Eric Clapton is guitar legend,influencal figure.the first man ever to use guitar effect called wah wah (cream:song of brave ulysses)

but there is something that bothers me the moust about him.
while he have some amazing guitar solos (why does love got to be so sad live from fillmore 1970),some great solos
(my father eyes live one more car one more ryder dvd)
he seems to be stuck in pentatonic routhe.
every lick he plays must be pentatonic.

he is one of the rare examples of guitar playing where he didn't improve at all.
to my ears derek and the dominos eric and cream eric isn't the same player at all.
his playing got from advanced (in the 60's)
to
the rudamentary (eversince)
so why do you think he never played anything beside pentatonic???
lack of musical education???

After seeing him perform on March 25. His show and his guitar playing is excellent.

man you got me wrong,he is excelent at what he plays but he never improved
listen to fillmore live 1970 then tell me is he better now.

yeah slow hand is kinda stuck in this whole Pentatonic page when playing, not that there's anything wrong with the blues scale, but shit i think he is capable of doing something else

i know he's great and legendary and there are some songs of his i really do like, but his guitar playing has never reached out and grabbed me like some other artists i love. i appreciate that he's amazingly adept and experienced and is incredibly influential. i guess i just don't "get" it.

Anx said:

I'm a bit the same. All the technical and musical elements are there. But it comes over as a bit dry to me.

GangstaFam said:

It's my "Pretending" single! I bought it! I swear!

Moonbeam said:

You don't have to convince me!

it's a blues scale. what else would he play?

buddy gut and joe walsh are blues players but they incoporate other scales beside pentatonic chromatic for example.
pentatonic is scale of only 5 notes.imagine yourself playing the same scale for all your life

buddy guy

buddy GUT was cooler at this stage of his career


Seriously tho'
Clapton is FAR from a favorite of mine..but he 100% knows that guitar...even Jimi wanted to meet him more than anything else on his first trip to the UK...clapton is discrete and super tasty..not my fav..but superbad !
[Edited 5/4/07 11:31am]

Tears In Heaven is no blues

Most of the stuff he did with Cream was brilliant, he really delivered some fantastic solos. Although I don't really care for his solo work.

prettymansson said:

Funny, I was just reading this great Jimi Hendrix book today, and in it some of Jimi's friends were quoted as saying Jimi longed to jam with Clapton, so he could 'burn him to death' because Clapton couldn't play rhythm guitar. Imo, comparing their abilities, Eric barely deserved to carry Jimi's guitar, let alone jam with the man!

A little more seriously, while I kind of respect Clapton, especially for his Cream and general '60s work, he always comes across as a 'pretender' to me. Not because he's white and British, there's just something about him and his playing that I find unconvincing. Can't really put my finger on it.

He'd be fairly low on my list of great blues-rock guitarists of his generation, mainly for his lack of invention and variation since Cream. I'd put him way below Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, Beck being probably the finest British blues-rock and beyond guitar player there's been imo. At least Page and Beck brought new things to their sounds; Clapton, post-Cream anyway, seemed to settle into an easy-going blues-rock or Robert Johnson-type thing and never grew or added anything new to his sound. He probably never again had musicians of the calibre of Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker to kick him around and raise his game.

Clapton's obsession with the imo fairly over-rated Robert Johnson also bores me. Bob was a bitchin' guitar player, but Clapton, like his (imo superior in the '60s) contemporary Peter Green, has done at least 2 Robert Johnson 'tribute albums, which add absolutely nothing to what Johnson already did 70 years ago. I hate tribute albums .

As for the pentatonic thing, that was fine for the old-time dudes, but unless you're into looking after the blues museum, I think you need to throw one or two other scales and modes in there for variation and personalisation, whether it's 'pure' blues (whatever that is) or not.

Does/ can he improvise? I suspect he has his stock of licks, but would be lost in a true improvisational setting - another black mark against him as a 'true' bluesman. You gotta listen to keep with the likes of John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters if you were in their bands.

Anyway, for me, Clapton's playing basically lacks the 'soul', invention and individualism that is vital to the blues.

I know I'm gonna get flamed for this but I don't care. As a singer and songwriter I think Eric's done some good stuff. As a guitarist, I think he's highly overrated.

I loved his stuff with The Bluesbreakers and Cream. But when he went solo and started playing Strats, that was the beginning of the end. He's been playing pretty much the same stock licks since the 70's and hasn't really progressed. And he always looks so nervous, stiff and uncomfortable every time he plays.

I love the guy and he's made some cool music. I even love his blues CD "From The Cradle" and he did a killer peformance when he jammed live on SNL to promote the CD (back in 93 or 94). But after seeing cats like Jeff Beck from that era progress and develop, he just leaves Clapton in the dust.

You know-it-all-snobs

You can bitch what you want to and drag the man down, but his version of Have you ever loved a woman? still kicks ass!

Seriously, I get what people are saying. The man had a great period, but then kinda got stuck for a long time.

I feel he's one of the most solid players out there. He's so solid in every way, even singing and writing, and he's been popular for an incredibly long time without the marked decline in the level of performance that you see in many of his peers.

That said, he never really grabbed me either. I have immense respect for him, but I'm not really a fan.

His playing is near perfect. It's a beautiful tone, it's recognizable after one note, but it lacks some of the excitement of other players (who may make more mistakes)

I guess maybe he's just a bit staid for me.

thebanishedone said:

Yeah he was first but way too many people still think Hendrix was, it's so annoying!

wow this turned to a great thread thank you all for your contribution to this thread
yes as a matter of fact since 1960's ONE of the most popular guitar players improved very much in singing department,
but very low in his guitar playing.
listen to electric Layla live these days,
his singing is 10 times better then it was on studio version

well people think hendrix was the first guitar player ever to use wah wah effect on record but it was due to the fact that jimi hendrix expiriance record was out little bit before creams "tales of brave ulyssis" but eric record first.

thebanishedone said:

I'm just trying to remember right now, but does Are You Experienced have wah on it?

thebanishedone said:

He's become more of a band anchor. After watching the Concert for George, which he was the bandleader for, I found he held that huge band together, and it sounded amazing.

I get bored listening to the blues unless it's SRV.

no,electricladyland album have wah on burning of the midnight lamp

thebanishedone said:

Chet Atkins is credited as the first on record in 1960...



...with a tuned called Boo Boo Stick Beat.



tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

theAudience said:

Boo Boo Stick Beat

Stax said:

It sounds......just like it sounds.


tA

Tribal Disorder

http://www.soundclick.com...dID=182431

eric clapton has remained true to his roots. if you listen to interviews with him, he characterizes himself as a blues guitar player, and that is what he does. if fact if you read or hear a lot of interviews with him over the years, he is very humble about his playing, he does not set himself up as some sort of brilliant player. in fact he is riddled with self doubt. it is reviewers and fans, that started that "clapton is god" and all that sort of thing. your initial statement, would be like saying john lee hooker never "progressed". he loves the blues, he plays the blues. he has occasionally dabbled in other styles, but always returns to what he loves.

thebanishedone said:

Also before Clapton, Frank Zappa recorded with a wah wah pedal. Maybe not before Chet, but he certainly did it before Clapton and Jimi.