[Slowhand] RE: Slowhand Digest, Vol 7, Issue 298

[An English Boy]

>"Eric Clapton is the most important and influential guitar player that has 

>ever lived, is still living or ever will live. Do yourself a favor, and 

>don't debate me on this. Before Clapton, rock guitar was the Chuck Berry 

>method, modernized by Keith Richards, and the rockabilly sound -- Scotty 

>Moore, Carl Perkins, Cliff Gallup -- popularized by George Harrison. 

>Clapton absorbed that, then introduced the essence of black electric blues 

>-- the power and vocabulary of Buddy Guy, Hubert Sumlin and the three 

>Kings, B.B., Albert and Freddy -- to create an attack that defined the 

>fundamentals of rock & roll lead guitar . Maybe most important of all, he 

>turned the amp up -- to eleven. That alone blew everybody's mind in the 

>mid-Sixties. In the studio, he moved the mike across the room from the amp, 

>which added ambience; everybody else was still close-miking. Then he 

>cranked the fucking thing. Sustain happened; feedback happened. The guitar 

>player suddenly became the most important guy in the band . When he soloed, 

>he wrote wonderful symphonies from classic blues licks in that fantastic 

>tone, with all of the resonance that comes from distortion. You could sing 

>his solos like songs in themselves . The thing is, he had seven years of 

>the most extraordinary, historic guitar playing ever -- and thirty-five 

>years of doing good work. Being the best has got to wear you out. So he 

>pulled back, like Dylan and Lennon did . Anyone who plays lead guitar owes 

>him a debt of gratitude. He wrote the fundamental language, the binary 

>code, that everyone uses to this day in every form of popular music . The 

>day may come, if you're a young rocker, when you'll hear one of Clapton's 

>mellow, contemporary ballads on the radio and think, "What's the big deal? 

>. Put on "Steppin' Out." And bow down" (Little Steven, "The Immortals: The 

>100 Greatest Artists Of All Time-53) Eric Clapton," "Rolling Stone," 21 

>April 2005 (#972), p. 52.

>

>Keep in mind that Silvio from "The Sopranos" is the author above. And if 

>you don't believe him, he, Pauly Walnuts, Christopher, and Tony will break 

>your kneecaps, slice you up at Satriale's, and sell you as a hamburger at 

>Silvio's Bada Bing club.

>

>                 DeltaNick


-=-=-=-=-


Not a big Little Steven fan, but this is so well stated, and, if one is old 
enough
to have seen it happen firsthand, so unblievably true....

Lew~