[Slowhand] Clapton & Les Pauls today

[Fabio Dwyer]

I don't really have any expectations to see/hear Clapton playing Les Pauls again. I believe this is an illusion many people have that if Clapton grab and play a LP, maybe he'll sound more like in Beano or Cream days. He won't, because...

1) It's not only the guitar, it's the amplifier too. Part of his "emotional" and raw sound these days depended on saturated Marshall amps, which he quit in favor of Fenders amps. 

2) His musical conceptions/techniques has changed, he has no urge to prove anything or to stablished himself in the musical world, because he already done that then. Today he lacks the adrenaline of his young years, but he compensates with experience. He was a hell of a blues players those days (which he still is, but with a Fender tone - actually he played lots of Gibson guitars in From The Cradle, even Les Pauls according to himself in the Guitar World Interview, so if you listen to that record, you ARE listening him playing Les Paul now and then, if this sound is SO distiguished, go figure out which tracks...) Besides that, he's a wonderful singer and composer anyone who thinks he was a better singer/composer these days... He said songwriting was a real mysterious to him, he could take 1 year to come up with one song. Tales of Brave Ulysses and Presence of the Lord were the first good songs he wrote, and I began to consider him a real good singer only after August and Journeyman albums. He was much more a guitar player than a real complete musician, now he's pretty much at the same level as guitarrist / songwriter and singer, which I cannot see as a failure.

3) Everytime I saw him playing Les Pauls after Beano/Cream days, he sounded completely different from then - (Roger Waters 84' Tour, 88' Prince Trust Concert playing While my guitar with GH, Portland gig in 2001). So, to everyone who begs to see him playing LP, he had been doing that, but IT's NOT the same 60's sound. Actually the sound he got with his "turbo-boosted" strat in Cream reunion, to my ears, is even closer to Cream days then the sound he got with Les Pauls themselves in recent years/decades.

No offense, but EC to is like a good "bottle of red wine", gets better with age. Just recentely I got Crossroads Fest 07' and Clapton proved to one of the best performances I ever saw from him, maybe not as a solo guitar players (those, for my taste are on FTC tour, only 12 yrs. ago, not in the 60's), but as a band. No 70's or 80's bands were better than the CGF band to my years. I'm a guitar player myself, but I praise the music overall not only guitar performances, otherwise I'd be in Steve Vai's digest.

Just my 2 cents,
Fabio



--Anexo de Mensagem Encaminhado--
From: jnt.elliott at comcast.net
To: turbineltd at btconnect.com; slowhand at planet-torque.com
Date: Sat, 24 May 2008 20:59:01 -0400
Subject: Re: [Slowhand] Guitar Hero

The Gibson Les Paul.  I've been dying to see and hear Eric play a Les Paul
again and this note, plus the recent photo of him in the recent edition of
"Where's Eric" playing a Les Paul, prompted me to ask, "How often does he
pick one up and play?"
 
I'm really interested to know if he played one occasionally during the last
tour as it certainly looks that way from the aforementioned photo.  
 
As Delta Nick and I have discussed, Eric's Les Paul sound and playing was
what really set him apart from his peers.  Wish he'd break one out on this
tour, specifically in Cleveland...
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