The guitarist Eric Clapton called one of the most important in history

Since the famous “Clapton is God” graffiti in the 1960s, Eric Clapton has reached the status of one of the most influential guitarists of all time. His work with The Yardbirds, John Mayall and Cream was extremely important for the evolution of rock and blues.

Over the decades, he has spoken about many of his peers, and there is one in particular whom he believes is one of the most important of all time.

The guitarist Eric Clapton called one of the most important in history

The guitarist praised by Clapton is the late J.J. Cale, who was one of his favorite musicians of all time and also a very good friend. Two of Clapton’s biggest hits, “After Midnight” and “Cocaine,” were written and originally recorded by Cale, and later covered by Clapton, turning them into worldwide hits.

One year after J.J. Cale’s death, in 2014, Eric Clapton organized a tribute album featuring cover songs and special guests to honor the guitarist. In an interview to promote the album, he explained why Cale was so important to him and why he believes he was one of the greatest guitarists of all time.

(Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage) “I just had to make this music (because) people around the world are unaware to a certain extent of how important he is in the tree of the musical history of this country and the world. The effect he’s had on people in a very subtle way in the way they sing, play guitar and make records.” Although he loves J.J. Cale’s work, Clapton said during the same conversation that the musician’s guitar playing didn’t influencee him.

He continued:

“I thought his guitar playing in my earlier years were quirky and a little bit light, almost as if was an afterthought, it’s only in becoming older or maybe just a little bit more mature about what’s needed musically that I see that he was a master. A master of understatement to be sure but still the power,” Eric Clapton said.

J.J. Cale started his musical career in 1958 and was active until his death in 2013. But it took a long time for him to record something on his own. He worked for years as a studio engineer while playing in bars and clubs. During that time, he was already writing songs and releasing them as singles, which were later covered by other artists like Clapton.

With the success of the cover of “After Midnight” in 1970, which became a top 20 hit, J.J. Cale was finally convinced to record his debut album Naturally (1971). From then on, the musician released 14 other solo albums. In 2004, he and Clapton released the collaborative album “The Road to Escondido”.

After all these years he is still impressed with Cale’s technique

Although the two had met, they became close later on, when a mutual friend, Albert Lee, who later joined Clapton’s solo band, spent time with both of them. “(…) I remember the day that Delaney Bramlett gave me the 45 (Record) of ‘After Midnight’ with ‘Slow Motion’ on the other side. There are radical moments (in your life), it’s just like the first time that I heard ‘That I’ll Be The Day’ by Buddy Holly, ‘I Love the Woman’ by Freddie King or “Standing at the Crossroads” (Elmore James). These moments… I will always be grateful to Delaney for that. When we came to the point to do my first solo album, ‘After Midnight’ went on the album. I kinda knew about John before his first album came out.”

“I went to see him play a few times but actually hang out with him (happened later) in a place where there was there’s nothing else going on. (So) I went to Albert Lee’s house and he said: ‘JJ’s is up here. Do you want to come out and have a coffee or something?’ We sat there all day. I thought he would be pretty reclusive, quiet and shy. (But) he talked a blue streak about everything. About the price of oil, the US economy, politics, music, literature.”

Eric Clapton continued:

“I was stunned and I felt really inept intellectually to be able to stay with him but I hung on. We spent all day together and a lot of the time I was just complimenting, flattering him, trying to make some kind of impression. (…) He makes this profound music, it’s so subtle, strong. Yet he manages to remain detached and uninvolved with all the, forgive me expression, bullshit inside of (the music business)”.

“(…) What I thought was interesting by JJ’s setup, was that he spent a long time… he didn’t make records until he was already a grown man. Being a sound engineer, he was recording people like Bobby Bland and Freddy King. A lot of seriously R&B and Blues guys. He learned that side of the technique before he ever did anything else. So when he made his record he knew how he wanted to sound like. He knew how to do it without compromise. It didn’t need promotion, it was word to mouth. Anybody that was worth their salt knew that this was the root. It was all like that, it was very kind of in a sanctum stuff,” Eric Clapton said in the interview to promote the tribute album.

How Eric Clapton first met J.J. Cale

Although Clapton had already covered J.J. Cale, it took a while for them to finally meet. At first, Cale didn’t even know that the British guitarist had covered “After Midnight”, he found out only after hearing the song on the radio. A few years later, they finally got together, as Clapton recalled.

(Transcribed by Rock and Roll Garage) “I went to see him when we were doing this tribute for The Crickets. We were making an album to honor The Crickets. I didn’t expect him to be there, in fact. Jerry Allison brought him along, convincing him to come to the sessions and there he was with Christine (His wife). He had this incredible Martin guitar, I mean, one of the most expensive looking guitars I’ve ever seen in my life. He always do weird things, he puts really light strings on it, so it sounds (different). I said: ‘That’s nice’ and he said ‘You paid for that’ (laughs).”

He continued:

“He had this incredible grasp of how you make a record and no one can figure it out. I mean, when we done covers of his stuff.  Even recently I was making an album a couple of years ago. We weren’t doing one of his songs. But I wanted to approach one of the songs we were doing as if he was producing. So I took ‘Guitar Man’, that song to the studio and I said to my engineer and my co-producer: ‘Listen to this. How does he (do that?)’. They couldn’t understand, they couldn’t figure it out. Each one of them would attempt to analyze what he’d done but they really didn’t know,” Eric Clapton said in 2006 on the promotional DVD of the record “Road to Escondido”.

Clapton was not the only artist who recorded successful versions of Cale’s songs. Lynyrd Skynyrd, for example, covered “Call Me the Breeze,” which was part of J.J.’s debut album in 1970. The Southern Rock band recorded the song in 1974, turning it into one of their signature tracks.