John Mayall Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton casts a long shadow in the annals of modern music. Released in 1966, it was dubbed “The Beano Album” to portray its transcendent qualities. The impact of its music was understated by the album cover, showing scruffy workingman players seated on a curb in front of a paint-splattered wall, an uncooperative Clapton reading the famous Beano comic book. Only his modified Beatle-bob coif, mutton-chop sideburns, fur coat, and Chelsea boots suggest any connection with the fashion-conscious London scene.
It’s all part of the album’s allure – something extraordinary packaged as ordinary, personifying the power and majesty of an art form springing from unlikely sources. “Transcendent” is an apt descriptor for Blues Breakers; it reimagined blues and rock, birthed a sound still with us today (perhaps more than ever) and launched a dozen related genres; from “Beano,” a sonic timeline reconciles hard rock, heavy metal, power pop, progressive and Southern rock with psychedelic and jazz-rock fusion, uniting players like Jimmy Page, Martin Barre, Joe Walsh, Duane Allman, and Al DiMeola. Like other groundbreaking influential works – Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue and John Coltrane’s Giant Steps come to mind – Beano was seen by its personnel as a routine date.
“We were just playing the stuff we were doing in clubs,” Clapton said. “The material was totally familiar to us and felt natural.”
However, pop culture and history hold a different view. “Clapton is God” graffiti covered walls in London and the legend of Slowhand began to grow. What began as a British guitar-driven expression of mainstream American blues evolved into an otherworldly style.
Clapton was barely 20 when he joined Bluesbreakers, but his musicianship had compelled John Mayall (12 years his senior) to recruit him for a new lineup. Raised on Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and Jerry Lee Lewis, Eric gravitated to blues after hearing Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee at age 10. His blues aspirations were nurtured with frequent trips to London from his rustic hometown of Ripley, partaking in a Bohemian lifestyle in coffee houses, where he met Long John Baldry, joined the burgeoning British blues movement, and absorbed the sounds of Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy, and Blind Willie Johnson. In ’61, he enrolled at Kingston School of Art, met guitarist/bassist Tom McGuinness (later of Manfred Mann) and played with him in The Roosters, covering a mix of blues and rock-and-roll tunes. During this period he fashioned a formidable lead-guitar style based on Freddie King, B.B. King, T-Bone Walker, Otis Rush, and Buddy Guy. He worked briefly with McGuinness in Casey Jones and the Engineers before joining The Yardbirds in October ’63. The R&B group secured a residency at London’s Crawdaddy Club (previously held by the Rolling Stones), recorded an album with Sonny Boy Williamson, landed a contract with EMI Columbia and built a strong following in the city, largely on EC’s guitar playing. In The Yardbirds, he earned the nickname “Slowhand,” alluding to the slow audience claps during his frequent string changes.
“Steppin’ Out” was Clapton’s instrumental showcase, a high point of his Bluesbreakers period, and a piece he played throughout his career. This excerpt (1:38) from the second solo – one of many EC phrases that raised the bar in blues-rock – demonstrates two dramatic sides of his blues style over a 12-bar blues in G. Sensitive to blues harmony, he renders lines that convey the resolving nature of the changes and exemplify his mixing of minor/major blues, pentatonic and related minor/major sounds. In the first two measures, EC milks the Bb “blue” note and cultivates a crying effect with a variety of string bends and phrasing variations. This is followed by a fiery two-bar flurry of double-timed notes comparable to his high-energy work with Cream.
A blues purist, Clapton departed when the band moved into pop with “For Your Love” (March ’65) and joined Bluesbreakers in April. Mayall, the bandleader, vocalist, and multi-instrumentalist, was a fixture on the London blues scene with two singles and a live album on Decca to his credit. He’d admired Clapton’s (and only Clapton’s) efforts with The Yardbirds, saying, “Eric was the first guitarist who had the elusive ‘it.’”
The short-lived combination proved one of the most-volatile and consequential partnerships of the era. From April to June, Clapton participated in a handful of sessions with Mayall (one with Bob Dylan) before leaving to take a vacation to Greece, where he was virtually held prisoner in a bar band before escaping back to England. He rejoined Bluesbreakers in October and by February ’66 was recording with Mayall and Champion Jack Dupree while also performing in London; “Primal Solos” and “Looking Back,” taped informally by Mayall at the Flamingo Club that March (with Jack Bruce on bass) were issued later as an “official bootleg.” Presaging “Beano,” they also hint at the Cream lineup to follow. EC’s incendiary playing also ignited “Have You Ever Loved a Woman,” “Hoochie Coochie Man” and “Stormy Monday” with lengthy, impassioned improvisations that capture him changing the blues-rock paradigm. Two months later, that intensity would be enshrined on “Have You Heard.”
