[Slowhand] Bloomfield

[Garret74 at aol.com]

****The only reason he didn't take get the
job (I forget if it was after Brian Jones or Mick Taylor) was because the
Stones wanted an Englishman for that position. If you don't like Buchanan
then I bet you don't like Jeff Beck either because their string bending
style was similar.****

Actually, the rumour mill has it that Buchanan turned them down because he 
thought he was going to be pretty big in his own rite. It's a shame it didn't 
happen, but it's another tale of a one dimensional talent not making it...albeit 
a great one dimension!
I don't think Beck and Buchanan are very much alike at all. Very different 
approaches and styles, to be sure. Buchanan is a lot like Robbie Robertson, but 
smoother. Jeff Beck is pretty much unlike anyone I can think of...One of the 
must unique guitar players I've ever heard.

But I do think Mike Bloomfield was a very important guitar player with a 
unique style and one of the great tremolo's I've ever heard. He was a little 
sloppy in his phrasing, but he was fast and he had his own voice on the guitar. He 
was emotional...He was an original. I can pretty much pick out Mike's frantic 
sound whenever I hear it...and he could play rings around most of the other 
guitar players of his time.

But again we talk of how these artists, Beck, Bloomfield, Buchanan, don't 
reach Clapton's status because they didn't write very much original material, 
they didn't sing, and they basically covered a limited genre, certainly none of 
them could make the pop music through fourty years- whether or not that's a 
liability or not is a good subject for a debate.

The guitar player comments only underscore what I think about Clapton's 
contribution to music and why he is so important, whether or not he is still 
playing the guitar as some of us would have him play it.

Garret

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