Legends of Guitar 06/95
E.C
PLUGGED IN
Eric Clapton, guitar god, knows the talismanic power of instruments. "If you can pick up the
guitar and tell that someone great has played it - you can actually tell it - then you want to take it and endow yourself
with what the guitar's got", he told Dan fort in 1968. Since most mere mortals can't actually hold Clapton's instruments,
they have tried to feel a bit the thunder by learning every link in his signal chain. For more than 20 years, Guitar
Player has documented Slowhand's gear, Disreali and otherwise.
By Bob Kenney, Fred Stuckey & Dan Forte.
Photo : Steve Granitz.
In 1968, an interviewer named Bob Kenney in the San Francisco Bay area talked with a
nearly 23-year-old Clapton. Fresh Cream and Disraeli Gears were the albums to own.
What was your first guitar and what do you have now?
In 1968, an interviewer named Bob Kenney in the San Francisco Bay area talked with a nearly 23-year-old
Clapton. Fresh Cream and Disraeli Gears were the albums to own.
What was your first guitar, and what do you have now?
The first one I had was a Kay electric guitar [a Jazz 11]. My
grandparents bought it for me because I told them I wanted to play guitar. Then I changed to a Telecaster. 1 did pretty
well with the Telecaster.
What kind of amp did you use?
Vox-but it was a good Vox. It was an old Vox. Then I had a Gibson ES-335. Then I had a Fender jazzmaster.
Then I had a Fender Jaguar Then I got another Telecasten Then I got, I think, my first Les Paul. That was when I was with
John Mayall. And then I just started collecting rapidly, and I've got one or two Les Pauls now.
Pictures in Eye magazine show you playing a double cutaway Gibson. Do you
still use that?
Yeah, I use that one all the time now. It's a very reliable guitar.
How do you get feed back?
Well, I don't use it much these days, but when I do use it, when I have used it, it's been very accidental most
of the time. I could never get it so I could technically control feedback
Do you use a fuzz box?
Nope. See, what the whole thing about the sound is, it's just the old blues sound, but heavily amplified-a lot
louder. Because the sound I've always wanted, and have always liked, is the sound that all those people used. On the
early records of Muddy Waters you get it. It's just that sound only so much louder.
A lot of people have misconceptions as to how you do it.
Yeah, I think they do. They're getting too hung up about it mechanically. They're trying to kind of invent
technical ways of doing it to hide the fact that they can't do it with their fingers.
How many Marshall amps do you normally use?
On stage I use two separate 100-watt amps going through four 4x12 cabinets. See, each cabinet has four 12"
speakers. There's two of those for each amp, so there's four cabinets in all.
In 1970, with Cream and Blind Faith behind him, Clapton was about to enter the
studio with Derek and the Dominos to record Layla (& Other Assorted Love Songs), which contains some of his greatest
work. Fred Stuckey talked with Clapton about his gear and his work as a sideman with Delaney & Bonnie.
With Delaney & Bonnie, you aren't using the Les Paul you used with
Cream.
I still play a Les Paul. But with Delaney & Bonnie I use an old Stratocaster I've acquired which is really,
really good-a great sound. It's just right for the kind of bag I was playing with them.
Have you done anything to the Stratocaster like modify the pickups or have the
frets shaved?
No. I just set the switch between the first and middle pickups. There is a little place where you can catch it
so that you get a special sound somehow. I get a much more rhythm-and-blues or rock kind of sound that way.
With Cream you used big Marshall amps. Lately you've been using smaller
fender amps.
With Delaney & Bonnie I used a Dual Showman, a big Fender amp. But I hardly ever jack it right up, you
know. It was always sort of half volume. I'm not getting the sustain or hold-over sound I used to get. It's still there
a bit, but that's the Stratocaster.
When you played through those big Marshall amps with Cream, would you turn them
up to get that distorted sound?
Yeah. I'd turn the amp and the guitar up all the way. It seems I'm known as a guitar player for that sustain
sound-you know, holding notes for a long time.
What kind of strings do you use on the Stratocaster?
Emie Ball Super Slinky.
How about the strings you used on the Les Paul on the live side of Wheels of Fire?
Fender Rock and Roll strings.
