Eric Clapton Quotes

Yeah, I wanted to know where they got it from, what it was all about, you know, and it seemed to strike something in me that was you know rearing it's head and I still don't know what that is. ~ Eric Clapton

Risk is trying to control something you are powerless over. ~ Eric Clapton

An obsession is where something will not leave your mind. ~ Eric Clapton

Although they can do it all the time, you know, they're far better than me, on a musically, on a theoretical music level. You know, they're out of my league. ~ Eric Clapton

They found our hero in the gutter with a diamond ring and a gun. ~ Eric Clapton

Oh yeah, I mean, it wasn't a very good guitar, most good guitars have got thrust rods in the necks that you can adjust or that'll keep them in shape, you know keep them straight. This one just, well it turned into a bow and arrow after a couple of months. ~ Eric Clapton

My guitar heroes are Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck and people like that - so I've tried to make an album of Robert Johnson covers that, well, while not totally faithful for blues purists, is faithful for people like me that grew up with the '60s and the electric blues-rock versions of Johnson's songs. ~ Todd Rundgren

Music became a healer for me. ~ Eric Clapton

This moment in time, on this tour, you know, I'm discovering a lot of new things. And to be 45 and doing that, it's a mixture of pleasure and pain, I can assure you. ~ Eric Clapton

I don't have half the nerves there that I have anywhere else. ~ Eric Clapton

I can never make up my mind if I'm happy being a flute player, or if I wish I were Eric Clapton. ~ Ian Anderson

The first band I identified with from Chicago was the Muddy Waters band. ~ Eric Clapton

All I am certain of right now is that I don't want to go anywhere, and that's not bad for someone who always used to run. ~ Eric Clapton

Musically, he was like an old man in a boy's skin. ~ Eric Clapton

The thing about pessimism is that in most cases it's nothing more than a front behind which a body can hide its most sweetful yet painful hopes. please forgive mine. ~ Eric Clapton

You can't mastermind everything. You'll go crazy. Just show up and play. ~ Eric Clapton

Once we played at the Fillmore opposite The Cream. Eric Clapton was there and he played his ass off that night ... backstage Michael Bloomfield introduced me to Eric, and Eric was so nice. He came up to me, put his arms around me and said "Barry, it's such a pleasure to meet you" ... I couldn't figure it out ... then Michael told me that he had told Eric I had cancer and two months to live ... ~ Barry Goldberg

Our love will rule in this kingdom we have made. ~ Eric Clapton

I listened to King Oliver and I listened to Louis Armstrong, Jelly Roll Morton, Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, John Coltrane, Archie Shepp ... I listened to everything I could that came from that place that they call the blues but, in formality, isn't necessarily the blues. ~ Eric Clapton

I wish I could write easily. I'm one of those guys who's visited by the muse when things are dire. ~ Eric Clapton

My driving philosophy about making music is that you can reduce it all down to one note if that note is played with the right kind of sincerity. ~ Eric Clapton

I think I deliberately sold out a couple of times. I picked the songs that I thought would do well in the marketplace, even though I didn't really love the song. ~ Eric Clapton

Only ask and you will get what you are needing, the rest is up to you. ~ Eric Clapton

I tried when I was 13, when my grandparents gave me an acoustic guitar, and I tried for a year. It hurt so much to play. I mean, the fingertips hurt so much, I gave up. ~ Eric Clapton

At first the music almost repelled me, it was so intense, and this man made no attempt to sugarcoat what he was trying to say, or play. It was hard-core, more than anything I had ever heard. After a few listenings I realized that, on some level, I had found the master, and that following this man's example would be my life's work. ~ Eric Clapton

[ Unplugged ] was also the cheapest to produce and required the least amount of preparation and work. But if you want to know what it actually cost me, go to Ripley and visit the grave of my son. ~ Eric Clapton

The only planning I do is about a minute before I play. I desperately try to think of something that will be effective, but I never sit down and work it out note for note. ~ Eric Clapton

Every time you pick up your guitar to play, play as if it's the last time. ~ Eric Clapton

