Eric Clapton Quit The Yardbirds Because He Only Wanted to Play ‘Pure and Sincere and Uncorrupted Music’

In the music industry, Eric Clapton is regarded as one of the most famous guitarists in history. In addition to being a solo artist, Clapton has performed in multiple bands including the Yardbirds. However, Clapton left the Yardbirds because he disagreed with the band’s style of music.

Eric Clapton joined the Yardbirds

Keith Relf, Paul Samwell-Smith, Top Topham, Jim McCarty, and Chris Dreja are the founding members of the Yardbirds.

After finding some early success, Topham did not fit the band as a guitarist.

“A nice kid, he really wasn’t up to it,” McCarty said in Bob Spitz’s Led Zeppelin: The Biography.

On top of that, his parents did not want him to work in a band full-time due to his age.

Because of this, Topham left the band and the Yardbirds needed to find a replacement guitarist. Giorgio Gomelsky, the band’s manager, reached out to Clapton.

“I asked Eric Clapton to join,” Gomelsky said in Led Zeppelin: The Biography.

The guitarist quit the Yardbirds

While Clapton joined the Yardbirds in the band’s early days in 1963, he did not remain with the band for a long time.

As the Yardbirds began to find mainstream success, Clapton disagreed with the type of music the group was putting out.

“He was obsessed with the blues,” Jimmy Page said in Led Zeppelin: The Biography, “with wanting to sound really authentic.”

Clapton shared his thoughts in the biography, saying, “I have to play what I believe is pure and sincere and uncorrupted music.”

According to Spitz, once the band “selected the catchy ‘For Your Love’ instead of a purer blues cover like Otis Redding’s ‘One and Only Man’ for their break-out single,” Clapton quit the Yardbirds.

What Jim McCarty thinks about Eric Clapton

While Clapton did not stay in the Yardbirds for as long as some of the other members, he still managed to make an impression on the band and his peers in the music industry during that time.

In an interview with azcentral.com, McCarty shared what it was like working with Clapton while they were both members of the Yardbirds.

“He was a very dedicated player, always very enthusiastic about playing blues. He was very keen about how he looked, very fashion conscious. When I first met him I thought he was a bit — you know, he was quite keen on himself, so to speak,” McCarty said.

He continued, “But I got to like him and we had a good relationship — a jokey, fun relationship, in a way. But he’s the sort of person that would be very intense as a friend for a while and then he’d move on and you wouldn’t see him.”