Normally with Cream did you use more than one Marshall?
I had the option. I always had two Marshalls set up to play through, but I think it was just so I could have one
as a spare. I usually used only one 100-watt amp. I tried to use them in parallel several times, connected with a split
lead, but it didn't work out too well. I would have one end of the cord going into the guitar and separating into the two
amps. It was very hard to control and too loud, really.
What kind of wah-wah pedal did you use for "White Room" on Wheels of Fire?
Vox.
How do you usually set the volume and tone controls on your guitar and amp?
That depends on the guitar and amp. When I use a Stratocaster and Dual Showman, I have the pickup switch set
between the first and middle pickups, which is a very bright sound, but not completely trebly. I take a little of the
treble off and put on all of the bass and the middle. And I set the volume at about half.
Do you have a pick preference?
Yeah. Fender, the heavy ones. When I pick, I rest the butt or palm of my hand on the bridge of the guitar and
use it as a hinge or lever. When I stretch strings hook my thumb around the neck of the guitar. A lot of guitarists
stretch strings with just their hand free. The only way I can do it is if I have my whole hand around the neck, actually
gripping onto it with my thumb; that somehow gives me more of a rocking action with my hand and wrist.
On Cream's Goodbye album, three of the tracks-"Doing that Scrapyard Thing,"What A
Bringdown,"and "Badge"-have a distinctive sound. Did you do anything different for those cuts?
I discovered a Leslie speaker that had been adapted for the guitar. You've got the Leslie
speaker and a little preamp that looks like a footpedal you plug the guitar into that. It's got two speeds on it. The
sound is kind of like an organ.
In 1974, Clapton ended nearly half a decade of seclusion to record 461 Ocean
Boulevard. Two years later Dan Forte talked with the guitarist in Los Angeles while he was finishing up No Reason To
Cry.
Do you have a special guitar that's set up for slide?
Yes, a Gibson ES-335. But it hasn't got a high nut. I just raise it at the bridge. I don't play it down at the
bottom much. I usually keep it up near the top frets. I use the same strings as I do normally on the other guitars: Emie
Ball Super Slinky-.009,.011,.016,.024,.032,.042. [Ed. Note.. Eric's road manager Willy Spears, says that normally, Claptor's
strings are changed only when they break, except for the high three, which Spears sometimes changes when he
feels they're going dead. Spears says, "He won't even let me buff them."]
Do you play slide in standard tuning or open chords?
I use open G [D, G, D, G, B, D] most of the time, for acoustic
and electric. I prefer G, because you get more of a country sound; it's more melodic.
Do you ever use open tunings when not playing slide?
Yes, on "Tell the Truth" [Layla and Derek And The Dominos In
Concert]. But I wasn't playing slide; I was just making chords in open tuning. If you tried to transpose them
onto a straight guitar, it would be very difficult. It's like a barre A on the 5th
fret. I'm holding down the fifth and third strings in a sort of E7 shape, holding it on and taking it off. That
comes directly from Keith Richards. Some of the Stones' things-like "Street Fighting Mad"
[Beggar's Banquet], where he's got all these great guitar sounds-he just tunes it
to an open chord and invents fingerings.
Do you always use a flatpick?
Yes, I use a heavy pick made by Ernie Ball. I think it's the exact same thickness and gauge as a Fender heavy.
I've never kept the fingerpicking up long enough. I do play around like that for my own pleasure at home sometimes, but I
wouldn't be able to cut it professionally. [ Ed. Note: EC obviously did a little
practicing before Unplugged.]
What about your changes in amplifiers over the years?
Music Man is my favorite now [HD 130 Reverb], because they
have dual volume controls. You can use them in the studio at low volume and still get a fair amount of distortion, just
as if it were a really big amp. I also like their sound; they're just like Fenders-in fact, I think Leo [Fender] had a big
part in designing them. [Ed. Note.. Tom Walker, who worked for the Fender
company from 1948 until 1969, was Music Man's main designer, although many of the ideas were passed on from
Leo Fender during their association in Fender's pre-CBS days.]
Were the amps you used previously more suited to your sound at that time?
[Music Mans] could have been used with Cream. You can get exactly the same sound as you would with a Marshall,
but then you can take it down to the same sound as a Champ. It's really got a wide range.
