Eric Clapton ignores pleas of "Stop embarassing yourself", releases anti vaccine song

[Greg McCoy]

This is a masterpiece of lyricism.

[Chris]

This may be your best thread title yet.

[Ken]

Hmm. Kinda reminds me of my divorce, so at least it's vague enough to have a broader appeal.

[BornToLooze]

How is Clapton like coffee?

[lespauled]

I don't know how I would feel if I got the side effects he got from the shot.

[Ghost.]

I don't know how I would feel if I got the side effects he got from the shot.

Yep and quite a few others too.

[Markus]

[Chris]

I don't know how I would feel if I got the side effects he got from the shot.

What Clapton says he is doing: "“I’ve been a rebel all my life, against tyranny and arrogant authority, which is what we have now,”"

What Clapton actually did: Took the second shot 6 weeks sooner than he was supposed to, on top of having a pre-existing condition.

I suffer with peripheral neuropathy and should never have gone near the needle.

Sounds like Clapton knew the risks and chose to accept them. It's not "passive rebellion", it's an old boomer who writes boring music for other old boomers taking advantage of an opportunity to make himself relevant again. He was anti-mask and anti-vaccine before this allegedly happened, so I don't believe him anyway.

He's also this guy, so he doesn't get the benefit of the doubt:

Do we have any foreigners in the audience tonight? If so, please put up your hands… So where are you? Well wherever you all are, I think you should all just leave. Not just leave the hall, leave our country … I don’t want you here, in the room or in my country. Listen to me, man! I think we should send them all back. Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white …

Fuck Eric Clapton. Shitty person, boring guitarist.

[Leah]

Wait what the fuck, regarding that last statement? What a piece of shit.

[Budda]

Wait what the fuck, regarding that last statement? What a piece of shit.

Iirc he's been pretty shitty for a long time, getting a pass as a legacy musician.

[Megametal7]

I never liked Clapton after reading his last statement I have more reason not to like him.

I am foreign in Britain been here 21years thats more years spent here than in my native country,Im going nowhere,he better accept that fact.

Fuck you Mr Clapton.

[Greg McCoy]

Iirc he's been pretty shitty for a long time, getting a pass as a legacy musician.

Partly that, but he mostly escaped unscathed from the whole "racist rant" thing due to technicalities.

No one will ever bust him on the racist rant, he lucked out on that one, it wasn't recorded and there was only one contemporaneous account of it in a news source, and it was a media critic, not an investigative journalist taping an interview. So while there is plenty of corroborating evidence for individual sentences like "Enoch Powell was right" or whatever, the full chunk of text is technically a paraphrase or "Eric Clapton said something to the effect of...".

So all the quotes of the full racist rant you see attributed to him differ slightly in like, how many times he said "coon" or whatever. Or contradict eachother in stupidly superficial ways. His career would have suffered more (although I agree he still would have gotten a pass due to the whole 'Hard Rock Hotel' crowd of apologists) had there been a recording. He's never had to apologize for the racist rant due to the fact no recording or corroborated account of what he said (verbatim) exists, so he's just been doing weird blanket (non)apologies for "some really racist stuff I did during the many decades I was perpetually wasted" for decades now.

The main corroborating evidence of the authenticity of the paraphrasing you see is actually Clapton himself, who pretty much doubles down on it whenever he is asked. It would be pretty apocryphal if Clapton himself didn't shittily double down on everytime he is asked about it.

Shitty dude for sure though. He essentially defends the racist rant everytime he gets asked about it in interviews.

I was a huge Cream fan and read he his autiobiography in high school. Super unpleasant dude. Just a miserable person all around.

His lackadaisical attitude toward his kid falling out a window and his cashing in with a cheesy song he didn't even write the lyrics to has always been gross too.

He also has a pathological fear of needles he mentions numerous times in his autobiography in weird tangents about "well, I spent a lot of money on drugs, but it would have been way less if I didn't hate needles and could mainline drugs the more effective intravaenous way, but I hate needles". So the ridiculous suspicion of needles is already well documented.

Snopes has a full thing on it, Snopes is having some drama of their own going on right now, but it's accurate. Eric Clapton has mainly been able to squeak by on a bunch of shitty behavior throughout the years because no definitive account or recording of his original rant exists.

Clapton’s Responses: 1976-2018


Based on our research, Clapton does not appear to have ever disputed the accuracy or authenticity of the remarks attributed to him from the August 1976 concert. Over the years, he has repeatedly accepted the authenticity of those remarks, beginning with a handwritten letter published in Sounds magazine in September 1976. That letter set a tone of ambivalence, churlishness, and self-contradiction about his own racist rant, which Clapton repeatedly demonstrated until decades later, when his stance belatedly shifted to one of regret.

