Blues Legend Eric Clapton Reveals His Greatest Musical Challenge
Eric Clapton has admitted that there’s one blues legend whose songs he finds nearly impossible to master, despite his own impressive career spanning decades.
Even after countless attempts, Clapton confessed that covering Muddy Waters’ songs presents the biggest challenge. “I’ve found, funnily enough, that Muddy’s songs have been the hardest.”
“The hardest. Of all of them, I’ve chosen the hardest, which is Hoochie Coochie Man, and we’ve done it dozens of times, and to most people, it probably sounds all right, but to me, it just is not good enough, and so we do it again and again and again”, he explained.
Impressive history
As Far Out writes, Clapton’s struggle with Waters’ material is particularly interesting given his own impressive history of covering blues classics. Despite being able to masterfully interpret songs like Robert Johnson’s Crossroads during his time with Cream, Waters’ unique style and powerful voice have proven especially difficult to recreate.
Challenge
The challenge lies not just in the technical aspects of Waters’ music, but in capturing the raw emotion and passion that made him special. Even when Waters played acoustically, as on his album Folk Singer, he demonstrated a level of skill and feeling that Clapton admits is hard to match.
