Quotes By Eric Clapton

You can't mastermind everything. You'll go crazy. Just show up and play.

My driving philosophy about making music is that you can reduce it all down to one note if that note is played with the right kind of sincerity.

Every time you pick up your guitar to play, play as if it's the last time.

During the pause while I was changing my string, the frenzied audience would often break into a slow handclap, inspiring Giorgio to dream up the nickname of "Slow hand" Clapton.

Let It Grow," and it was several years before I realized that I had totally ripped off "Stairway to Heaven," the famous Zeppelin anthem, a cruel justice seeing as how I'd always been such a severe critic of theirs.

I had no idea how to do that, because I was either above or below everybody. I was either towering above as Clapton the guitar virtuoso, or cringing on the floor, because if you took away my guitar and my musical career, then I was nothing.

Musically I was fed up with the virtuoso thing. Our gigs had become nothing more than an excuse for us to show off as individuals, and any sense of unity we might have had when we started seemed to have gone out the window.

Music will always find its way to us, with or without business, politics, religion, or any other bullshit attached. Music survives everything, and like God, it is always present. It needs no help, and suffers no hindrance.

When he first came to England, you know English people have a very big thing towards a spade. They really love that magic thing, the sexual thing. They all fall for that sort of thing. Everybody and his brother in England still sort of think that spades have big dicks. And Jimi came over and exploited that to the limit, the fucking tee. Everybody fell for it. Shit. I fell for it. After a while I began to suspect it.

I thought that young bands like Oasis had learned from our mistakes. Instead, they are irresponsible and arrogant. They act like hooligans. They are a load of shit to me.

I was so ashamed of who I was, a kind of semi-racist, which didn't make sense.

Do we have any foreigners in the audience tonight? If so, please put up your hands. So where are you? Well, wherever you are, I think you should all just leave. Not just leave the hall, leave our country. I don't want you here, in the room or in my country. Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the w*gs out. Get the c**ns out. Keep Britain white. Listen to me, man! I think we should send them all back.

We didn't really have a band with Cream. We rarely played as an ensemble; we were three virtuosos, all of us soloing all the time.

My dedication to my music has driven everyone away. I've had girlfriends, but I always end up on my own. I don't particularly like it, but I don't see a way 'round it.

When you're onstage with an electric band going through a massive P.A. system, it's very artificial. You can't really hear your own voice as it comes out of your mouth.

It is painful to relive things that have caused emotional crises or whatever and find ways to express that musically.

I did play a lot of fingerstyle when I first started playing. I could never really find the right combination of flatpick or fingerpick, so playing fingerstyle is really the easiest way - though it's quite strenuous on the fingertips.

I never met Johnny Rotten, and I didn't want to meet Johnny Rotten.

I'm not a big fan of lead vocalists, people who sing but don't play. I never wanted to be in a band where the guy who was up front just sang. I've always thought it better when one of the musicians sings, like Steve Winwood.

I think I deliberately sold out a couple of times. I picked the songs that I thought would do well in the marketplace, even though I didn't really love the song.