[Ed. Note.. Spears reports that Erick amps are beefed up, with the bias up all the
way, by Walker at Music Man. This HD 130 Reverb has special open-back cabinets, as opposed to the folded-horn type, with
JBL D120 speakers. Eric also uses a Leslie cabinet, with JBL components for which he has had a special footswitch devised
by Keyboard Products and modified by Fred Meyers, soundman for Santana. This switch has fast/slow and on/off positions,
so that the guitar can go either straight through the amp, through both the amp and the Leslie (fast or slow), or through
just the Leslie at either fast or slow speeds-as on "Badge" (History of Eric Clapton and Eric Clapton's Rainbow Concert).
The only other effects pedal Clapton uses is a Cry Baby wah- wah.]
Why do you record at such low volumes?
There's less interference, less noise. I like to record a lot of tracks as live as possible, including voice.
So if you've got a really loud amp, you're going to leak onto everyone else's track, and you won't be able to sing either.
I also like to record tracks without cans [headphones]; I like to hear the sound the room is making itself, rather than
the balance coming through the board and into the cans. I recorded "Motherless Children" [461 Ocean Boulevard] with just a Pignose mini-amp.
In 1985, Forte interviewed Clapton, who had recently turned 40, during a tour
stop in Pensacola, Florida.
Is there any consistent setup that you try to have all your guitars
conform to?
Yes, all of them need to be about 1/8" in the action, and I like it to be constant all the way down. I can't
stand it if the nut is low, and the action gets higher as you go up the neck. I always take the wang bar off and have five
springs, and just tighten the whole thing right up. I like frets to be generally somewhere between a Strat and a Les Paul.
Les Paids' are too thick, and Fenders' are sometimes too thin. The Fender Elite is very nice because it's a blend. The
neck on Blaclde, the Strat I play all the time, is probably my favorite shape. It's almost triangular on the
back-V-shaped-with a slightly curved fingerboard, as opposed to the flat one. That, to me, is the best.
Is the Strat you use for slide set up differently than Blackie?
Yes, it has a very high action with a higher nut and thicker strings. I always use Ernie Ball strings.
What year is Blackie?
I don't know, because it's made up of about three different guitars. I was in Nashville in 1970 with Derek And
The Dominos, and I went into the Sho-Bud shop, and in the back they had a rack of Stratocasters and Telecasters and various
Fenders, all going for $100 each. No one was playing them then. Everyone was going for Gibsons.
Because of you, largely.
Yeah, maybe [laughs]. Well, I wasn't alone. But Steve Winwood had
kind of gotten me interested in them, because he was playing a blond-necked Strat. It sounded great. Then I thought,
"Well, yeah, Buddy Guy used to play one," and I remembered a great picture of Johnny Guitar Watson playing one on the
Gangster Of Love album. So I just bought a handful of them and took them all back to England. I gave one to George
Harrison, one to Steve Winwood and one to Pete Townshend. I kept three, and out of them I made one, which is Blackie. I
just took the body from one, the neck from another, and so on. I have no idea what year the various parts are-so it's
actually not a good collector's guitar at all. Well, it is now [laughs].
I feel that that guitar has become part of me. I get offered guitars, and endorsements come along every now and then.
Strings & Things from Memphis tried to get me interested in a fairly revolutionary-looking guitar, the St. Blues. I
tried it, and I liked it, and I played it on stage liked it a lot. But, while I was doing that, I was thinking, "Well,
Blackie's back there. If I get into this new guitar too deeply, it's tricky, because then I won't be able to go back to
Blackie. And what will happen to that?" This all happens in my head while I'm actually playing [laughs]. I can be miles away thinking about this stuff, and suddenly I shut down and say,
"This is enough. No more. Nice new guitar. Sorry. You're very nice, but ...
Even though you have Blackie, your favorite stratocaster do you still have the
temptation to shop around and collect guitars?
Yes, and there are still guitars that I want; they're like the Holy Grail for me. There's the fat-bodied guitar
that Chuck Berry played in all the publicity photographs of him duck walking: a Gibson ES-350. It's got those black
[P-90] pickups. I'm always on the lookout for a good one of those.
