The Playboy Jazz & Pop Hall of Fame
February, 1973
This year, instead of selecting three artists for our Jazz & Pop Hall of Fame, readers were asked to choose one only--and only the top vote getter would be enshrined. It was inevitable, perhaps, that Eric Clapton would get the mandate. In 1970, our readers picked Bob Dylan, John Lennon and Paul McCartney; they were followed in 1971 by Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Elvis Presley; and last year by Mick Jagger, Jim Morrison and George Harrison. A sign of the musical times: All of the above ten are pop stars--and five of them (six if you count McCartney) play the guitar.
Eric ClaptonAs we went to press, Eric Clapton was in one of his periodic states of semiretirement. It was anybody's guess as to when he'd record again or when he'd perform again. It was even hard to imagine what he'd look like when he reappeared, since Clapton projected a greaser image with Derek and the Dominos, a hippy look with Delaney, Bonnie & Friends, and so on. Still, he was enjoying unprecedented popularity and interest, partly due to the release, by Atlantic, of the four-sided "History of Eric Clapton." Another factor in Clapton's victory is probably the degree to which the competition has been decimated--by death and by the living death to which so many rock "stars" are so quickly banished. Rock music needs stars, so it creates them--and then, because it craves new ones, it rejects them. The current Clapton vogue may be a sign of new maturity, since he has never been a pop idol or star in the expectably outrageous sense. He has always been--except for his early tours of duty as an art student and a designer of stained-glass windows--a guitar player, a sideman: a musician, if you will. Clapton's playing has undergone as many metamorphoses as his personal appearance (some analysts interpret all this as a search for the father he never knew), and he has survived the demise of several major groups. Clapton's impersonal but ever-changing image and his intense (but also chameleonlike) playing virtually embody the modern rock era, which can be defined as sound in search of style, and is to a large extent the result of explorations made by guitar players, from Chuck Berry and B. B. King to Clapton and Hendrix. Eric first gained prominence as the inventive lead guitarist of the Yardbirds, a blues-based British rock group that eventually became too regimented for him to handle. He then spent a year living, playing and obsessively practicing with John Mayall, primal sire of British blues. Then, after an interlude of jamming with people like Jimmy Page and Stevie Winwood, he became one third of Cream, the short-lived but explosive trio that included Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce, and which stunned audiences with its all-out improvisations. Cream turned sour, though--chalk it up to personality conflicts--and Clapton's next venture was Blind Faith, a much-heralded group that included Baker and Winwood and was also short-lived, for similar reasons. Clapton disappeared on one of his recurrent night-sea journeys, finally resurfacing as a prominent member of Delaney and Bonnie's entourage; it was Delaney who produced Clapton's first LP as a solo artist. But it was with his next combo, Derek and the Dominos--the first outfit he actually led--that Clapton, in the opinion of many, reached his greatest heights. The Dominos, however, didn't last long, either, and except for his appearance at the well-remembered concert for Bangla Desh, Clapton has not been active in some time. It's doubtful that the jamming guitarist--who, along the way, has found time to record with such soul stalwarts as Aretha Franklin and King Curtis--will remain out of sight much longer. As contenders for top rock guitarist flare in and fade out, Clapton's stock continues to rise, and he'll most likely appear soon with a new musical bag.
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