Plant your love and let it grow. ~ Eric Clapton

I know there will be no more tears in heaven. ~ Eric Clapton

I'm no spring chicken. The same arthritis that ate up my left hip that finally got replaced hasn't stopped there ... And touring is a lot of work. I'm impressed when I see people like Eric Clapton out there. Gee whiz, Eric, give me a break! I know it's gotta hurt somewhere. ~ Steve Perry

When I look for what I'm going to listen to I go backwards. I'm always going the other way you see. Most people are trying to figure out 'how do I get in the fast lane going that way?'. I'm going in the other direction. I wanna find the oldest thing to do. ~ Eric Clapton

There are people these days who can do things on the guitar which are beyond my reach. There's one guy who plays with Queen who can do things I would dream of doing. I sincerely mean that. ~ Eric Clapton

I just like the company of beautiful women. I have a weakness in that department. ~ Eric Clapton

Yeah, it is, because it's a real discovery of your inner resources, you know. That's what my character is all about and what my playing is all about. But to get up there and just go inside and draw out something that makes you feel good first and foremost. ~ Eric Clapton

Eric Clapton is my dream guitarist. ~ Carole King

It's been very important throughout my career that I've met all the guys I've copied, because at each stage they've said, 'Don't play like me, play like you.' ~ Eric Clapton

Give me a guitar and I'll play; give me a stage and I'll perform; give me an auditorium and I'll fill it. ~ Eric Clapton

Lately I've been running on faith. ~ Eric Clapton

In playing, I suppose my greatest gift was to express the way I felt or the willingness to express myself. ~ Eric Clapton

I grew up playing in clubs - that's my spiritual stomping ground. ~ Eric Clapton

My definition of Blues is that it's a musical form which is very disciplined and structured coupled with a state of mind, and you can have either of those things but it's the two together that make it what it is. And you need to be a student for one, and a human being for the other, but those things alone don't do it. ~ Eric Clapton

Punk was sort of an angry stance against things that had happened just before, against the pop of glam rock, against progressive rock. Music had become very staid and it was about the playing and people obsessed. Eric Clapton was God and we needed an enema within the art form, and punk did do that. ~ Gary Kemp

When I was in Nashville, Tennessee in 1970 with Derek and the Dominoes, I went into this shop and they had a rack of Strats and Teles - all going for $100.00 each. I bought a handfull and made Blackie out of the body from one, the neck from another, and so on ~ Eric Clapton

My selective memory of what drinking was like told me that standing at the bar in a pub, on a summer's evening with a long, tall glass of lager and lime was heaven, and I chose not to remember the nights on which I had sat with a bottle of vodka, a gram of coke and a shotgun, contemplating suicide. ~ Eric Clapton

My original interests and intentions in guitar playing were primarily created on quality of tone, for instance, the way the instrument could be made to echo or simulate the human voice. ~ Eric Clapton

The music scene as I look at it today is a little different from when I was growing up. The percentages are roughly the same - 95 percent rubbish, 5 percent pure. ~ Eric Clapton

I did play a lot of fingerstyle when I first started playing. I could never really find the right combination of flatpick or fingerpick, so playing fingerstyle is really the easiest way - though it's quite strenuous on the fingertips. ~ Eric Clapton

For me there is something primitively soothing about this music, and it went straight to my nervous system, making me feel ten feet tall. ~ Eric Clapton

I found my God in music and the arts, with writers like Hermann Hesse, and musicians like Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, and Little Walter. In some way, in some form, my God was always there, but now I have learned to talk to him. ~ Eric Clapton

I've always wanted the sound of Muddy Waters' early records - only louder ~ Eric Clapton

When I got out of high school, I was in a blues band. It was the kind of music I was interested in, and listening to, mostly because it was becoming a vehicle for a generation of guitarists - like Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton. Mike Bloomfield. And that's what I wanted to be, principally: a guitar player. ~ Todd Rundgren

I couldn't believe how good Jimi Hendrix was It was a really difficult thing for me to deal with, but I just had to surrender and say, 'This is fantastic.' ~ Eric Clapton

