{"id":631283,"date":"2026-06-10T14:18:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T14:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/631283\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T14:18:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T14:18:11","slug":"the-1970s-band-eric-clapton-thought-he-would-never-match-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/631283\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1970s band Eric Clapton thought he would never match again"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <img width=\"1140\" height=\"855\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Eric-Clapton-Cream-23-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\" class=\"attachment-single-feature size-single-feature wp-post-image\" alt=\"Eric Clapton - Cream - 23\" layout=\"fill\"  style=\"object-position: 50% 20%\" loading=\"eager\" fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Credit: Far Out \/ Video Still<\/p>\n<p> Wed 10 June 2026 8:00, UK <\/p>\n<p>The entire journey of <a href=\"https:\/\/faroutmagazine.co.uk\/tags\/eric-clapton\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" title=\"\">Eric Clapton<\/a> has always been about moving forward. <\/p>\n<p>Anyone could have tried finding one sound and sticking with it, but even if Clapton never stopped his love affair with the blues, there was always going to be something pushing him to make music that was a bit more off the beaten path than what every other rock guitarist was doing. He wanted the chance to show his stuff every single time he played, but there were more than a few times where some project left a hole in his heart when the music stopped.<\/p>\n<p>But it\u2019s not like \u2018Slowhand\u2019 was a stranger to that kind of turmoil, either. Some of the best blues musicians of all time get their greatest strengths from tragedy, and while Clapton would have rather not carried around all that heartache in his chest, he knew that he could channel all of it into great songs at the end of the day. The thought of losing a child isn\u2019t something you\u2019d wish upon anyone, but \u2018Tears in Heaven\u2019 was Clapton\u2019s perfect way of translating his sorrow into music.<\/p>\n<p>Long before he was thinking about settling down, though, Clapton could hardly hold onto a single band for too long. The entire purpose of a blues icon like him was to be the travelling troubadour that kept moving on to the next phase of life, and by the time that Cream had ended, it\u2019s not like Clapton didn\u2019t have a good idea of what he wanted to do next. He wanted to work with the best musicians he could, and<a href=\"https:\/\/faroutmagazine.co.uk\/the-band-that-made-made-eric-clapton-leave-blind-faith\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" title=\"\"> getting Blind Faith<\/a> was the next best thing after his first supergroup fell through.<\/p>\n<p>If you look at how they shaped up, though, Clapton seemed almost too gung-ho about entering the next phase of his career. The band were still going through those birthing pains when they played their first shows, and Steve Winwood wasn\u2019t going to keep going in a band like that if he didn\u2019t feel comfortable playing their songs. But for a brief moment in time, it looked like Derek and the Dominos were going to make everything alright.<\/p>\n<p>Clapton had the perfect musicians with him, the kind of hits that anyone would have fallen in love with, and even a perfect singing partner in Bobby Whitlock, but given how everything fell out, it was also the darkest time of his life as well. His love for <a href=\"https:\/\/faroutmagazine.co.uk\/eric-clapton-vs-george-harrison-the-guitar-battle-for-pattie-boyds-love\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" title=\"Eric Clapton vs George Harrison: The guitar battle for Pattie Boyd\u2019s love\">Pattie Boyd was rejected once again<\/a>, and after getting into a massive fight with Jim Gordon and losing Duane Allman, playing any of those songs aside from \u2018Layla\u2019 ever again had to do a number on his psyche whenever he performed.<\/p>\n<p>And even though he was ready to celebrate his last supergroup decades removed from their formation, he wasn\u2019t shy about wanting to forget all of the painful memories of that time as well, <a href=\"https:\/\/archive.ph\/vC0X6#selection-1685.193-1693.8\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" title=\"\">saying,<\/a> \u201cDoyle [Bramhall II] and Derek [Trucks] both expressed so much interest in this stuff that I thought was dead and buried. It\u2019s a difficult thing to revisit the Dominos thing. It isn\u2019t an emotional thing. It\u2019s how do you make that work with a bigger band. But it was infectious from Doyle and Derek: \u2018They really want to do this stuff.\u2019 So I thought, \u2018This is the perfect opportunity. Because they can do it.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n<p>Those days seemed to be gone forever, but it\u2019s not like Trucks and Bramhall had shaky hands when it came to the material, either. There\u2019s hardly anyone who could manage to capture the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/faroutmagazine.co.uk\/the-moment-eric-clapton-recruited-duane-allman\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">same slide feel that Duane Allman<\/a>\u00a0had on the original, but Trucks is still one of the most lyrical guitar players who ever lived, and when he played with Clapton, you could hear the reverence that he had to make sure that everything sounded perfect.<\/p>\n<p>Clapton never had a problem with trying to go back to those days, but even if he never wanted to talk to some members of the band ever again, he could at least find ways of remembering the good times whenever he <a href=\"https:\/\/faroutmagazine.co.uk\/classic-eric-clapton-riff-striking-gold\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\" title=\"\">kicked off the riff to \u2018Layla\u2019.<\/a> Because as much as the album itself was laced with heartache when it first came out, that didn\u2019t stop \u2018Slowhand\u2019 from proving to everyone why he was still considered a guitar god.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>  <a class=\"fw\" href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=https:\/\/faroutmagazine.co.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener noreferrer\" style=\"\"> ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"28\" height=\"28\" src=\"https:\/\/faroutmagazine.co.uk\/wp-content\/themes\/far-out-magazine\/img\/google-discover.svg\" alt=\"\"\/> <\/a>   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Credit: Far Out \/ Video Still Wed 10 June 2026 8:00, UK The entire journey of Eric Clapton&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":478240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[42201,122875,96,36499,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-631283","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-1970s","tag-duane-allman","tag-entertainment","tag-eric-clapton","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631283","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=631283"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631283\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/478240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631283"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631283"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631283"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}