Top 70 Clapton Quotes

Whenever I sing blues from the ’50s or the kind of blues that you might have heard Eric Clapton or Duane Allman emulate, I often feel the similarity of some of the ragtime stuff I sang early on. A lot of the phrasing and the harmonization is the same.

I used to play quite a good lead guitar, R&B style. Clapton and BB King are heroes.

Whenever I hear my playing, I can’t detach from my influences: there’s my Jeff Beck, there’s the Clapton bit, the Eric Johnson bit, the Birelli Lagrene bit, the Billy Gibbons.

Eric Clapton’s scales – when he comes off a high note and it’s time for a refrain or a little bit of a rest, he peals off scales going downwards that are so good it’s unbelievable.

When I grew up, I had influences as diverse as Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix.

I think guitar-wise, Eric Clapton was a big influence on me. I got to spend time around him. He’s kind of strange, mysterious, serious and he always has played such hot guitar.

I’m a big fan of songs like Joe Cocker’s ‘You Are So Beautiful’ and Eric Clapton’s ‘Wonderful Tonight’ – songs that go straight to the point.

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.

Clapton was just picking up ideas. He picked up some of mine like I picked up some from the people before me.

I went to London and performed in Eric Clapton’s concert at the Royal Albert Hall. I’ll work with him any time he asks me.

I love Eric Clapton.

I was a kid that grew up listening to The Beatles and The Stones and Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, and I wanted all of that in there. But at the same time, a large part of my playing is Tony Iommi and Billy Gibbons. I’m just a sum total of all of the guitar players that I think were really cool.

My early influences were the Shadows, who were an English instrumental band. They basically got me into playing and later on I got into blues and jazz players. I liked Clapton when he was with John Mayall. I really liked that period.

I can’t deny that Eric Clapton’s and Eddie Van Halen’s lead stuff has influenced a stack of people, but for me, it’s the rhythm thing that’s way more impressive and important to a band.

When I was 15, I got super into Eric Clapton. My father took notice of this and got me a guitar for Christmas.

Eric Clapton always wanted to come out onstage with a stuffed parrot on his shoulder.

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.

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

I really wanted to write a song like Eric Clapton’s ‘Wonderful Tonight.’ It’s just such a sweet sentiment. It’s so simple but so genuine.

John Mayer will be around forever, like the Eagles and Eric Clapton.

It was pretty surreal because The Allman Brothers’ ‘Eat A Peach’ and ‘Live At The Fillmore East’, and the Eric Clapton ‘Layla’ record was the music I grew up hearing all the time.

Eric Clapton’s scales – when he comes off a high note and it’s time for a refrain or a little bit of a rest, he peals off scales going downwards that are so good it’s unbelievable.

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.

The one thing I do have is good ears. I don’t mean perfect pitch, but ears for picking things up. I developed my ear through piano theory, but I never had a guitar lesson in my life, except from Eric Clapton off of records.

Eric Clapton has earned all of our respect. He is the greatest. He opened the doors for us. Without Cream, there is no Allman Brothers.

I’m going to try and make you take the Beatles and Eric Clapton as seriously as the Berlin Philharmonic and Simon Rattle.

You don’t have to play the blues to play rock ‘n’ roll, but that’s where, somewhere along the line, your influences came from. I mean, I don’t care where you got it from. If you got it from Eric Clapton, he got it from the blues.

I love Sutton House in Clapton, a beautiful example of Tudor architecture.

As far as actual playing, Clapton – by far – is my biggest influence, and you can tuck Jeff Beck underneath that.

Whenever I sing blues from the ’50s or the kind of blues that you might have heard Eric Clapton or Duane Allman emulate, I often feel the similarity of some of the ragtime stuff I sang early on. A lot of the phrasing and the harmonization is the same.

I tended to lean towards the guys who both sang and played, such as Ricky Skaggs, Vince Gill, Steve Wariner… And at the other end of the spectrum, I had Eric Clapton in a rock and blues sense, jazz guys such as Tal Farlow and Les Paul… Then Chet Atkins-type stuff.

The Beatles had some juice when it came to distortion, but Clapton was finally able to break through those early studio engineers’ fear of overloading. He defined the sound that guitarists spend the rest of their lives trying to get.

Whenever I hear my playing, I can’t detach from my influences: there’s my Jeff Beck, there’s the Clapton bit, the Eric Johnson bit, the Birelli Lagrene bit, the Billy Gibbons.

Going through ‘The Partridge Family,’ I looked up to people like Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck and all those guys. But as an actor playing a part, I had to sing what was right for the character and the show.

I’m going to try and make you take the Beatles and Eric Clapton as seriously as the Berlin Philharmonic and Simon Rattle.

I heard Robert Johnson way before I heard about Eric Clapton.

I decided early on that I wanted to be Michael Bloomfield, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton – not George Harrison.

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.

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.

I love Eric Clapton.

Im a product of my influences, and those are the 60s. All analog. I loved the Beatles, the Beach Boys, and the Stones – and then later on, of course, Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix.

When I was a little bitty kid, I was listening to the stuff my parents were listening to. My mom was a huge Whitney Houston, Mariah Carey, Mary J. Blige fan. My dad had a cover band that I sang with, and he loved Parliament, Prince, Jimi Hendrix, and Eric Clapton, the blues, James Brown.

I know he played on the last record but I don’t wake up in the middle of the night thinking of Eric Clapton.

Clapton asked my brother to play on his record. I thought that was the most wonderful thing in the world.

Eric Clapton is my dream guitarist.

I used to sit for hours and copy every lick on those early AC/DC and Kiss records. From there, I went on to Eric Clapton and Stevie Ray Vaughan. After a while, you kind of develop your own style.

Eric Clapton was such a great player. He sounds like he’s Freddie King or someone like that. He plays the roots of blues and Delta blues. He really affected me with the way that he plays, because he never really plays that many notes.

Eric Clapton is my dream guitarist.

The Beatles had some juice when it came to distortion, but Clapton was finally able to break through those early studio engineers’ fear of overloading. He defined the sound that guitarists spend the rest of their lives trying to get.

I think guitar-wise, Eric Clapton was a big influence on me. I got to spend time around him. He’s kind of strange, mysterious, serious and he always has played such hot guitar.

My early influences were the Shadows, who were an English instrumental band. They basically got me into playing and later on I got into blues and jazz players. I liked Clapton when he was with John Mayall. I really liked that period.

I used to play quite a good lead guitar, R&B style. Clapton and BB King are heroes.

Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck made me an Anglophile. I listened to English and Irish artists as a kid, and they were way louder, heavier, and faster than the traditional blues that I was listening to.

I went to London and performed in Eric Clapton’s concert at the Royal Albert Hall. I’ll work with him any time he asks me.

I’m the youngest of three boys, and my oldest brother was super into Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton and played guitar. I wanted to be like him, so I asked for a guitar of my own for Christmas in ’93.

When Eric Clapton cut ‘After Midnight,’ he sold so many records and it was so big at the time, I decided that I would pursue the songwriting thing. I was 34 years old at that time. I’d been down the pike and back before I had any success at all.