It was a mystery to me, how the tuning was, or the style seemed to come out of nowhere, it obviously had roots in America going way back, there was nothing like it for me I'd ever seen before. ~ Eric Clapton

It was stumbling on to really the bible of the blues, you know, and a very powerful drug to be introduced to us and I absorbed it totally, and it changed my complete outlook on music. ~ Eric Clapton

The first guitar I ever had was a gut-string Spanish guitar, and I couldn't really get the hang of it. I was only 13, and I talked my grandparents into buying it for me. I tried and tried and tried, but got nowhere with it. ~ Eric Clapton

I had never been allowed to go on tour with my husband George Harrison, so had no idea what to expect when I left him to join Eric Clapton on his 1974 U.S. tour. ~ Pattie Boyd

Having lovers and friends is all good and fine But I don't like yours and you don't like mine. ~ Eric Clapton

When I met Eric Clapton, I was a very young girl. I was 20 years old. And we were linked for a very short time, and then we became friends. And then we lost touch, which I'm really sorry about. ~ Carla Bruni

When you're onstage with an electric band going through a massive P.A. system, it's very artificial. You can't really hear your own voice as it comes out of your mouth. ~ Eric Clapton

I thought Eric Clapton was good. He still is. Not only is he good - he's rock's #1 guitarist, and he plays blues better than most of us ~ B.B. King

One summer I remember, I got exposed to Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly and Buddy Holly was a very very big, made a very big impression on me. Because of a lot of things, you know, the way he looked and his charisma. ~ Eric Clapton

Very much like that, and very much a loner, do you know and I didn't fit really into sport or all kind of group activities as a kid, I couldn't find a niche. And music was not really part of the kind of village curriculum it would, you know. ~ Eric Clapton

If I could do something with Paul McCartney it would be just amazing. Or Eric Clapton. ~ Jake Shimabukuro

It's taken me to be an older guy, an old man, to have an old man's voice. Because I only liked old men's voices. As a kid, I didn't like pip-squeaked singers. ~ Eric Clapton

I never met Johnny Rotten, and I didn't want to meet Johnny Rotten. ~ Eric Clapton

There are many excellent guitar players but I have to say Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton are still at the top! There are many imitators but very few genuine articles. There is so much more to playing than a fast blur of notes, like feeling and emotion from the soul. It's like punctuating a sentence and knowing when to lay back and not fill up all the space. Those are the things I tried to teach my son Tim when he began playing. ~ Merrell Fankhauser

In terms of scale or stature, I believe that if Robert Johnson was reincarnated, he is probably BB King. Maybe it would be worth investigating the appropriate dates to see if this is even a remote possibility. ~ Eric Clapton

I just managed to convince my grandmother that it was a worth while that was something to do, you know, and when I did finally get the guitar, it didn't seem that difficult to me, to be able to make a good noise out of it. ~ Eric Clapton

I thought, 'My God, this is like Buddy Guy on acid.' ~ Eric Clapton

The great British blues guitarists of the Sixties - people like Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page and Peter Green - could play like virtuosos, but they also understood the importance of energy and intensity ~ Joe Perry

My identity shifted when I got into # recovery . That's who I am now, and it actually gives me greater pleasure to have that identity than to be a musician or anything else, because it keeps me in a manageable size. When I'm down on the ground with my disease-which I'm happy to have-it gets me in tune. It gives me a spiritual anchor. Don't ask me to explain. ~ Eric Clapton

Lightnin' Hopkins was something of a fixture on the Houston coffee house scene so we were witness to eccentric blues brilliance close up. Then, believe it or not, along came the wave of the English cats like John Mayall, Eric Clapton and the Stones embracing the great American art form - the blues. ~ Billy Gibbons

So there I was in Hollywood, thinking I was doing good. ~ Eric Clapton

I mean, the sound of an amplified guitar in a room full of people was so hypnotic and addictive to me, that I could cross any kind of border to get on there. ~ Eric Clapton

