Eric Clapton has found new motivation in his protest songs

Eric Clapton said he found new inspiration in the idea of ​​writing the protest songs that caused backlash and made him lose friends.

He said he hadn’t felt ‘socially involved’ with his own performances in recent years, and his objection to coronavirus measures – expressed in Van Morrison’s collaborations ‘Stand and Deliver’ and ‘This Has Gotta Stop” – helped him find the motivation that was “dormant”.

In a new interview with the Real Music Observer (video below), Clapton said his “career was almost gone anyway” when he found new inspiration in the global vaccination process. “I heard Van was sticking to the metrics, and I thought, ‘Why isn’t anyone else doing this?'” he recalled. “And we come back – I’ve known him since we were kids [so] I contacted him [and] said, ‘What do you think? What is going on?’ And he said, ‘I’m just objecting, really. But it looks like we’re not even allowed to do that. And no one else does.

The conversation led to their collaborations — including “The Rebels,” a revamp of “Where Have All the Rebels Gone?” by Morrison. — but Clapton found himself taking the concept of protest further after talking to other musicians. “I was a little mystified because I seemed like the only person who thought it was an exciting idea or even appropriate with what was going on,” he explained, “and that pissed me off even more. dare… I’m cut from the cloth where if you tell me I can’t do something, I really want to know why I can’t do it.

He described the resulting backlash as “like I had a wall built around me,” but added: “I made concessions; I deleted or edited the lines a bit just to appease those I really didn’t want to hurt… And needless to say my family and friends, they got scared, and I think they got scared on my behalf . He said he had come to believe there was a larger theme of controlling people’s lives, summed up in the concept “you shall own nothing and you shall be happy”, which he said was in under development for some time. He explored the argument in his recent song “Heart of a Child.”

“And that made me even more resolute,” he continued. “In the UK we have the BBC, and it was an unbiased commentary on world affairs and affairs of state. And suddenly it was completely one-sided to follow orders and obey. And I felt really motivated, musically. It sparked something that was really dormant. I was just playing live gigs into lockdown not really being socially involved in any way. He said, “I a tool, I have a calling and I can use it, so I took the plunge and started writing.

Watch Eric Clapton on the “Real Music Observer”