by Eric Clapton was always looking at the bigger picture of being a musician.
He never wanted to play the game of being a pop star, and even when he started to have mainstream hits, he was never going to take the easy route and make the kind of songs that would make people want to sing along to in stadiums. He was a maverick throughout every part of his career, but that didn’t mean he didn’t have to deal with a couple of suits now and again.
But when looking at Clapton’s record, you would think that his label heads would let him do whatever the hell he wanted. Here was a musician that was being treated like a legitimate guitar god, and yet he was being treated like any other random person on the payroll. It might seem like an outlandish idea to give anyone total control of their creative process, but it feels like Clapton should have been exempt from that after working on both ‘Crossroads’ and ‘Sunshine of Your Love’.
When Cream officially broke up, though, not all of them had the best reputation in the music industry. They were titans in many respects, but each of them were becoming more famous for their massive feuds with each other, and when they finally decided to bow out, ‘Slowhand’ felt like a wounded dog trying to figure what the hell he was supposed to do next.
While the credence among blues musicians is to keep being a musical troubadour, Clapton was going to keep trying to get the kind of band that he wanted to perform with. And even though Ginger Baker may not have been invited to join Blind Faith, having Stevie Winwood in the group was never going to hurt their chances or get a massive hit.
Whereas Jack Bruce had a more operatic voice whenever he sang, Winwood had the kind of bluesy delivery that anyone like Clapton would have killed for. He may have been seated behind the keyboard most of the time, but listening to him crank out tracks like ‘Can’t Find My Way Home’ is always a treat to hear. But since the band had potential to be another version of Cream, Clapton felt that everything got ruined when they were rushed into the studio.
They needed some more time to gel, and as much as Clapton appreciated the time he had with Winwood, it was never going to come together the way it was supposed to, saying, “Pressure started coming at us from every direction. We were forced to do an album and rushed onto the road. That’s the last thing you can do to a shy person like Stevie. Some people excel when they’re forced up against the wall. Other people completely shut off. We were both very unhappy over the whole thing. It’s a shame, too, because I heard the other day that Stevie just completely quit playing.”
Then again, making Clapton work on the fly isn’t always the worst move to make, either. Derek and the Dominos may have been equally as short-lived as Blind Faith, but a lot of the sessions that produced Layla and Other Assorted Love Songswill forever be the most authentic version of Clapton’s playing. He didn’t care about the quality of the recording all the time but as long as it captured an honest performance, that was all that mattered.
The rush job probably explains why there are only six tracks on the final mix of the album, but even if they fizzled out, Clapton wasn’t about to stop. He wanted to make music that reflected how he felt at the time, and even if bands would come and go within months of each other, they would leave a legacy of great music in their wake.