They're actually very rare. I know of a couple, but the people won't part with them. Or if they do want to part with them,
they'll quote such a high price you say, "Well, no, that's actually silly." Because I wont play it; I only want it because
it looks good. On the other hand, there will come a time when someone will walk into the dressing room with the guitar,
and you don't know why-it just is magnificent-and then you have to buy it. It could be a Les Paul, an Explorer, a
Stratocaster, but it's just so perfect. You can tell by the way it feels that it's been played. if you can pick up the
guitar and tell that someone great has played it-you can actually tell that-then you want to take it and endow yourself
with what the guitar's got.
Judging by the sound you achieved on the Blues Breakers album, you must have been
turned up to 10 on your amp.
Maybe it was. We'd gotten used to it, obviously. I remember reading an interview with [engineer] Gus Dudgeon where he said that I put my amp in a certain place, he went over and put
a mike in front of it, and I said, "No, put the microphone over there on the other side of the room-because I'm going to
play loud." I think that sounds like it would be true. We all had a definite idea of what they were doing in Chicago when
those blues records were being made. John Mayall had ascertained that you could tell by the sound, the compression that
was going on on the Little Walter records, for instance, that maybe they were recording the whole bloody thing through his
vocal mike. Because when he took his mike away from his face, the band would get louder-which was a great sympathetic
thing to happen. Then when he'd start singing, they would die down. We had definite ways of thinking about how we wanted
to be recorded That still appeals to me a great deal-having one mike in the room and everyone arrange themselves around it
to their satisfaction. So, yeah, I was probably playing full-volume to get that sound, and then I'd place myself in a way
that it would be a good mix for the band. I was playing a Marshall 60-watt.
Your tone changed between the Blues Breakers album and Fresh Cream.
Yeah, we were using bigger Marshalls by then-100 watts. And we used the stacks in the studio. Fresh Cream
was done in England, and Robert Stigwood produced it. I don't know who the engineer was. Then we went to America to
do the Murray The K show, and while we were there, they invited us into the Atlantic studio, and I played with
[engineer] Tom Dowd, and Felix Pappalardi became our producer. So Tom Dowd was
the one getting the sound on Disraeli Gears.
It sounds like you're using fuzztone on tunes like "Outside Woman Blues" and "Swlabr"
[Disraeli Gears].
There may have been. What we used to do was trip down to Manny's every day and pick up whatever was new.
That's how I got my first wah-wah. Jimi was knocking around New York then, too, and we used to trade things. I have no idea
how many gadgets were passing through the studio then. But it may have just been straight, with the Marshall full up. In
those days, it would get that quality.
Did you go straight from the Marshall amps you used with Cream to the Music
Mans you used in the '70s?
No, I was on Fenders for quite a while. Fender Showman was my number-one amp during Derek And The Dominos.
When I got the Tulsa boys together, [bassist] Carl Radle came up with a
Music Man, and I really got into them. The first ones were really great, but
then I started blowing them up a lot, and they started sounding very thin. So I went back to Marshall recently. On the
ARMS tour [a benefit for multiple sclerosis], I was using a little old Fender blond Twin.
You've recently started using a chorus for instance, on "Same Old Blues" [Behind the
Sun].
I'm a funny person like that. If I like it, I'll forget it's there. I've got a pedal board that was built for
me by the man who works with Steve Lukather [Bob Bradshaw]. It's got a
bank of presets, but I just use the one chorus and then a deeper chorus. I sometimes put it on the minimal one and forget
that it's on-just leave it. Then if I go back to normal, I think, "God, that sounds so straight." Very rarely now do I
just play completely straight.
When you perform "Layla" onstage, you sometimes play the high part and sometimes play the low part. Who did which
on the record?
Well, Duane [Allman] and I played all of it together. We found that
whenever we were going to do an overdub, neither of us would do it alone. We'd either do it in unison or in harmony. So
we did all of it together.
In 1988, when the four-CD retrospective Crossroads was released, Forte
talked with Clapton about another milestone.
Did you decide to retire your old Stratocaster, Blackie?
