Eric Clapton – "Blues Power" (1970)

Bet you didn’t think I knew

How to rock ’n’ roll

I play keyboards, not guitar – so I’m not qualified to judge Eric Clapton’s technical ability as a guitarist.

But what this year’s “29 Posts in 29 Days” is about is whether a recording artist is overrated or underrated based on the quality of his or her recorded music – not on his or her ability as an instrumentalist or a singer or a songwriter.  

By that criterion, Clapton is clearly overrated – at least as a solo artist.

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Type “Eric Clapton overrated underrated” in a Google search box and you’ll see that a lot more people see him as overrated as underrated.

David Hayter of Guitar Planet magazine has written that the young Clapton “played with both an effortless sauntering swagger and a luscious melting tone that could pierce one moment and ooze seductively the next.”  

But Hayter thinks Clapton peaked a long time ago:

His glory lays in the distant, distant past.  [After] the halcyon days of youth, when his sound was a revelation . . . Clapton quickly began to wane, and Slowhand set about an arduous three and half decades of meandering jams, indulgent and unspectacular live performances, and innovation free LPs.

Many critics think Clapton was more of a borrower than a creator.  They give Clapton little credit for what the Yardbirds, Cream, Blind Faith, and Derek and the Dominoes accomplished.  “Left to Clapton, Cream would have played half-hour versions of Robert Johnson's ‘Crossroads’,” wrote Kieron Tyler of the Guardian.   “And the thrilling guitar on ‘Layla’ was played by Duane Allman.”

There’s little doubt that Clapton’s solo records are mediocre at best.  Most of his best-known covers (like “I Shot the Sheriff,” “Cocaine,” and “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”) are inferior to the originals, while his most successful originals (like “Lay Down Sally,” “Wonderful Tonight,” and “It’s in the Way That You Use It”) do nothing for me except make me change the channel when I hear them on my car radio.

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“Blues Power” – which was released on Clapton’s eponymous debut solo album in 1970 – was co-written by Clapton and Leon Russell.  It sounds like it’s 99% a Russell song, but I could be wrong.

The Eric Clapton album featured many of the same musicians who played on the Delaney & Bonnie & Friends album, On Tour with Eric Clapton, which had been released earlier that same year – Leon Russell, Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, drummer Jim Gordon, bassist Carl Radle, keyboard player Bobby Whitlock, and saxophonist Bobby Keys.

Click here to listen to “Blues Power.”

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: