Eric Clapton’s 70th birthday – Tamer of pain – Süddeutsche.de

The blues has become in this guitar grandmaster way of life, in the strictest sense of the word. Now celebrating Eric Clapton, who coined the popular music like few, his 70th birthday.

By Thomas Steinfeld

Eric Clapton will be available in a few weeks on the stage of the Royal Albert Hall in London, seven nights in a row, it will be there to celebrate two anniversaries.

The one applies the fiftieth anniversary of his first appearance on this stage: First he was there occurred the Yardbirds in December 1964 one of the many British groups of the time, which brought the blues to Europe from America had and then later became louder and more compact and merged with the English folk music, give it back to America. The other is the seventieth birthday of guitarist and singer who falls on 30 March, on this Monday so.

And as unlikely as it may have been at times, especially of alcohol and hard drugs because that Eric Clapton experienced that day, so timeless and of course the music will be that he will perform on those evenings.

One of his most successful songs of the eighties called “Forever Man”, and if the title also did not mean it, so he has long been assumed programmatic character

A musician is there, the Eric Clapton more honored than all the other black singer and guitarist who accompanied him throughout his life. Robert Johnson a slain in 1938 Rover, with the Blues began as a composer closed form.

The music of this man from Mississippi, explains Eric Clapton in a book dedicated to his idol, was the “most powerful cry of pain “(” the most powerful cry “), which you can find in the human voice. From the pain, as he is the Blues underlying all the ballads, the ubiquitous farewell song is the largest part of the music Eric Clapton, of “No Reason to Cry” (1976) to the ballad “Tears in Heaven” (1992), up to ” River Runs Deep “(2010), one of the most laconic small works of JJ Cale.

Teenager Fury in sovereign purer form

Eric Clapton has sublimated the pain. He’s had it, which is not a contradiction, made civil, and often gave him resistance elegance. His soft voice helped him.

This is true even for his seemingly wildest moments, for the long solos at Cream about, the trio, in which first the conversion of the popular Music took a matter for virtuosos. As Cream 2005 occurred again at the Royal Albert Hall, the youthful fervor was to experience in sovereign purer form.

Eric Clapton is a master on the guitar, one of the largest, which in the history of popular is music. But he shows his mastery quite rare. He retreats to his taste intoned songs, he lets his game, which is difficult, easy and casual look. Concerts at the Royal Albert Hall will be in May, so it is likely not be the last. The blues musician has become in this way of life, in the strictest sense of the word.