Yes, I was worried that if something happened to Blackie, I'd be out on a limb, you know. I mean, it's still
playable, although not comfortably so. It's got a great character the guitar itself is really a character-and it worried
me, taking it around on the road. It just seemed to be unfair; it's like taking a very old man and expecting him to do
the impossible every night [ laughs]. So it was [Fender's] Dan Smith's idea to copy Blackie as closely as we could and update it with a little
bit of electronic work to give it a fatter sound, if I wanted it. Which is what one of the knobs does: It gives you a kind
of graduation in compressions They duplicated the way Blackie felt, so I would have two or three Blackies, in effect.
After so many years with Blackie, does it feel comfortable playing the new
models onstage?
Yeah, you just pick one up and it's exactly right. For me, it's exactly the way I would want a guitar to be.
I'm very, very happy with it. And someone else that I know, who's very into guitars, came along and gave me an objective
point of view-, he said it was the best guitar he'd ever played, all around. I mean, it's hard for me to say that-about
my guitar that I've kind of put my name to-but for someone else to say it, I was very impressed.
RETIRING BLACKIE
THE ERIC CLAPTON MODEL STRAT
Ebet Roberts
What would it take for Eric Clapton to part with his beloved blackie, the black Stratocaster whose playability he once
described as "like jumping into a big pool of warn water"? Wear and tear - lots of it.
"Blackie is simply worn out", reports Eric. "It's unplayable. The problem is in the neck. The rest of the guitar is okay, but
the neck is worn out. The frets are almost down to the wood, and it's already been refretted once and couldn't take another
refret. I've played it so much that even the sides of the neck, running along the length of the fingerboard, are wearing down.
The neck is actually getting thinner. It's even wide enough anymore to support the six strings, so I simplyhad to go with
something else. Dan Smith and I came up with some ideas, and the guitars I'm playing now are the result."
Fender designer/executive Dan Smith explains that eric's guitars - the silver-grey one and the red one he's now using [1987]
on tour - are the first two Eric Clapton model Stratocasters ever made and the prototypes for the stock Eric Clapton model.
Eric's guitars (as well as the stock model) incorporate an active circuit and stacked-coil pickups so that they would sound
very close de the vintage Strat", says Dan, "but because pickups incorporating Alnico II magnets usually have so little
output, we wound them to the same specs as if they were Alnico V. From the pckups the signal goes to the active circuit, which
does a couple of different things. First, it boosts the gain back up so that it's actually a little holter than a regular Strat.
You usually lose a little low-end response when two coils are stacked, so the active circuit also adds the bottom end back
in."
the first knob (nearest the tailpiece) is a master volume control. The middle knob is Fender's patented Master TBX passive
tone control, with a detent at the "5" position. From 0 to 5 it operates as a normal tone control for all three pickups.
Between 5 and 10 the effect is minimal, but at 10 the tone control is completly removed from the circuit. "When you remove
that passive control", Smith says, "you get slightly more output and more resonant peaks. It's a bit to high-end boost, but
it doesn't have that harsh sound of some active circuits. It's just very natural sound of letting the pickups breathe."
Ht econtrol nearest the output jack is midrange boost. At 0 it has no effect on the sound, and when dialed in all the way
up to 10 it adds 15dB od midrange boost and rolls off a bit of high end. Smith explains :"It"s the same high end you
get from a humbucker. Eric calls it a 'compressed' sound, although it's not technically compression, it just has that beefy,
slightly distorted sound, like his old Gibson SG that he played with Cream. The range is boosted from 200 to about 1,100Hz,
and it peaks at 740Hz."
When Smith met Clapton in Dallas early in 1985, Eric was already thinking of replacing Blackie. He had smith play the guitar
and explained that he liled necks with an extreme V-shaped back. Smith agreed to make him a guitar that played like Blackie.
He made about six necks, from a soft to an extremely pointed V. The most extreme V of all is now on the red Strat, and will
be offered as a custom option on factory models. "Eric's favorite neck is the one on the silver guitar," says Smith," and
that's going on the stock Eric Clapton model from Fender. It's a little less radical, more like a U than a sharp V - like
you'll find on a late '56 or ealy '57 Stratocaster. It might not be for everybody, but it's the one Eric Clapton likes. So from
now on people are going to know that when they buy an Eric Clapton model, it's exactly what eric is using himself."
Tom Wheeler
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