Among the top rock groups of the 1960s, few could match the live firepower of Cream. Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker were among the era’s most formidable players, and their extended jazz-rock excursions onstage set a standard few bands could match.
Remarkably, Clapton himself didn’t see the trio as a particularly strong live act.
“We were really limited onstage. We could go into the studio and make great records by overdubbing,” he said, as quoted by Bob Beatty in the 2022 book Play All Night! Duane Allman and the Journey to Fillmore East. “I would play a rhythm part, and then play a lead part with a harmony to it, so you’re really talking about three guitar parts.”
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Bruce had already confirmed Clapton’s viewpoint years earlier.
“Basically, Cream was two bands: a recording band and a live band,” the bass guitarist told Guitar Player in the July 1985 issue. “There was a certain amount of dissension in the band, though. I don't think Eric ever had much faith in Cream as a live band in the beginning. I remember him saying, ‘This is a good recording band, but it will never be a good live band.’
Basically, Cream was two bands: a recording band and a live band. There was a certain amount of dissension in the band, though.”
— Jack Bruce
“My feeling was that we could succeed on both levels if we didn't try to approach them both from the same point of view. So the band had a split personality. It was definitely more of a jazz band onstage.”
So which group did Clapton consider the best live band of the classic-rock era? His answer was the Allman Brothers Band, who emerged just as Cream were nearing the end of their run.
“The Allman Brothers’ music was unbelievable, because they were doing all that harmony playing,” Clapton said. “Even if they played solos, they were all in harmony. It was fantastically worked out.
“The impression that I got was how much hard work they’d put into their presentation, and the fact that it wasn’t really blasted all over the airwaves. They had just quietly gone about doing a fantastic job of making really, really good music that was really well thought out. It influenced my music at the time.
To this day, I’ve never heard better rock guitar playing on an R&B record.”
— Eric Clapton
“They made it okay for a band to be live all the time. Their thing was really more about live than [studio].”
Clapton’s admiration began when he first heard Duane Allman on Wilson Pickett’s late-1968 cover of the Beatles’ “Hey Jude.” Driving in his car, Clapton was so struck by the guitar playing that he pulled over to listen more closely.
“I remember hearing ‘Hey Jude’ by Wilson Pickett and calling either Ahmet Ertegun or Tom Dowd and saying, ‘Who’s that guitar player?’” Clapton later told Guitar Player. “To this day, I’ve never heard better rock guitar playing on an R&B record.”
About a year and a half later, Clapton and Allman would finally meet — thanks to Dowd — and go on to record together in Derek and the Dominos.
“When Eric’s manager called me at Criteria Studios to produce the Derek and the Dominos album, I was working on Idlewild South by the Allman Brothers,” Dowd recalled to Guitar Player. “The Allman Brothers had to take a break from recording to go on the road.
“When I got off the phone, I mentioned to Duane, ‘Boy, a guitar player you’re going to love is coming here in about 10 days: Eric Clapton.’ He said, ‘Oh, man, I’d love to meet that guy’ — and he started playing me Eric’s licks.”
Duane said, ‘Oh, man, I’d love to meet that guy’ — and he started playing me Eric’s licks.”
— Tom Dowd
Dowd said something similar happened when he mentioned Allman to Clapton.
“When Eric started recording a couple of weeks later, Duane called and said they were going to be doing a concert in Miami and asked if he could drop by the studio. I turned to Eric and said, ‘There’s a chap I’ve been working with named Duane Allman.’ He said, ‘The guy that plays all those bottleneck licks?’ and he started emulating Duane on the guitar. He said, ‘I’m dying to see him play.’
“I told him they were giving a concert Saturday night, and Eric announced, ‘There will be no session Saturday night. We are going to a concert.’ After the show, I introduced them, and they came back to the studio and started trading instruments and licks.”
Clapton would ultimately credit Allman with inspiring his transition from acoustic slide to exploring the technique on electric guitar. Before Allman’s emergence, Clapton noted, most electric slide players were essentially repeating the standard vocabulary established by Elmore James. Allman, however, pushed the style into new territory.
“No one was opening it up until Duane showed up and played it a completely different way,” Clapton said. “That sort of made me think about taking it up.”
Even so, Clapton said his own slide style ultimately developed along different lines.
“No, not a great amount, because I approach it more like George Harrison. Duane would play strictly blues lines; they were always innovative, but they were always in the blues vein. I’m somewhere in between him and George, who invents melodic lines often on the scales.”
