Eric Clapton Said The Beatles Were Like One Person: ‘It Was an Odd Phenomenon’

Eric Clapton first crossed paths with The Beatles during his time with The Yardbirds. He’d already established himself as a blues missionary, so their presence wasn’t intimidating. However, Clapton couldn’t ignore what an odd phenomenon the group was in those days.

Eric Clapton was a lone wolf when he first crossed paths with The Beatles

When Clapton first met The Beatles, he’d already become a proficient guitar player and a free spirit, moving from act to act. In the early days of his career, he busked on the streets of London and joined other artists on various projects. In 1963, he joined The Yardbirds. Eventually, the group landed on the same bill as The Beatles, who were beginning to experience Beatlemania.

In Martin Scorsese’s documentary, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, Clapton said he was “kind of this lone wolf without any direction.” However, that doesn’t mean The Beatles intimidated him when he first saw them.

Clapton said The Beatles were like one person

The guitarist was a little shocked when he first saw The Beatles. Clapton thought they were a phenomenon. He was also initially suspicious of them.

He added, “I saw The Beatles play at the Hammersmith Odeon when I was at bottom of the bill in the Yardbirds. This band was like a-they were like a single person. It was an odd phenomenon, in fact, that they seemed to move together and think together. It was almost like a little family unit.

“I was very, very suspicious about what they were up to. But when I saw them play, I mean, I was overwhelmed by their gift. Each one of them seemed to be very well endowed with their own musical capacity. But the sad part was that no one listened to them [Laughs] and that their audience, which they had cultivated, I suppose, they were 12-year-old girls.

“He [George Harrison] was clearly an innovator. George, to me, was taking certain elements of R&B and rock and rockabilly and creating something unique. They were very generous to everybody. They took time to come and take to everybody. I didn’t feel threatened at all because I had quite a lot of self-confidence going in my concept of myself as being this sort of blues missionary, as it were. I wasn’t looking for any favors from anybody.”

Clapton connected with George the most

Clapton connected with George the most out of all The Beatles. In Scorsese’s documentary, he continued to explain that George recognized him as an equal because Clapton had a “level of proficiency even then that he saw as being fairly unique too.”

“George chose to move into a house in Esher, and Esher is maybe eight miles north of where I was born,” Clapton said. “We became friends, and I would go and visit them there, and something grew out of the music and the kind of people we were.”

Clapton thinks George envied that he was a lone wolf.

“I think we shared a lot of tastes too, in superficial things, cars or clothes, and women obviously,” Clapton explained, alluding to having been married to the same woman, Pattie Boyd. “But I think what George might have liked about me was the fact that I was a kind of free agent.

“And I think, if anything, he may have already been wondering about whether he was in the right place being in a group. Because the group politic is a tricky one. There was a lot about what he had going, which I envied, and there was a lot about what I had going that he envied.”

Clapton said one of the good things about being George’s friend was that it was like “basking in the sunshine of this immense creativity.”

Eventually, once The Beatles split, George became just as much of a lone wolf as Clapton. Although they sometimes came together as a pack to work on various projects. Fans loved it when they did.