Clapton and Beck: The Long and Winding Road

ON A BITTERLY COLD MORNING IN THE FIRST WEEK of the new year, Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck are stretched out on a pair of sofas in front of a crackling fire in the living room of Beck’s country home in Wadhurst, England, a Tudor house built in 1591 and stripped back to its original timbers inside and out. The guitarists warm themselves with hot tea and toasted cheese sandwiches as they talk and fire licks at each other on instruments from Beck’s collection. Beck plays some T-Bone Walker and a piece of Jimi Hendrix’s “Foxey Lady” on a white Stratocaster; Clapton jumps in with stinging runs on a gorgeously weathered 1954 Telecaster.

Clapton, 64, and Beck, 65 -two of the most revolutionary and influential guitarists in rock & roll — are throwing song ideas around for their historic first-ever co-headlining tour, six February shows in London, New York and Canada. Clapton suggests a Charles Mingus piece, “Self-Portrait in Three Colors,” and blues guitarist Albert Collins’ instrumental “Sno-Cone.” Beck — whose new album, Emotion is Commotion, veers from his trademark jazz-rock snarl to a majestic solo-guitar-and-orchestra treatment of the aria “Nessun Donna,” from Giacomo Puccini’s opera Turandot — mentions the funky guitar player Lonnie Mack, then plays the hook from Mack’s 1963 single “Wham!”

As Beck and Clapton pick and chat, other names and memories come up from the 1960s, when the two were already Britain’s first guitar superstars yet only knew each other from a distance, by records and reputations. Beck describes the first time he saw Clapton with Cream, at the Marquee in London in 1966: “It was three blokes in paradise, making great music. They were like a big machine coming at you.” Clapton recalls his deep immediate connection with Hendrix, after they first played together in the fall of ’66: “I found it affirming to meet someone else who was as passionate about blues as I was, who was absolutely on the same path.” And for one lively stretch, Beck and Clapton get into their strange connected history with the Yardbirds, the British psychedelic-R&B band that was ground zero for British guitar heroism. In just six years, the group boasted Clapton, Beck and Jimmy Page as lead guitarist, in that order.