Best Eric Clapton Songs To Learn On Guitar

Even for non-players, Eric Clapton has become synonymous with the electric – here, we pick just 20 examples of Slowhand’s fretwork from his varied career to serve as reminders of his extraordinary talent.

Never mind what he did with The Yardbirds, Bluesbreakers, Cream, Blind Faith and Derek And The Dominos – 2020 marks the 50th anniversary of Eric Clapton as a

Artist, and for most of this prolific musical career, the blues-obsessed ist from Surrey has been a household name. As a ist, he began as an imitator who paid his dues to become an influencer. Eventually, he became one of a select few whose impact and influence has continued across the generations in the role of innovator, comeback kid and now, elder statesman.

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Along the way, he’s been virtually the most iconic player of many different models of instrument, including the Strat, the Les Paul and the SG; he’s also counted among them for the 335, the Firebird and the Martin acoustic. And it’s not just his playing that’s earned him this status. With the wah and Marshall, he’s been an effects and amp innovator and with his creation of ‘woman’ tone, a sonic pathfinder, too.

So with an avalanche of music to choose from, we present a selection of 20 fine examples of his six-string genius in the hope that anyone who doesn’t yet know what the fuss was all about can hear for themselves why, among many other achievements, Clapton became the only three-time inductee in the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.

EC joined The Band during their final concert to cover this Bobby Bland Texas shuffle as part of the 1976 concert film

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 and turned in an amazing performance that illustrated two important lessons for ists. The first was economy, both in terms of the energetic, stinging licks he wrings from his Strat and the elegant precision of his fingers along the fretboard. The second was, put your strap on properly. Luckily, Robbie Robertson proved an able deputy when put on the spot and in any case, Eric’s had decided to make its leap at the beginning of the four bars of silence in the turnaround. Even his straps have great timing.

At The Band’s Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame induction in 1994, Clapton said that hearing them was one of the factors that had prompted him to break up Cream

 is perhaps more intriguing, given that Clapton is backed by Nile Rodgers, Bernard Edwards and Tony Thompson (the last time the three Chic men played together). Though it’s predictably stiffer-limbed than the original, EC does an admirable job of capturing Hendrix’s freeflowing spirit in the solo, and adds a lovely feedback jam at the end that references

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The ill-starred Blind Faith were saddled with the ‘supergroup’ tag from the off, and piled pressure on themselves by making their lacklustre live debut in front of 100, 000-plus fans at Hyde Park. They only managed a single album before splitting up; but at least it contained hints of their ambition and what might have been. This Steve Winwood composition leans heavily on its hypnotic double-tracked Zeppelin-esque loping riff, but its solo, which EC likely played on his ’63 ES-335, channels the improvisational brilliance he had painstakingly developed with Cream into a more disciplined, storytelling style. Then at the end, in true 70s style, they just go mad and overdub loads of solos for the hell of it.

For Blind Faith’s infamous Hyde Park debut, Clapton played a confusing-looking hybrid instrument – a modified 1969 Sunburst Telecaster with the neck from his famous ‘Brownie’ Stratocaster

Eric’s rise was so meteoric, he’d eventually have an asteroid – Minor Planet 4305 Clapton – named after him. The truth is, for many EC purists, most of this list could come from a single album:

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, the 1966 mother lode of British electric blues that saw the 21-year-old ist redefine the horizons of electric- tone and intensity. On John Mayall’s horn-soaked slow-blues lament,

, Clapton distils all of his passion, energy and fire into a minute-or-so of pure lightning: announcing his presence with a couple of angry knocks on the door, he proceeds to wring the neck of his Les Paul to send staccato flurries of angry vibrato, mazy pentatonics and frantic bends through his fully cranked 2×12 Marshall combo, before finishing with a definitive, crunching flourish that practically shouts: “Have that!”