March also saw the “Powerhouse session,” with Jack Bruce and Steve Winwood (later to join EC in Blind Faith) – a one-off studio date for Elektra’s What’s Shakin’ that yielded seminal performances of Clapton signature pieces “Steppin’ Out” and “Crossroads.” Clearly, a stew of excitement and innovation was simmering in British blues circles, and it reached a boiling point in May ’66 when Mayall, Clapton, bassist John McVie (Fleetwood Mac) and drummer Hughie Flint (Alexis Korner, Savoy Brown) entered Decca’s London studios for the sessions that led to “Beano.”
Engineer Gus Dudgeon remembered it well. As was customary, he positioned a microphone near Clapton’s speaker and was taken aback when EC turned up to gig levels (without headphones) then worked the amp to exploit nuances and controlled feedback, necessitating baffles and angling of the cabinet. The guitar nonetheless bled into room mics, lending an ambience to every track. The unorthodox setup was questioned initially, but its sound proved extraordinary.
Slow blues is a Slowhand specialty, explicit in “Double Crossing Time” and “Have You Heard.” The former was a slow-blues piece sardonically aimed at the departing Jack Bruce, who quit Bluesbreakers to join Manfred Mann. Clapton’s concise and colorful solo is a masterpiece of soulful phrasing and melodic invention – elements not lost to Jeff Beck on “Blues Deluxe,” which shares several commonalities. This section (1:12-1:45) is a case in point, employing melodic development, dramatic phrasing, rubato time, motivic recall of unison bends (which open the solo and are recalled later), varied bends, double-timed passages, and vocalesque speech rhythms to form a strong thematic statement. His solo lines are accompanied by a “woman-toned” second guitar supplying horn-like counterpoint riffs to the improvisations. Note the feedback sustain in measures 3-4, a harbinger, as rock got heavier with the advent of the Les Paul/Marshall combination.
Dudgeon, Clapton and producer Mike Vernon were in uncharted waters, setting new practices for rock-guitar recording. The repertoire consisted of blues covers – Otis Rush’s “All Your Love,” Freddie King’s “Hideaway,” Memphis Slim’s “Steppin’ Out,” Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say,” Mose Allison’s “Parchman Farm,” Little Walter’s “It Ain’t Right,” Robert Johnson’ “Ramblin’ On My Mind,” and Mayall originals “Little Girl,” “Another Man,” “Double Crossing Time” (penned with Clapton), “Key to Love,” and “Have You Heard.” Most of it was rendered as a live blues quartet (Mayall on Hammond organ and acoustic piano) with a few purposeful overdubs. Consider Clapton’s overlapped E7#9 guitar arpeggiations (1:01), double-lead solo and quote of the Beatles’ “Day Tripper” riff (3:32) in “What’d I Say,” interwoven bass-register riffs (with the “woman tone” sound) and solo licks throughout “Double Crossing Time,” and rhythm/riff guitar accompanying fills and lead lines in “All Your Love.” An overdubbed horn section (Alan Skidmore, John Almond, Derek Healey) added Motown/Stax-inspired riffs, shout choruses, sustained pads and chord punctuations to “Key to Love,” “Steppin’ Out,” and “Have You Heard,” along with jazzy solo sax flourishes to the latter.
Mayall’s harmonica/vocal pieces, “Another Man” and “Parchman Farm” provided contrast, with simpler arrangements typical of folk blues, while “Ramblin’” offered an unplanned intimate guitar/piano/vocal interpretation. The latter was EC’s lead-vocal debut; shy about his singing, he recorded it as a duet with Mayall in a separate session.
At the center of the storm was Clapton’s guitar, emphatic in the co-billing banner and featured copiously throughout. A potent improviser, he was masterful, re-telling the story of American blues with British flair, novel electric attitude, and a personal touch on his instrument.
