The artist Eric Clapton called his Elvis: “He was my pilot”
Every giant of 1960s rock usually had their conversion moment when seeing Elvis Presley for the first time. The Beatles may have just been a bunch of scruffy lads from Liverpool interested in the arts, but once they saw Presley shaking his ass playing ‘Jailhouse Rock’, they knew that they had found their new religion and would spend the rest of their lives chasing after what the ‘King of Rock and Roll’ could do. Presley may have impacted rock fans, but Eric Clapton had his conversion moment when listening to Buddy Guy for the first time.
Because for every great song Eric Clapton ever made, it all circled back to the blues. Considering how much of his background is in traditional blues scales, ‘Slowhand’ was probably born in the wrong country and about ten years too late, usually taking inspiration from everyone from Robert Johnson to Muddy Waters, depending on what song he was playing.
Compared to the other Delta blues players, Guy came all the way up to Chicago to find the sophisticated side of the blues. While Chicago blues is now more known for The Blues Brothers and the fancy suits everyone would wear as they played, Guy was never one to go along with the program when he played.
Muddy Waters may have had a way of speaking through his instrument, but Guy seemed like the precursor to someone like Jimi Hendrix. He may not have had the same showmanship as the hippie genius, but he could still squeeze as much as he could out of his instrument, almost like he was in a fierce battle against it that would surely leave one of them broken by the end of any song.
Since Guy was coming up concurrently with the beginning of rock and roll, Clapton thought that the blues legend could have gone toe-to-toe with Presley, recalling at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, “He was for me what Elvis probably was for most other people. My course was set, and he was my pilot. Since those early days, Buddy has become the core reality of what the blues is supposed to sound and look like.”
While it’s easy to kick back and try your hand at playing the bluesy riffs of BB King, where do you think Clapton got that fire in his belly when he first became a member of The Yardbirds? Hendrix hadn’t even come along yet, so hearing him wail across those early blues hits was hearing the British equivalent of what Guy had been doing, including those fantastic bends that made the guitar sound like it was crying.
Clapton would later come to appreciate the more subtle takes on the blues from people like Johnson, but any blues guitarist who has ever wanted to really attack their instrument can take some cues from Buddy Guy. He wasn’t meant to be sophisticated every time he played, but when you heard him tear into a solo, you knew that you were hearing something that was pulled straight out of his heart.