There’s always a certain amount of rivalry when it comes to any two guitar players. Everyone might be trying to make a track better with their licks, but it’s sometimes healthy from a creative standpoint to try to outdo what the person next to you is saying whenever you step into the spotlight. Even when every guitarist was striving to be the next Eric Clapton, ‘Slowhand’ himself said he had found a kindred spirit the minute he met Jimi Hendrix.
Because, really, who else was there to compare with Clapton’s playing in the British music scene? There had been other guitarists in The Yardbirds who were doing their best to keep up with him, but even by the standards of George Harrison or Brian Jones, Clapton smoked every one of them in terms of raw fury behind the fretboard.
But Hendrix knew that kind of fury like the back of his hand. After spending time serving as Little Richard’s backup guitarist, the best songs that he would create usually relied on toeing the line between the sweetest sounds to come out of a guitar and playing chords that sounded like he was trying to pry open your third eye through raw sound.
When someone arrives that fully formed, it’s almost impossible not to take notice. While the rest of the guitar community stood there with their jaws on the floor, Clapton saw someone who could actually manage to compete with him. He may have been equally shell-shocked, but he really found a confidante in Hendrix when he came by to jam with Cream.
The power trio didn’t really need another guitarist for everything to sound full, but listening to Hendrix play off the rest of the group, Clapton was transfixed by what he was hearing, telling Rolling Stone, “I took to him straight away. Then he asked if he could jam, and he came up and did ‘Killing Floor’, and it blew me away. I was floored by his technique and his choice of notes, of sounds. Ginger [Baker] and Jack [Bruce] didn’t take to it kindly, but I fell in love. He became a soulmate for me and, musically, what I wanted to hear.”
But if Clapton was just looking to create a brash sound whenever he played the blues, Hendrix was searching for different colours whenever he played. Whether it was making his original compositions like ‘Voodoo Child’ or trying his hand at ‘Red House’, half of his job was about reaching for something that hadn’t quite been tapped into yet.
Even though Hendrix wasn’t long for this world after the 1960s drew to a close, Clapton probably never forgot the idea of having someone like him in a group. He was pivoting towards rustic acts like The Band, but hearing him wail away next to Duane Allman on Derek and the Dominoes felt like he was attempting to relive his time with Hendrix by having an equally skilled craftsman by his side.
We can only look back and marvel at what Hendrix gave us when he was here, but Clapton knew that he could learn a thing or two from how the guitar maestro played. As much as people were fawning over ‘Slowhand’s technique on ‘Sunshine of Your Love’, ‘Purple Haze’ announced to the world that there was a new version of ‘God’ in town.
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