Eric Clapton Tries Out Guitars at Home and Talks About the Beatles, Cream, and His Musical Roots

“Brown­ie” Fend­er Stra­to­cast­er:

Eric Clap­ton recent­ly allowed a cam­era crew into his Lon­don home for an inti­mate talk. The pur­pose was to demon­strate a new series of high-priced, lim­it­ed-edi­tion repro­duc­tions of some of his most famous gui­tars, which will soon go on sale to ben­e­fit his Cross­roads Cen­tre in Antigua. But as Rolling Stone not­ed in a recent online piece, the con­ver­sa­tion went much deep­er.

In the video above, Clap­ton tries out a repli­ca of an ear­ly sun­burst Fend­er Stra­to­cast­er, nick­named “Brown­ie,” that he pur­chased in 1967 and played with Derek and the Domi­noes. The orig­i­nal gui­tar, which had a heav­i­ly worn maple neck that Clap­ton attached to a Fend­er Tele­cast­er body dur­ing his days with Blind Faith, was sold at auc­tion in 1999 for $497,500. The repli­cas were made by the Fend­er Cus­tom Shop and will sell for $15,000. In the video, Clap­ton plugs the gui­tar into a 1950s-era Fend­er “Tweed Twin” ampli­fi­er and tries it out, play­ing a few blues lines and rem­i­nisc­ing about his ear­ly Stra­to­cast­er-play­ing influ­ences: Bud­dy Hol­ly, Bud­dy Guy and Jimi Hen­drix.

Mar­tin 000–28 and 000–45:

Above, Clap­ton tries out a pair of acoustic gui­tars made in his hon­or by Mar­tin & Co. He talks about his ear­ly infat­u­a­tion with Mar­tin gui­tars, which he devel­oped after hear­ing oth­er musi­cians talk about them and after see­ing footage of Big Bill Broonzy play­ing the 000–28 mod­el. Unlike the oth­er “Cross­roads Col­lec­tion” gui­tars, the Mar­tins were appar­ent­ly not mod­eled after indi­vid­ual gui­tars Clap­ton once played, but were instead hand­made to his spec­i­fi­ca­tions. The Cross­roads mod­el 000–28 will sell for $6,000 and the 000–48 will be offered in two edi­tions made with dif­fer­ent mate­ri­als, one for $13,000 and the oth­er for $50,000.

“Lucy” Gib­son Les Paul:

Per­haps the most inter­est­ing of the three videos involves a gui­tar Clap­ton is not usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with: a Gib­son Les Paul. The gui­tar is a repro­duc­tion of a heav­i­ly worn 1957 cher­ry-red gui­tar Clap­ton bought in about 1967, when he was tour­ing Amer­i­ca with Cream. He gave the gui­tar to George Har­ri­son of the Bea­t­les, who nick­named it “Lucy” and played it on the White Album and Let it Be. When Clap­ton accept­ed Har­rison’s request to play lead gui­tar on the record­ing of “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps,” he played it on Lucy. In the video, Clap­ton rem­i­nisces about the Bea­t­les ses­sion and talks about the ampli­fi­er he used dur­ing his days with John May­al­l’s Blues­break­ers and the ones he used after­wards. Har­ri­son briefly loaned the orig­i­nal Lucy Les Paul back to Clap­ton, who played it dur­ing his famous Rain­bow Con­cert in 1973, but the gui­tar still belongs to the Har­ri­son estate. The Gib­son-made repli­cas will sell for $15,000 each.

via Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Eric Clap­ton Demon­strates the Ele­ments of His Sound

Eric Clap­ton and Steve Win­wood Join Forces at the His­toric Blind Faith Con­cert in Hyde Park, 1969


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