from the LP Disraeli Gears, ATCO Records, 1967Developed by audio geeks at Vox in 1966, the wah wah guitar pedal created one of the most iconic sounds associated with rock music over the last 40 years, and this song was many people’s introduction to the wonderfully warped effects that said pedal could create; in fact, Clapton & crew barely beat Hendrix to the punch, releasing this single a mere day before Jimi’s own, wah wah-drenched “Burning of the Midnight Lamp” dropped. There is definitely some kind of watery vibe that a wah wah pedal imbues, that matches effortlessly here with artist Martin Sharp’s Odyssey-on-acid prose about “tiny purple fishes” and “crimson shells”, riding along the descending chord progression from “Summer in the City”. I only mention this because, well, I feel like you’d be hard pressed to find many songs Clapton wrote that aren’t direct variations on some other (typically blues) song---I know, I know, every guitarist on the planet is guilty of this crime, often many times over, but most of the great players (which I do concede Clapton is among) also develop their own signature sound, atmosphere, even creating songs or entire albums which truly sound like they dropped out of the sky. People write of Clapton’s “distinctive style”, but I don’t see/hear it beyond the early, more experimental days. Now, I’m not saying the concept of sui generis always bests incredible talent & remixing ability, but a little of both is nice; excepting for his tenures in Cream and Blind Faith, Clapton has just always seemed terribly boring and trite to me, and his own biography certainly doesn’t help, coming off like an insecure prodigy consumed with some random trans-Atlantic sense of white guilt, bent on using enough drugs & alcohol and fucking up his life enough to feel acceptably penitent for all the black musicians he’d ripped off. Is the guy an incredible guitarist, for sure, but for me, the late ‘60s were his apex, and most of what’s come after isn’t terribly interesting. I can already hear the bile churning in people’s stomachs, but that’s how I feel, c’est le vie.