Mayall, who wanted to capture the band’s live sound, strove for a “jazz perspective where there is improvisation, a long-running jam session and exploration of the music.” EC concurred, and delivered. In the process, they elevated standards overnight.
Clapton’s admiration for Freddie King was evident in his reinterpretation of “Hideaway.“ The trademark instrumental not only paid tribute to the blues master, but established a template for future Mayall guitarists Green and Taylor. This example from the fourth solo section (1:20) finds him elaborating on the unmistakable chord (E9) figures and parallel-sixth double stops that King made famous. Clapton’s variations are preceded by a winding triplet turnaround – a blues staple. He slightly alters the sixths, but retains King’s intriguing slurs and unpredictable delivery. The excerpt concludes with rhythmically displaced triplet riff and a series of articulated string bends. Clapton was the first modern rock guitarist to regularly exploit this advanced type of string bending.
Everyone but Mayall and Clapton must have been surprised when the album reached #6 in England that July and stayed on the charts for 17 weeks. Today, Blues Breakers maintains its supremacy on countless playlists. When Eddie Van Halen and Brian May collaborated on the 1983 EP Star Fleet, they chose to spar and trade improvisations over the 13-minute “Blues Breaker,” a tribute instrumental celebrating the powerful effect Clapton had on them and, by extrapolation, succeeding generation(s). For anyone interested in how blues informed hard rock, the album is revelatory essential listening. It was the bridge – the newest expression of a tradition and the beginning of a dynasty.
THE BLUESBREAKERS GUITAR SOUND
By the time Blues Breakers was released, Clapton was assembling Cream with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. His successors in Bluesbreakers, Peter Green and Mick Taylor, both used sunburst Les Paul Standards and Marshall amps, extending the album’s influence. The legacy continued with Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, then into the modern era with Carlos Santana, Paul Kossoff, Dickey Betts, Ronnie Montrose, Neal Schon, Gary Moore, Steve Lukather, and Slash. The mating of Les Pauls and Marshalls produced sonic offspring that define much of hard rock and metal to the present.
Clapton acquired his iconic ’Burst between April and June of ’65. But, for his first dates with Mayall (April 24 for the live BBC broadcast of “Saturday Club”), he favored the Telecaster from his Yardbirds days and was photographed with it again on May 30 at the Kirklevington Country Club, in Yorkshire. He appeared with the ’Burst (likely for the first time) at the Ricky Tick club in Guildford, Surrey, on June 4. In later June, he played it on Mayall’s Immediate sessions (“Bernard Jenkins,” “Lonely Years”) and duets with Jimmy Page (since compiled on Blues Anytime: An Anthology of British Blues). Clapton’s ’Burst was nearly the guitar that wasn’t; a Freddie King fanatic, he scoured London shops until finding Les Paul similar to King’s, later telling Beat Instrumental that he’d purchased it “almost new” from Lew Davis’ shop in Charing Cross Road. However, it wasn’t the well-worn goldtop with P-90 pickups seen on Freddy King Sings the Blues; through happenstance, it was a newer sunburst version with humbuckers. Clapton replaced the tuners with Grover Rotomatics and removed the pickup covers, which he claimed improved the sound – and revealed double-white neck and double-black bridge bobbins. Experts differ as to whether it was a 1960 model (documented by Robb Lawrence in The Les Paul Legacy) or ’59. In any case, the effect was sweepingly influential. A year later, Beck was using a ’Burst with The Yardbirds on Roger the Engineer, and by ’67, Mike Bloomfield played one with Electric Flag. The Beano ’Burst was stolen in late ’66 and replaced by the famous SG given a psychedelic paint job by The Fool. In 2011, Gibson offered the Beano ’Burst as a VOS Custom Shop model with ’60 specs.
To produce the final sonic refinement of increased tube overdrive and sustain, EC mated his ’Burst to Marshall amps, deviating from the beat-group norm of Vox amps used with the Yardbirds, and turned to a Marshall 50-watt model 1962 (second series) combo with two 12″ Celestion speakers and GZ34/KT-66 tubes, likely purchased from Jim’s Hanwell shop in November ’65. By mid ’66, Marshall stacks became the standard for rock groups, and the combo fell into obscurity.
This article originally appeared in VG’s January 2024 issue. All copyrights are by the author and Vintage Guitar magazine. Unauthorized replication or use is strictly prohibited.
