I was only made aware of this speech by Eric Clapton at a 1976 gig in Birmingham, UK, the other day, but It’s truly disgusting. Here’s a relatively short sample (quoted from Rebel Rock by J. Street (1986) and sourced from New Musical Express, Melody Maker, The Guardian and The Times):

Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white. I used to be into dope, now I’m into racism. It’s much heavier, man. Fucking wogs, man. Fucking Saudis taking over London. Bastard wogs. Britain is becoming overcrowded and Enoch will stop it and send them all back.

It goes on for a lot longer than that - the entire speech can be heard in the animated YouTube clip below. The “Enoch” Clapton is referring to is the notorious English politician Enoch Powell who in 1968 made the infamous “Rivers of Blood” speech, also in Brimingham. How Clapton didn’t get crucified at the time in the popular press is beyond me, as is the fact that the rest of the concert continued as normal, with no rioting or no bottling. The activist group Rock Against Racism was set up as a direct response to these remarks. Clapton has never properly apologised  - how does he still get away with receiving so much praise and acclaim? Fuck Eric Clapton. 
 

 
Thanks to Joe Spencer for alerting me to this.

 
Farewell Concert is a documentation of Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker’s final concert performance together as Cream at the Royal Albert Hall on November 26, 1968. It was originally broadcast by the BBC in January of 1969. The film was directed by pioneering rockumentarian Tony Palmer.

Farewell Concert was always regarded as a bit shoddy due to the muddy sound, herky-jerky camera movement and the often out-of-sync editing. To say nothing of the annoying voice over and the fact that the whole thing consists of tight close-ups.

A new version of Farewell Concert was released in 2005 where the musical performance were shorn of the interviews and narration. Three songs were added and the audio was remixed to 5.1 DTS surround.

Embedding disabled, watch it on YouTube.

Eric Clapton at his grandmother’s house in Surrey, 1970
 
Eric Clapton explains some of the finer points of how he’s able to squeeze such amazing sounds out of his gee-tar, as Jack Bruce looks on. A four and a half minute master class on electric guitar.
 

 
Oh dear, who’s going to want to eat those grapes now?

(via This Is Not Porn)

 
There is an interesting article the New York Times about the fever caused by an upcoming charity auction of some of Eric Clapton’s guitars. “Fever” is the right word apparently, because the desire for these guitars (and other once celebrity-owned fetish items) seems to be somehow socially contagious:

Fortunately, social scientists have been hard at work on the answers. After conducting experiments and interviewing guitar players and collectors, they have just published papers analyzing “celebrity contagion” and “imitative magic,” not to mention “a dynamic cyclical model of fetishization appropriate to an age of mass-production.”

One of their conclusions is that the seemingly illogical yearning for a Clapton relic, even a pseudorelic, stems from an instinct crucial to surviving disasters like the Black Death: the belief that certain properties are contagious, either in a good or a bad way. Another conclusion is that the magical thinking chronicled in “primitive” tribes will affect bids for the Clapton guitars being auctioned at Bonhams in Midtown Manhattan.

Some bidders might rationalize their purchases as good investments, or as objects that are worth having just because they provide pleasant memories and mental associations of someone they admire. But those do not seem to be the chief reasons for buying celebrity memorabilia, according to a team of psychologists at Yale.

The researchers asked people how much they would like to buy objects that had been owned by different celebrities, including popular ones like George Clooney and pariahs like Saddam Hussein. People’s affection for the celebrity did not predict how much value they assigned to the memorabilia — apparently they were not buying it primarily for the pleasant associations.

Nor were they chiefly motivated by the prospect of a profit, as the researchers discovered when they tested people’s eagerness to acquire a celebrity possession that could not be resold. That restriction made people less interested in items owned by villains, but it did not seriously dampen their enthusiasm for relics from their idols.

The most important factor seemed to be the degree of “celebrity contagion.” The Yale team found that a sweater owned by a popular celebrity became more valuable to people if they learned it had actually been worn by their idol. But if the sweater had subsequently been cleaned and sterilized, it seemed less valuable to the fans, apparently because the celebrity’s essence had somehow been removed.

