(Credits: Far Out / David Litchfield / Matt Gibbons)
Sat 10 January 2026 15:00, UK
Music marketeers often like to use the phrase ‘your favourite musician’s, favourite musician!’ when pushing an album, and to be honest, while I find it incredibly annoying, it works. Maybe the root cause of why I find it annoying is because of how damn effective it is in making me listen to a record, especially when the favourite musician in question is Paul McCartney.
I’ll sadly admit that I would probably listen to 45 minutes of a dog barking if the liner notes said it was endorsed by McCartney. To me, he invented the modern melody and so I willingly follow him into an album he recommends, as a means of grasping the essence of melody even further.
While I understand the ridiculousness of crediting him for it, he was faultless in his championing of The Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, an album that stood alongside his own in terms of the very best from the 1960s. But there was one more, released in 1968 which he has consistently outlined as one of his favourites.
When asked to pick three, he put it at the very front, ahead of two other classics, saying, “Music From Big Pink by The Band, Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, and Harvest by Neil Young. They are the three classics that I love to listen to, and they all remind me of certain times in my life. When I perform my own songs, the great thing is that they often bring back memories of recording them. That can often entail memories of John and George in the studio – sweet memories!”
But the memories of Music From Big Pink aren’t as sweet for Eric Clapton. While he admittedly respected the album’s musicality, before any feelings of love were allowed to develop, he had to grapple with feelings of envy. The Band’s record was one that to Clapton, signalled the end of his own band.
“It stopped me in my tracks,” Clapton said of the album in 2007’s The Autobiography, “And it also highlighted all of the problems I thought [Cream] had. Here was a band that was really doing it right, incorporating influences from country music, blues, jazz, and rock, and writing great songs. I couldn’t help but compare them to us, which was stupid and futile, but I was frantically looking for a yardstick, and here it was. Listening to that album, as great as it was, just made me feel that we were stuck and I wanted out.”
In the world of hyper-competitive 1960s rock and roll, an album so good that it made you quit your band is as good a bit of praise as you’re likely to receive. Within weeks of the album’s release, Clapton announced that Cream would break up and come good on his pledge for the album.
Years later in 1994, when inducting The Band into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Clapton revealed that he in fact travelled all the way to Woodstock, the group’s hometown, where he intended to arrive hat in hand, asking to be a part of the band. He then shared that ultimately, he “didn’t have the guts to say it”.
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