[Slowhand] Re: Woodshedding

[David Fynan]

At first I tended to agree that Clapton's playing with the Yardbirds  
was not all that impressive, but then I kept hearing "Got To Hurry"  
running through my head, and wondering how an average guitarist  
played something that great.  It sounds like it could have been  
recorded with Mayall or early Cream it is that good.  There's no way  
that could have just been a fluke.  This was recorded with the  
Yardbirds, before the wood shedding with Mayall, which led me to  
conclude that he WAS that good with the Yardbirds, but for whatever  
reason it didn't really come across that well in other songs with the  
Yardbirds.

Well, when I went back and listened to all the Yardbirds stuff (the  
first time in a long time) it hit me like a ton of bricks that the  
band around Clapton was, frankly, bad, and the songs in general were  
very, very weak.  Just corny and amateurish.  "Good Morning Little  
School Girl", "Aint Got You", etc.  To me, they're awful, but the  
Clapton solos are great.  Those solos are like COMPLETELY different  
songs.  He was a man amongst boys, really.  I always thought of him  
as being slightly better than the rest of the band, but listening  
back, he was way, way out of their league.

I tend to skip over Yardbirds songs when they pop up in my playlist,  
which is too bad, because the Clapton solos are pretty darn good, but  
overshadowed by the dreck played around them.  Not to mention he  
wasn't given a ton of room to strut his stuff.  In "Got to Hurry", he  
had the room, and he really didn't have much of the other band around  
screwing it up...but it wasn't light years better than his other  
stuff he was playing at the time, which was how I had remembered it.   
So, yeah, on second thought he really was that good with the  
Yardbirds.  I think if everyone really listened to those songs you'd  
see what I mean.