Top 85 Clapton Quotes & Sayings

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.

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.

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

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

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

Eric Clapton is my dream guitarist.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

I just wonder where I was when the talent was being given out, like George Benson, Kenny Burrell, Eric Clapton... oh, there's many more! I wouldn't want to be like them, you understand, but I'd like to be equal, if you will.

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 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.

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 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.

I grew up on a lot of early Beatles, DC5, Cream, Clapton, Page, Beck and Hendrix.

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.

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

Everyone wanted to play like Eric Clapton in the early to mid-'60s.

I love Eric Clapton and what he did with Cream; 'Spoonful' and 'Crossroads,' those are probably the coolest solos.

I love 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.

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

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

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.

People are familiar with my songs, especially through Eric Clapton. But I have a hard time drawing a crowd, because I have been a songwriter.

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.

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.

You stop anybody on any street, around the world, and they know who Eric Clapton is. They don't know who I am!

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

Duane Allman inspired the group to explore the extended jam format that was already a staple of the Allman Brothers act. Moreover, his ferocious slide playing motivated Clapton to turn in some of the finest guitar performances of his career

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.

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.

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'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.

I used to say, if Jim were alive today he'd never be clean and sober but I'm changing that answer because Eminem - angry, creative, just like Jim; a real talent - and Clapton, of course. It's a different time so he would have learned something, I think, but I don't protect what he did.

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.

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

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

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

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

No one's better than me. I'm not better than anyone. Whether it's Eric Clapton or BB King we look straight at each other. And that keeps it real.

In those days, I didn't know how guys like Clapton and Beck were getting that searing blues lead sound, so I developed my style to be rhythmic and chord-based, with simple lead lines that you could almost hum.

Eric Clapton wrote "Layla" when he was coked out of his mind. Later on, it nearly killed him.

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.

I think Clapton is brilliant. He's the only one who moved me. The only one who made me want to play the guitar.

I remember a festival we did in Denmark with the Clapton band where you suddenly realize it's an actual band - and you're on an equal stage playing music together.

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

My dad used to listen to Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton, and my mom liked Michael Bolton and Roy Orbison. She was pretty big into country music, too. So there was a wealth of music being played in the house, and I kind of took it all in.

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.

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

I didn't look up and say, "Oh, man, if I learn how to play a guitar I could make not much money, but I'd make a decent living like Eric Clapton or somebody." There wasn't nothing like that out there.

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.

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.