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Credit: Far Out \/ YouTube Still<\/p>\n
Sat 10 October 2026 14:00, UK <\/p>\n
Eric Clapton<\/a> didn\u2019t really need to do anything else except play guitar if that\u2019s what he wanted to do. <\/p>\n Some of the greatest solos of all time have come from his hands, and after spending years showing everyone what a guitar could do in a rock and roll context, he could have been completely cut off in 1970 and still gone down as one of the baddest musicians to ever play the instrument.\u00a0 But after working with bands like Cream and Derek and the Dominos, \u2018Slowhand\u2019 knew that he needed a change of pace whenever he worked on something new behind the scenes.<\/p>\n He wanted the chance to show people what his real chops were, but there were always going to be certain pieces of his catalogue that stuck with him throughout his entire life. The blues would have an indelible mark on everything that he played, and while he was the last person to talk about the technical side of a song like \u2018Crossroads\u2019<\/a>, he had to come to terms with the fact that most people really loved that song when Cream put it out back in the day.<\/p>\n Then again, the idea of him being purely a rock and roll guitarist was only one side of the conversation. He wanted the chance to show people that there was a lot more that he had to offer, and that came from him learning how to write songs. He didn\u2019t have the same opportunities to write when Jack Bruce helped fill out so many Cream albums, but when you look through his own personal repertoire, he was getting into music that had a lot more to do with where the Americana bands were going.<\/p>\n The Band left a massive imprint on him when he started making his solo projects, and that\u2019s half the reason why so much of his later work ended up sounding a lot more mature. He may have turned himself into a pop star in the 1970s, but even when he stripped everything down and went for a more acoustic approach, he still had his ear close to the ground for people who were reinventing the idea of what songwriting could be.<\/p>\n And when you look through history, no other person has had the same impact on the popular song as Bob Dylan has. Some of the greatest tunes that Mr Zimmerman ever made were always supposed to make you think a little bit more, and while he was going through his ups and downs in the rock and roll world, most of the time, hearing Time Out of Mind<\/a> was a game-changer for Clapton when he heard some of those songs.<\/p>\n So many people would have loved to write tunes like \u2018Highlands\u2019, but \u2018Not Dark Yet\u2019 captured something visceral that he had never heard before, saying<\/a>, \u201cI was intrigued to know what moved him to write. I\u2019ve done a lot of his stuff live. I used to play \u201cNot Dark Yet\u201d from Time Out of Mind. That is one of the most beautiful songs ever written. It says everything about growing old and letting go of things.\u201d<\/p>\n Further reading: From The Vault<\/p>\n Given where Dylan was at the time, though, it\u2019s no surprise that Clapton would have gravitated to this kind of music. Some of the biggest moments of Dylan\u2019s career were about going back to the source of songwriting, and while a lot of the tunes on that record did have a folksy streak, there are pieces of the record that had much more in common with what was going on in the world of blues long before people had heard of rock and roll.<\/p>\n Dylan was pulling from the likes of Robert Johnson when he was working on that kind of record, and while Clapton could only look on in wonder whenever he heard those tunes, he wasn\u2019t trying to act like those songs were out of reach. He knew all he needed to do was apply himself, and while he was never going to make tunes as authentic to Dylan as \u2018Not Dark Yet\u2019, he could at least find something that came pretty damn close to it whenever he quoted his own heart.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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<\/a> The Far Out Bob Dylan Newsletter<\/p>\n