician said the song was a direct influence on “Let It Rain,” and that people should know it.
Eric Clapton continued:
“I haven’t listened to that stuff for a long time, the west coast music at all. I haven’t heard the original version of ‘Questions’ for a long, long, long time and it really took me back. It took me back to the song that I had done around the same time. A little later actually, called ‘Let it Rain’, it was one of the first songs I’ve written. I was influenced by it, I think, I must have copied it and not even known, you know. (Jakob said they would cut that part of the interview) Clapton replied: “No, no! That’s very important for people to know,” he said (Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage).
Curiously, at the time he invited Stephen Stills himself to play on the song. The American musician played the famous guitar solo in the bridge and the bass guitar in the outro, as well as providing backing vocals. Clapton is also a fan of Stills’ solo hit song “Love The One You’re With” as George Terry, who played with both of them, said in the book “Stephen Stills: Change Partners” (2019). “I clearly recall Eric telling me that Stephen would go to heaven for writing that song,” he said.
Also in 1970, Clapton played on Stills’ solo debut album, recording guitar parts for the song “Go Back Home”. In the next year he recorded again with Stills, being part of the song “Fishes and Scorpions”, released on his second studio record.
The funny story of when Stephen Stills escaped through a bathroom window and Clapton was arrested
Stephen and Eric had the chance to play together many times over the years and hang out. When their friendship started back in the late 60s, Clapton ended up being arrested by the police but Stills managed to escape through a bathroom window. “I had got an invite to go and watch Buffalo Springfield rehearsing in a house in Laurel Canyon. I had met this girl called Mary Hughes, who was the kind of beauty queen of the strip at that time. Jeff Beck was dating her, Keith Moon was dating her and I somehow managed to get into the equation. I’m with this beautiful girl and there’s joints being passed around, and they start to play.”
“They played at a level where it wasn’t too loud for everybody. They were rehearsing a set, I think, to play for a show. Then there’s a knock on the door and someone goes to answer and there’s an immediate vibe in the room that something is wrong. They opened the door and there’s a policeman standing there and there’s a squad car in the background. He says: ‘You’ll have to keep it down, we’ve had some complaints about the noise.”
He continued:
“(Then he smells and says:) ‘What’s that?’ Next thing you know they’re in the room. I had just put down a joint but I had nothing in my hands. I was handcuffed to somebody. So we were all taken to L.A. County Jail. Meanwhile, people were like ‘What happened to Stephen?’ Stephen, when he realized who was at the front door, jumped out of the bathroom window and ran off (laughs),” Eric Clapton recalled in the documentary “Echo in the Canyon” (2018).
Unlike Clapton, who has been called “God” for more than 60 years, Stephen Stills never really got the real recognition he deserves as a guitar player. His bandmate Neil Young already called him one of the most underrated guitar players in the world. Graham Nash has the same opinion and once said: “Stephen had moments when no one could touch him. Not Clapton or Bloomfield or Beck or Santana, or anyone in that league.”
What Stephen Stills learned jamming with Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix
During his career Stephen had the chance to meet and jam with some of the greatest guitar players of all time. Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jimi Hendrix were some of them and he said in the CSNY biographical book by Peter Doggett that he learned a lot of things playing with them.
“The thing I learned about playing with Eric Clapton and all the great British Blues guys is that there’s a courtliness, a kind of manners involved in jamming. I wouldn’t trade that, period, for the world. The issue for me wasn’t so much fitting in, or being a chameleon, as simple good manners, which can be a problem when you’re going out and getting hammered, and end up looking like a jerk. I realize now that I was simply being shy, and trying to overcome it in a haphazard, clumsy kind of way,” he said.
He curiously became the only person who ever had Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton playing on the same album. They both recorded guitar tracks for his solo debut record released in 1970. Talking with Classic Rock, Stills recalled a guitar he gave Clapton and said he adores him. “I saw him at Ahmet’s (Ertegün, Atlantic Records head) funeral. He was looking at Crosby with this English bulldog disgust. It’s hard to think of Eric Clapton as an English bulldog, but he is after all. He’s great.”
Stephen continued:
“I gave him a guitar once for doing a session, a really nice Martin F series that had been turned into a round-hole. And he rather liked it. He did his first solo acoustic song, and Bill Halverson recorded it, and I gave him the guitar. And then of course when they sold the collection, some roadie took credit for it. I was vexed. I’m sure it was so long ago he didn’t remember, and the miles in between were long and hard. I absolutely adore the man,” Stephen Stills said.