Eric Clapton, John Mayall - Blues Breakers
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Artist: Eric Clapton, John MayallBrand: MAYALL,JOHN
Edition: Music CD
Format: Extra tracks, Original recording remastered
CD Release Date: 2001-06-05
Music Label: Polydor / Umgd
Soundtracks:
- All Your Love
- Hideaway
- Little Girl
- Another Man
- Double Crossing Time
- What'd I Say
- Key To Love
- Parchman Farm
- Have You Heard
- Ramblin' On My Mind
- Steppin' Out
- It Ain't Right
- Lonely Years
- Bernard Jenkins
Music reviews of Blues Breakers
Music Review: A moment in time...
Rating: 5 Stars
It was 1966. The Beach Boys had been the dominant influence on Rock & Roll for 3 - 4 years with their surf music and Carl Wilson's guitar playing was pretty much the standard ("God Only Knows" & "Wouldn't It Be Nice" were their current chart toppers). The Beatles had been around a couple of years and it was clear that, whatever other qualities their music had, George Harrison's guitary playing wasn't going to set the world on fire ("Paperback Writer" & "Rain" were their current hits) and even Brian Jones wasn`t really showing much on the Stone`s record releases. Motown's singers dominated the super-professional rhythm & blues musicians who "made" the Motown sound in anonymity and without solo spots. Folk rock & Pop ("Turn Down Day" - Cyrkle, "Georgie Girl" - The Seekers, and Herman's Hermits) were the mainstream.
Amidst all this, a group called the Yardbirds had a song "Over, Under, Sideways, Down" following up "For Your Love" - a somewhat surprising driving ballad with a `rock' harpsichord and, at the end, a blazing downscale guitar arpeggio that, unless you were listening to guitar players, probably escaped notice but which, if you had been listening, was something really unexpected. If you bought their album "Having A Rave Up With the Yardbirds" you found that guitar credits were given to Eric Clapton & Jeff Beck. The album featured some blues cuts and, if they appealed to you, you began searching out more of this "blues music". If you liked Keith Relf's singing & harmonica playing you bought a harmonica and tended to play blues licks on it as you walked the streets of downtown Denver in the summer of `66. After all, Carl Wilson was pretty much as good as lead guitar got back then (at least in white audience's airplay), and harp seemed the dominant blues instrument.
Having considered myself something of a rock connoisseur at the ripe age of 17 (after all, I had been listening since 1955) I had a number of local record shops that I stopped in regularly to see `what's new'. One day that summer I was offered a couple of albums by "unknowns" that had just come in but that featured white harp players and were said to have pretty good guitar players too: "The Paul Butterfield Blues Band with Michael Bloomfield" and "John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton". Clapton? Well, I'd heard that name before so I bought `em both and hurried home to listen.
Which to listen to first? Let's see, there the British group with the Beatles' type haircuts and one guy reading a comic book with the unlikely title of "Beano" who, on the back cover has a guitar... hmmm, must be that Clapton guy. They all look pretty harmless. Then, there's the Butterfield group, from Chicago, who all look like they just got out of stir and are checking in with their P.O. (except Jerome Arnold, who looks so out of place). Whoa! These guys look like blues guys... let's hear them first.
After that, several things were clear. First, I needed to put my harp away `cause I had no idea of what Paul Butterfield was doing to get that sound and I never was. Second, this guy, Mike Bloomfield (a Jewish bluesman? And what kind of name is "Elvin Bishop" - on rhythm guitar - anyway), knew more about guitar playing than anyone else I'd ever listened to up `till then and on the last cut his slide-type riffs on "Look Over Yonder's Wall" made me just jump up and yell! Carl Wilson, eat your heart out! There's a new sheriff in town. Still, Mike Bloomfield's guitar still sounded like a guitar (as we knew them then) and there was a discernable trail from what was being played on top-40 radio to what I heard from Bloomfield, not necessarily short or easy, but discernable.
