In the late 1960s, when both Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton were leading the charge in blues rock music, the two change-makers were pitted against one another in a fierce battle for ultimate guitar god status.
It was, in theory, an easy comparison to make. Both guitarists were taking the electric guitar to an all-new level.
Clapton had already been anointed ‘god’ by the press, but Hendrix’s arrival in London in ’66 exacerbated the six-string arms race. Within months, he left his contemporaries quaking in their boots – Jeff Beck, Pete Townshend, you name it. Britain’s biggest players knew they had met their match.
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Clapton was included. After Hendrix crashed a Cream gig and famously stunned Slowhand and his audience with an impromptu stage appearance, he knew things would never be the same again.
It was one of guitar’s most intense – yet respectful – rivalries, one which found fans and the press alike comparing the two guitarist’s playing styles.
This didn’t sit right with Hendrix. As he once explained during an interview with Jazz & Pop Magazine in 1968, it was a forced rivalry he didn’t really understand. In his mind, they were two completely different players.
“That’s one thing I don’t like,” Hendrix had said at the height of the pair’s perceived rivalry. “Sometimes the notes might sound like [we’re alike], but it’s a completely different scene between those notes.
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“First they do that [compare him to Clapton], and then they expect me to play blues exclusively. We just say we don’t want to play blues all the time – we just don’t feel like it all the time. You see, there are other things we can play too, nice songs or different things.”
Clearly, Hendrix didn’t think of himself and Clapton as similar players, but that’s not to say we didn’t rate his ‘rival’. After that Cream gig, the pair remained friends, and Hendrix never held back in dishing out praise.
“But as far as the blues scene goes, some of the things that Albert King and Eric Clapton do are very good,” he continued in his Jazz & Pop interview, which was re-published in the November 1991 issue of Guitar World.
“I don’t have any favorites. It’s very hard because there are so many different styles, and it’s so bad to put everybody in the same bag. I like to listen to anybody, so long as they don’t bore me. I tend towards the blues as far as guitar players are concerned.”
The ‘competition’ was healthy, and both players left a lasting impact on one another. Clapton once credited Hendrix with influencing his decision to turn to the Stratocaster.
Slowhand even purchased a rare left-handed Strat as a gift for Hendrix in 1970. As fate would have it, he never got the chance to give it to the American guitarist, who died the night it was going to be presented.
Hendrix and Clapton never let the forced rivalry get between them. Instead, it helped them both hit new heights.