“Our results suggest that physical contact with a celebrity boosts the value of an object, so people will pay extra for a guitar that Eric Clapton played, or even held in his hands,” said Paul Bloom, who did the experiments at Yale along with George E. Newman and Gil Diesendruck.

As someone who was bitten—hard—by the collecting bug, I can certainly attest to the fact that you want that personal touch. And since there have also been various points in my life where I’ve had the money to indulge my mania, I can also tell you that a “collector”—if they’ve got the bank balance necessary to cover the cost—WILL blow it ALL on the right item. Been there, done THAT… and more than once, too.

Had I not gotten married, I’d have continued such behavior probably for the rest of my life. Once I got married, it became harder to justify why I needed to spend $300 on yet another signed William Burroughs first edition! My wife beat the collector out of me!

Below, Derek & The Dominos performing “It’s Too Late” on The Johnny Cash Show in 1970:
 

 
George Harrison’s exotic soundtrack to swinging 60s cinematic head trip Wonderwall was the first solo Beatle project (that is if you don’t count Paul McCartney’s soundtrack to The Family Way, which was credited to The George Martin Orchestra). Wonderwall Music is all over the musical map—delightfully so—with songs ranging from classical Indian ragas to jaunty nostalgic-sounding numbers to proto-metal guitar freakouts. It’s a minor classic, I wish more people knew about it. I’ve long been an enthusiastic evangelist for this album, sticking tracks on mixed CDs and tapes for quite some time.

With Ringo Starr (under the pseudonym “Richie Snare”) and Eric Clapton (here credited as “Eddie Clayton) and some session musicians, Harrison recorded the “English” portion of Wonderwall Music in December 1967. The Indian musicians were recorded the following month in Bombay. Peter Tork from The Monkees plays an uncredited banjo part on the record. It was released on November 1, 1968, just a few weeks before the White Album, and was the first release on Apple Records.

There are a lot of great tracks on Wonderwall Music, but the one I want to highlight first is “Ski-ing” a two-minute long sonic SCREAMER wherein Eric Clapton comes up with the blueprint for the Buttlhole Surfer’s guitar sound back when Paul Leary was just a little kid.
 

 
“Greasy Legs”:
 

 
“Party Seacombe” (amazing!):
 

 
Another minor masterpiece with “Red Alady, Too”:
 

 
“Glass Box”:
 

 
The trailer for Wonderwall, directed by Joe Massot and starring Jane Birkin, Jack Magowran and Iain Quarrier.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Wonderwall: The Ultimate Sixties Flick?

Wonderwall is an unusual and beautiful psychedelic Sixties period piece that sees a scientist (Jack MacGowran) becoming obsessed by a gorgeous model who lives next door to him.

Wonderwall is probably the ultimate “swinging London” film and what a pedigree it has. The film stars the lovely Jane Birkin and featured Anita Pallenberg and Dutch design collective The Fool (who art directed the film and were well-know for their work with the Beatles) in cameo roles. The soundtrack was by George Harrison and featured Ringo Starr, Eric Clapton, some top classical Indian players in Bombay and an uncredited banjo performance by Monkee Peter Tork. There is one song called Ski-Ing that features one of the single most ferocious guitar riffs that Eric Clapton ever laid down and most of his biggest fans have never even heard it.

Made in 1968 by first time director Joe Massot (who would later direct the Led Zeppelin concert film The Song Remains the Same and work on the psychedelic western Zachariah with the Firesign Theatre), Wonderwall was released on DVD in an elaborate package by Rhino in 2004 that now goes for top dollar to collectors.

The stills and animated gifs here were nicked from the fantastic blog of Martin Klasch. Over and over again, I find myself using Google Images and landing on his site, which is a visual treasure trove. He’s got a great eye. Check it out.

Last Friday on Twitter, Yoko Ono announced that she’d answer questions tweeted to @yokoono on her website and mine was one of the ones she answered:

@RichardMetzger
Do you find that children ?