According to blues-rock great Joe Bonamassa, Clapton’s long-lost ‘Beano’ Les Paul currently resides in a collection on the East Coast of the US – and “it’s a ’59, not a ’60”

Eric Clapton 'struggles To Play Guitar'

Alas, this wah workout from Stephen Stills’ solo debut doesn’t feature both Hendrix and Clapton on the same track; Jimi only played on

From the same record. Eric’s contribution is timeless, nonetheless: armed with one of his spikiest recorded Strat tones, he elevates Stills’ grinding Firebird riffery with a string-raking, off-the-cuff masterclass in scene-stealing punctuated with creative use of doublestops and his trademark repeated triplet licks.

: “I bumped into Eric one evening, and he came by and the night degenerated into an endless jam of The Champs’

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. Then we did the album track in the studio. His solo was one take and he got a fabulous sound. His greatest solo? It inspired me.”

In terms of Clapton’s approach to soloing, this 1970 cover of the Billy Myles/Freddie King classic is a fascinating halfway house between the virtuoso channeller of influences he started out as with the Bluesbreakers and the fluid vocabulary of instantly recognisable licks he developed when he embraced the Strat as a lead instrument. With sumptuously dynamic backing and an extended slide solo from Duane Allman, the scene is set for one of Clapton’s finest moments: his follow-on solo (at 4:08) is a blazing example of how he’s able to effortlessly adapt his playing style to the idiosyncrasies of the tone he’s using, in this case from his ‘Brownie’ Stratocaster into a tweed Fender Deluxe on 10. If you’re going to play along, make sure your Fender’s set up well beforehand – the solo’s many whole-tone-or-more bends go way beyond the string-choking limits of most Strats. 

 record, but comes to life in this close-to-15-minute version recorded at the Fillmore East in 1970. Opening with a frantic, edge-of-feedback wah-based funk workout (that incidentally sounds a lot like

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 by the Stone Roses, of all things), the band quickly gets the song out of the way before embarking on an unrestrained odyssey that takes in inventive chordwork, Santana-esque pull-off sections, slide-like single-string melody lines and more, with the major-key setting a chance for Eric to explore ideas beyond the boundaries of blues-rock.

 has a bonus disc with a number of BBC sessions and live recordings that capture the band in full flight during EC’s all-too-brief tenure. This gnarly recording of a cover of T-Bone Walker’s blues standard from London’s Flamingo Club in 1966 joins the action with the band mid-flow and Clapton mid-solo, with the song’s non-standard chord progression seemingly spurring the 21-year-old’s lead playing into another realm of sophistication in terms of phrasing, tone, intensity, control, solo construction, creativity and musicality. The ‘Clapton Is God’ graffiti was scrawled for a reason… and this recording pretty much sums it up.

Oklahoma’s J.J. Cale, architect of the laid-back Tulsa Sound, fascinated Clapton throughout his solo years, with the two eventually collaborating on the Grammy Award-winning 2006 album

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 and proved to be right in EC’s wheelhouse; Eric’s version stuck close to the original, adding layers of sparse but perfectly measured lines and a classy, rhythmic solo section with an extra bump of second for good measure.

: “The first time I heard it on my car radio I just drove off to the side of the road. Because I’d never heard anything of my own on the radio before…”

 from 1934, which Buddy Guy and Junior Wells had covered. Young producer Felix Pappalardi heard Cream’s 4/4 reworking, rewrote the lyrics together with his wife and persuaded Clapton to come back into the studio and re-record his vocal (his first for the band). Clapton was initially reticent. “[Pappalardi] let me play a solo which was… almost like an unspoken deal that if I gave in and played on this kind of pop song, I could play an Albert King solo.” Deliberately derivative though the lead playing may have been – sections of it are note-for-note lifts of Albert King’s

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Clapton is thought to have used a newly acquired triple-pickup Les Paul Custom through a Twin for the rhythm on the track and his SG for the lead overdubs

) back in 1960; an infectiously melodic instrumental with King’s biting, staccato style and a fluid doublestop section that turned the tune inside out. In his autobiography, Clapton described hearing the song for the first time as “similar to what I imagine I might feel if I were to meet an alien from outer space. It simply blew my mind.” When it came time to record his own take in 1966 with the Bluesbreakers (aka the Blues Breakers), everything about it had been supercharged: from the Les Paul-through-Marshall-combo’s

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