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Julian Cope presents Head Heritage

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Cope vs. The Clash
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IanB
IanB
6761 posts

Edited Dec 15, 2009, 21:09
Re: Not liking Clapton
Dec 15, 2009, 20:41
I know what you mean. It all comes across as a bit controlled but in truth he has been playing that way at very least since Ocean Boulevard. He has played like that for more of his career than not.

At the time it seemed to be a case of throwing off his own Guitar Hero myth (possbily as a strategy / road out of addiction) but in the 80s and 90s I think he may have made a concerted decision to leave the widdly-hyper-drive-and-gurning field wide open for the likes of Gary Moore and to become a Serious Artist. He started wearing seriously professional looking and expensive suits on stage the same time that the record company offices started being staffed with actual suits rather than metaphorical ones. So go figure.

And all in all I don't think he could be assed with the bear pit competetiveness of the blues guitar speed queens so he went for the De Burgh / Rea singer songwriter thing and, to be fair, it went pretty well for him. Also the 80s blues guys played faster and longer than he ever did. Faster and longer being the popular benchmark for Guitar Heroism. So why would you put yourself in the position of competing with that. It's like running a race against guys fifteen or twenty years younger than you who are all on steroids. Why bother?

And look what happened to Robert Palmer, Phil Collins, Steve Winwood and John Martyn in the same era. They all did the suit thing with the sleeves rolled past the elbows. The people running their labels dressed more or less the same way. They were all on the same page and looking to get paid. It's a Badoit-at-the-lunch-table-and-no-booze-on-show vibe. The era when rock tried to go respectable.

Wanting to get paid properly after 20 years in the business is not a sin in itself but I think the likes of Clapton and Gilmour carry a deep insecurity that all said and done rock music is a bollocks art form. So they default to appealing to people of conventional taste and discernment. A lot of jazzers went the same way but when Clapton sticks to slow blues, mid tempo grooves and ballads he is pretty effective. I'd love to hear him play behind someone like say Erykah Badu.

There seems to be a similar but much more cynical thing going on with DG. Especially the godwawful lyrics on the post Final Cut Floyd material. It's like he couldn't be bothered to make it in any way meaningful so hey, lets have a dirge with some psycho babble bilge and throw in a solo like the one of the ones on Wish You Were Here. It's a simulcra of Floyd in their hey day and you hope no one will notice.

Not that Rog is much better these days but I believe that he believes in things that matter and means every word. The dross Gilmour let through the ediorial filter on Division Bell is just unbelievable. And that he let his wife put those words into his mouth even worse. Rick Wright wrote the only half decent Floyd song after Comfortably Numb but no one was keeping score otherwise they would have had him write the whole bloody thing. Had they not been intent on keeping the publishing in the family!
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Re: Not liking Clapton (Moon Cat)
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