(Credits: Far Out / Chris Hakkens)
Tue 30 September 2025 14:00, UK
The art behind a guitar player like Eric Clapton is all about knowing when to play.
He could fly off the handle whenever he wanted to and play the kind of guitar solo that would have any novice player swooning, but the best moments of his career came when he understood what needed to be played rather than throwing in whatever new exercise he learned. All songs are meant to be a conversation between instruments, so when Clapton saw anyone abusing that mentality, he wasn’t going to take it lightly.
When looking at Clapton’s history, he put his heart and soul into nearly everything that he could. There are more than a few moments where he was out of his head and made the kind of ridiculous tune that no one in their right mind should have done, but even in his impaired state, he seemed to always abide by the credence of the blues by staying brutally honest about his work.
But even if he was coming from a place of pain or a place of fury when making his more aggressive guitar breaks, not everyone was looking at those tunes as sad musical exorcisms. It all seemed cool to them, so when Clapton finally transitioned to a singer-songwriter, there had been a slew of new kids in town trying to take what he did and turn it into an Olympic sport in many respects.
Although Eddie Van Halen really should be blamed for that kind of guitar movement, Eddie would have said that he wasn’t doing anything that he didn’t hear out of Clapton back in the day. Even though Clapton proved his ‘God’ status again in the 1980s when he started working with Phil Collins, he had no tolerance for those who only used the guitar as an excuse to battle someone else onstage.
While Clapton wasn’t exempt from a few musical battles onstage, it was always about making the song better whenever he played with bands like Derek and the Dominos. That was the healthy way for musicians to get the best out of each other, but by the time the movie Crossroads came out, Clapton was absolutely insulted by what he saw when watching the final guitar battle.
For him, this kind of movie was an insult to the kind of guitar playing that he loved, saying, “The concept of the guitar duel at the end was just appalling – so disappointing. I mean, the way the kid won was to revert to some kind of classical piece. What did that have to do with fucking anything?” But it’s not like this goofy take on the guitar duel can’t still be a ton of fun to watch onscreen.
I mean, it’s clear that Ralph Macchio isn’t exactly playing the most sophisticated lines in the world next to Steve Vai, but if there’s one silver lining to the film, it’s that it would inspire kids that would want to play the guitar. Not everyone is going to listen to the finest names in blues and suddenly be inspired, but if they see a guitar framed the same way that a martial arts movie frames a final battle, it can feel like one of the single coolest scenes in cinematic history.
It’s not like the numbers don’t speak for themselves, either. Outside of the success of the movie, Crossroads is basically the movie equivalent of what the Guitar Hero video game franchise would be doing decades later, and even if Clapton never appeared in the game, there are countless kids who put their hours in on that game and were convinced to pick up an instrument themselves.
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