Then came time to hear this British group... as the record ended I realized that the Earth had stopped turning! It's hard, now - more than 40 years later - to describe the feeling of knowing you'd just listened to something that nobody in your city, or maybe even country, had ever heard before and after that, as they say, everything's going to be different from now on. That difference was Eric Clapton's guitar playing. Judging by the album photos, it was a Les Paul put through a Marshall amplifier and I have no idea about the electronic machinations beyond that. The sensation though, was of this intense looking young fellow, Clapton, wrestling with vast and overwhelmingly threatening electronic power, just barely keeping it under control lest the feedback run away and destroy all life on Earth, while forcing it to bend and do his will. And his will was the most fiery, screaming, moaning, pleading, dexterous, and technically proficient guitar solos recorded in rock music to that time. Prior to that, nobody had released a record with the guitar pushed to its electronic limits. Prior to that, there were no rock guitar virtuosos (or heroes) whose skill and musical depth allowed them to dominate not just a song, but an entire album. Prior to that, there were no of an electric guitar player pushing himself and his instrument to their absolute limits and then just a little bit more, and pulling it off... brilliantly. It was no wonder that "Clapton Is God" graffiti started showing up all over England. It was stunning.
All the cuts have their own little wonders in them but, for my money, "Hideaway" is the outstanding virtuoso performance on the album, and in the history of electric blues guitar. It's all there, the sound, the licks, the runs, and the musical history. The song is an entire history of blues guitar and also a complete lesson in playing electric blues. By the way, there's no "blues-rock" on this album. It's all "Electric Blues"... just like Butterfield & Bloomfield. It's the real deal and the same could have been heard on Chicago's South Side if you'd known then to go there to find it - Clapton, Bloomfield, Mayall, and Butterfield did know it. "Ramblin' On My Mind" is Clapton's public acknowledgment and ode to Robert Johnson (and his first released vocal as well) with a slow, easy, and tasteful guitar part. As a group effort, "Have You Heard About My Baby" is superb and probably the album`s best overall track. Mayall's wheezing echoed vocal lends an eerie distance to the music reminiscent of Son House's "Death Letter", his Hammond B-3 (also wheezing) fills the voids, and Clapton's guitar solos tell you about pain. I could go on but suffice to say that it's a great, ground-breaking, album filled with little joys (like Clapton giving George Harrison a guitar lesson by riffing the guitar theme from "Ticket To Ride" as part of his solo in their cover of Ray Charles' "What'd I Say") that keep rewarding the repeat listener. John McVie (later to become half of the "Mac" in "Fleetwood-Mac") and Hughie Flint provide an adequate if prosaic rhythm section but, naturally, neither they nor John Mayall are the essence of this recording.
It wasn't long after that before all guitars became overamped and guitar virtuosity took a giant leap ahead. Sadly, there was no follow-on Mayall-Clapton album but rumors of a new "super-group" called Cream were in the mill and Clapton was supposed to be in it. Meanwhile "Are You Experienced?" was released and Jimi Hendrix established a new paradigm in rock guitar playing. Cream released Disraeli Gears but the Clapton solos one expected weren't there. If you listened closely, there were hints (kind of like back in the Yardbirds days) of Clapton's fire but the whole tone of the album was not that of electric blues... not that it's not a great album - I still enjoy it. Then Cream released "Wheels of Fire" with the signature live track of "Crossroads" (and to a lesser extent, Spoonful) in which Clapton's fire and finesse make an all too brief final bow. As time passed his playing became more and more restrained until, on "Delaney and Bonnie and Friends" it seemed almost an afterthought. His playing has rebounded from that time and he's gone on with a stellar career as the premier rock-blues electric guitar player but, to my mind (and he's been on record for years as saying he hates hearing this) his best work was on the Blues Breaker's album.
I've often reflected on why that may be and, to me, it seems that at that time he'd reached a maturity and mastery of his technical skills, filled his mental musical library with all the blues music he'd listened to before, heard in his mind a sound he wanted to project and had the technical ability to do it and, most importantly perhaps, had nothing to live up to, nothing to loose. He was free to `let her rip' and see what happened, take chances because those who were really listening were a limited few and the consequences of failing were low. He could just let it all out. After that, he'd set a mark his listeners would always expect him to achieve, and the risks if he failed were greater so the restraint increased and the musical risk-taking decreased.
Consequently, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton is a musical snapshot of a unique moment in the history of electric-blues, rock & roll, and contemporary electric guitar. It is essential to anyone seriously interested in how what you listen to today came to be but more importantly, it`s just a great album to listen to. I still put it on every few years or so... just to keep it in mind.
Description of Blues Breakers
John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers with Eric ClaptonBlues CDs
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