It happened one night in 1969 at Madison Square Garden in New York City – when one of the world’s most celebrated guitar players picked up a new trick from a young hotshot who was still in his teens.
Eric Clapton was on tour with Blind Faith, the supergroup also featuring Steve Winwood (ex-Traffic) on keyboards and vocals, Ric Grech (ex-Family) on bass guitar and Clapton’s former Cream bandmate Ginger Baker on drums.
The support acts on this tour were American duo Delaney & Bonnie, Irish guitar hero Rory Gallagher’s power trio Taste, and British blues-rock quartet Free.
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Simon Kirke was the drummer in Free alongside singer Paul Rodgers, bassist Andy Fraser and guitarist Paul Kossoff. And as Kirke now tells MusicRadar, that Madison Square Garden show was memorable not only for the meeting between two great guitarists but also a frostier encounter between two great drummers.
“I’ll never forget it,” Kirke says. “It was the end of the Blind Faith and Free tour, and Madison Square Garden was the final show.
“I think Eric had been watching us from the wings. We did about fourteen or fifteen shows with them. Clapton is quite a shy guy, believe it or not. But finally he sent a roadie to our dressing room to say, ‘Is it all right if if I come in and say hello to Paul?’”
Clapton was referring to Paul Kossoff, not Paul Rodgers.
Kirke continues: “So, Eric Clapton walks into our dressing room and says to Paul, ‘Show me how you do that vibrato.’ Paul says, ‘You got to be kidding me!’ This is one of the greatest guitarists ever, and he’s asking an 18-year-old kid to show him how he does what he does.”
For his part, Kirke was equally surprised when Blind Faith’s drummer walked into Free’s dressing room after Clapton.
“Ginger Baker was right behind him,” Kirke says. “I thought, ‘I’ve got to talk to him!’ So when he walked in, I said, ‘Oh, lovely to meet you, Ginger.’ I stuck my hand out and it just hung there. Ginger was all morose.
“I said something like, ‘What what do you use, calfskin heads or plastic heads?’ Some stupid drummer-to-drummer shit. And he didn’t even acknowledge me. I thought, ‘Well, fuck you then!’ Miserable bastard he was.”
In spite of that, Kirke does offer something in Baker’s defence.
“Quite honestly, Ginger had been saving the show every night. He did a ten- or fifteen-minute drum solo because Blind Faith only had about 45 minutes of material, and a big part of that was a twenty-minute version of Crossroads.
“So Ginger saved the night every night, and he was still very vibrant. He did drugs, but they hadn’t overtaken him at that point.”
Sadly, Paul Kossoff would be overcome by a drug problem in his tragically short life. The guitarist was just 25 years old when he died on 19 March 1976 on a flight from Los Angeles to New York.
Kossoff recorded six studio albums with Free, from 1969 debut Tons Of Sobs through to 1973 finale Heartbreaker. The most famous and influential of those albums is 1970’s Fire And Water, which features the classic hit single All Right Now.
In Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time, Paul Kossoff was placed at No 51. Rolling Stone critic Dave Fricke said of Kossoff: “He is admired by guitarists for the economy of his lines and the purity of his tone. He made his presence felt by what he did not play, and the exquisite way he sculpted what he did.”
Simon Kirke tells MusicRadar that Kossoff was badly affected by the period in the early ’70s when Paul Rodgers briefly abandoned Free.
“We were a band of brothers,” he says. “So when Free broke up for the first time, and Paul Rodgers went his own way, that really hurt Paul Kossoff. It tore him up because he adored Paul, and Koss was never the same after that.”
He adds: “I guess at the time we didn’t really know how good Koss was because we were so young. I knew that he was good. I just didn’t realise how good he was until I started playing guitar myself, and until a few years down the road after he passed away, when I began to listen to him again and again.”
It is now 50 years since Paul Kossoff died, but Simon Kirke still feels that loss.
“I’m getting all emotional now,” Kirke says. “The thing about Koss was he only had four or five years before the drugs came in and started eroding his talent. He passed at the age of 25 – but at his peak he knocked everyone sideways with his playing.”
