{"id":328491,"date":"2025-12-21T17:43:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T17:43:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/328491\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T17:43:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T17:43:10","slug":"the-one-musician-eric-clapton-considered-a-pop-genius","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/328491\/","title":{"rendered":"The one musician Eric Clapton considered a “pop genius”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Eric<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Showtime Documentary Films)<\/p>\n

Sun 21 December 2025 15:00, UK <\/p>\n

The unspoken rule in the 1960s guitar community was centred around the fact that Eric Clapton<\/a> was one of the greatest of all time. <\/p>\n

Before Jimi Hendrix came in to turn rock and roll on its head, \u2018Slowhand\u2019 was one of the biggest draws of the English rock scene, working out of The Yardbirds and his latest supergroup, Cream. Then again, blues was only one aspect of what Clapton could do.<\/p>\n

Throughout his solo career, Clapton was known for dipping his toes into different flavours of pop music. From angles of reggae, country and back to blues, the songwriter turned his simplest ideas into pop gold on tracks like \u2018Wonderful Tonight\u2019 and \u2018Cocaine\u2019. In terms of perfect pop, though, Slowhand had to bow down to one of the genre\u2019s resident kings.<\/p>\n

Around the time Clapton was making the rounds as one of the most fiery guitarists imaginable, Brian Wilson was slowly painting his masterpiece. Wanting to take rock music out of the niche audience that wanted to talk about girls, cars and surfing, Wilson worked in the studio to create Pet Sounds, which would become the model for any music fan to base their career on<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When first hearing the album, Clapton was knocked out by its brilliance, telling Melody Maker at the time, \u201cI consider Pet Sounds to be one of the greatest pop LPs to ever be released. It encompasses everything that\u2019s ever knocked me out and rolled it all into one. Brian Wilson is, without a doubt, a pop genius\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"Brian<\/a>Brian Wilson in his happy place: making music. (Credits: Far Out \/ Brian Wilson)<\/p>\n

Once Clapton heard what Wilson could do on tracks like \u2018God Only Knows\u2019 and \u2018Sloop John B\u2019, he knew that he needed a band that was more sonically adventurous than The Yardbirds. Later, Clapton would recall Pet Sounds being one of the main inspirations behind Cream getting together, explaining: \u201cIt was like \u2018It\u2019s over\u2019. We were forming Cream when Pet Sounds came out. That became the primary influence for a lot of the songwriting. We couldn\u2019t get it, but we would listen to that album non-stop\u201d. <\/p>\n

Clapton wasn\u2019t the only one completely enamoured with what Wilson had created. Being caught in an international competition, The Beatles were looking to put together an album that could match the ambition of Pet Sounds, eventually working on their masterpiece Sgt Pepper as a retort.<\/p>\n

As the rock scene began shifting towards the sounds of psychedelia, Clapton also co-mingled with both pop rock giants. Coming off the Cream album Disraeli Gears, Clapton would serve as The Beatles\u2019 only guest guitarist, performing on the track \u2018While My Guitar Gently Weeps\u2019 from The White Album. Later in life, Clapton also worked with Wilson on his solo track \u2018City Blues\u2019.<\/p>\n

Even though Clapton would return to his blues-infused roots throughout his solo career, the influence of Wilson\u2019s music on the public at large can\u2019t be denied. Regardless of how much ear candy Clapton packed into his solo material, his attempts at radio-friendly rock tunes are still a pale imitation of what Wilson did when he followed his intuition.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Clapton isn\u2019t the only musician to be completely enchanted by Wilson. Following the beach Boys maestro\u2019s passing, Elton John paid tribute to the star alongside other icons like Paul McCartney and Keith Richards. \u201cBrian Wilson was always so kind to me from the day I met him,\u201d the post began. \u201cHe sang \u2018Someone Saved My Life Tonight\u2019 at a tribute concert in 2003, and it was an extraordinary moment for me. I played on his solo records, he sang on my album, The Union, and even performed for my AIDS Foundation,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Rocket Man\u2019 singer added, \u201cI grew to love him as a person, and for me, he was the biggest influence on my songwriting ever; he was a musical genius and revolutionary. He changed the goalposts when it came to writing songs and shaped music forever. A true giant.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Showtime Documentary Films) Sun 21 December 2025 15:00, UK The unspoken rule in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[29764,96,36499,128,15745,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-328491","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-brian-wilson","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-eric-clapton","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-the-beach-boys","13":"tag-uk","14":"tag-united-kingdom","15":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=328491"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/328491\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=328491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=328491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=328491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}