One of the most beneficial things I've ever learned is how to keep my mouth shut. ~ Eric Clapton

To sing in a lower key is harder work. You have to use your diaphragm more. ~ Eric Clapton

It is painful to relive things that have caused emotional crises or whatever and find ways to express that musically. ~ Eric Clapton

There are people who are great technical players like Eric Clapton, and there are people who are great intuitive songwriters like Daniel Johnston. There are sometimes people who are great at both the technique and the creativity, the two sides of the coin, maybe Jimi Hendrix. ~ Jeffrey Lewis

I often enjoy singing in an acoustic setting more than an amplified one. ~ Eric Clapton

'My Father's Eyes' is very personal. I realized that the closest I ever came to looking in my father's eyes was when I looked into my son's eyes. ~ Eric Clapton

Leave bands, go back to obscurity if I choose to, without a great sense of loss of security because it's all been based on the fact that I did it on my own or was doing, enjoying doing it on my own in the first place. ~ Eric Clapton

I used to do crazy things that people would bail me out of, and I'm just grateful that I survived. But the music got very lost; I didn't know where I was going, and I didn't really care. I was more into just having a good time, and I think it showed. ~ Eric Clapton

I suppose when I started playing guitar, it was the means to an end. I never thought of myself as a fully fledged guitar instrumentalist. And my early excursions on the electric guitar were curtailed when Eric Clapton came on the scene, and I decided I was never going to be in the same arena as a Clapton or a Peter Green. ~ Ian Anderson

My dedication to my music has driven everyone away. I've had girlfriends, but I always end up on my own. I don't particularly like it, but I don't see a way 'round it. ~ Eric Clapton

I have always been resistant to doctrine, and any spirituality I had experienced thus far in my life had been much more abstract and not aligned with any recognized religion. For me, the most trustworthy vehicle for spirituality had always proven to be music. It cannot be manipulated, or politicized, and when it is, that becomes immediately obvious. ~ Eric Clapton

It's very dependent on your state of mind. And your emotional state as well. And a lot of it comes pouring out, you don't really have that much control with it. ~ Eric Clapton

But I did go to music really early on, even when I was 4 or 5, I was responding to music probably in ways other kids were not. ~ Eric Clapton

I've heard the stories. Like, Eric Clapton said he wanted to burn his guitar when he heard Jimi Hendrix play. I never understood that because, when I went and saw a great drummer or heard one, all I wanted to do was practice. ~ Neil Peart

I feel a real need to observe a level of propriety in what I'm handing out. Instead of me just venting or spilling my guts, I've got to consider how it's going to affect people. How it's going to affect me, as well. Because it's like a cycle. ~ Eric Clapton

I think everybody has their own way of looking at their lives as some kind of pilgrimage. Some people will see their role as a pilgrim in terms of setting up a fine family, or establishing a business inheritance. Everyone's got their own definition. Mine, I suppose, is to know myself. ~ Eric Clapton

They looked great, you know the drawings of the guys playing looked great and bits of string around their necks. So it didn't seem to be that difficult a thing to do, or that inaccessible. ~ Eric Clapton

I was very influenced by Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix, both of whom I had the pleasure of playing with and becoming friends with. ~ Mick Taylor

Let it grow, let it grow,
Let it blossom let it flow.
In the sun, the rain, the snow,
Love is lovely, let it grow. ~ Eric Clapton

And if I don't be there by morning, she'll know that I must've spent the night in jail. ~ Eric Clapton

Whatever your standing in life, the most important thing is behaving in ways that help other people. It's the same with music. I am a servant of the music ... and if I get caught up in ego, I'll lose everything .. it'll burn and that's a guarantee ... ~ Eric Clapton

Well, I think part of my gift, or if I have one, is that I love listening. ~ Eric Clapton

It's been up to me to inspire me. ~ Eric Clapton

It sounds strange for me to be saying this, but I've come around to the idea that sex really is for procreation. ~ Eric Clapton

Watching him, I understood for the first time how you could really live music, how you could listen to it completely and make it come alive, so that it was part of your life. ~ Eric Clapton