While ostensibly apologizing, Clapton also excused and downplayed his remarks (offering the explanation that he was drunk) and then offered an assessment of Powell that could readily be interpreted as an endorsement.

In October 1976, Clapton was interviewed for Sounds magazine. There, he expressed ambivalence and amusement about the rant, vaguely distancing himself from what he had said, but without demonstrating any understanding of why it was unacceptable, bigoted, and extremely offensive.

In an interview with Melody Maker magazine in 1978, Clapton defended Powell and again called him a “prophet.”

In the ensuing decades, Clapton was given still further easy opportunities to comprehensively or sincerely apologize for his rant, or even to demonstrate an understanding of why it had caused such outrage, or to explain how his views had changed. He did not take up those opportunities.

In a 2004 interview with the Times of London, Clapton claimed “there’s no way I could be a racist,” but in the same breath once again defended Powell as “outrageously brave,” and once again sought to excuse and contextualize his obscenely racist rant by blaming his alcoholism and saying “It was fuelled by an outrage at what was happening to London with the Saudis buying up the West End.”

Remarkably, Clapton even volunteered, in that 2004 interview, that he had steadfastly refused to apologize for his racist rant when given the opportunity in 1988...

[Greg McCoy]

Also from the same Snopes article on Clapton's cartoonishly shitty behavior, Clapton's response to being casually asked to apologize for some racist shit he said at a Nelson Mandela tribute concert. Stay classy.

[Hulk Krogan]

I've also seen quotes talking about that rant where he was like "I've dated a black woman." Oh ok, dude. All good then.

[Greg McCoy]

I've also seen quotes talking about that rant where he was like "I've dated a black woman." Oh ok, dude. All good then.

Yeah, in spite of the fact that there is no definitive quote of his original rant, in today's climate you don't want any holes in your argument anti-vaxxers or racists can seize upon like, "That's not a quote, thus your entire argument is invalid", there are plenty of damning Clapton quotes since that make him look really shitty.

Reputable media sources should know better than to share the "quote" of his famous rant. I see a bunch of media sources running articles like "Think this new shittiness is shocking? Here's what Eric Clapton said in the '70s." It's an honest mistake, it's been reported as a "quote" for-fucking-ever, but with todays misinformation climate you don't want to see "the good guys in news" getting busted for some technicality like calling something that is technically paraphrased a quote. Better not to give the crazies any ammunition for their conspiracy theories. Especially given the fact that there is an established record over the past decade of conspiracy theories discrediting entire reputable news sources because they slipped up in some miniscule way.

[Chris]

I've also seen quotes talking about that rant where he was like "I've dated a black woman." Oh ok, dude. All good then.

"I like black metal, I can't be racist".

Anyway, racism aside, the song in the OP sucks just like the rest of his catalog. He can fuck off back into irrelevancy where he belongs.

[Greg McCoy]

"I like black metal, I can't be racist".

Anyway, racism aside, the song in the OP sucks just like the rest of his catalog. He can fuck off back into irrelevancy where he belongs.

The black metallers love Eric Clapton back. From the (clearly not screened for positivity) comments on the youtube video.



I can't tell if this is an "Eric Clapton is a cock" joke or not.

[Chris]

To be fair, there are no racist black metallers. They are either cool, like 7DT, or just equal opportunity hate mongers who hate everyone, like Abbath.

I have no problem with someone who says "I hate black people" as long as they follow it up with "just as much as I hate everyone else, including you". That's actually pretty metal.

[Dominic]

How is Clapton like coffee?

The punchline to this old gag is: They are both crap without Cream.

Having also read a bio years ago, I'm with Garrett: he's a miserable person. Money and fame do not mean happiness.

[Mike]

I've never understood how Harrison - certainly the least dickish of the Beatles - and Clapton managed to remain friends after what a cock Clapton has been his whole life.

[Chris]

I've never understood how Harrison - certainly the least dickish of the Beatles - and Clapton managed to remain friends after what a cock Clapton has been his whole life.

Is Ringo a dick? The only thing I know about him is that he was funny in Caveman when I saw it like 35 years ago..

[Greg McCoy]

The punchline to this old gag is: They are both crap without Cream.

Having also read a bio years ago, I'm with Garrett: he's a miserable person. Money and fame do not mean happiness.

Yeah, the "How is Clapton like Coffee? They are both better with Cream." joke works because it is true on multiple levels.

Obviously Clapton likes his coffee with Cream, it's been established many times that Clapton doesn't like it black.

[Mattayus]

Tbf, that whole generation of rock stars were misogynistic, racist, homophobic bigots, desperately uneducated and suffering from a severe case of Peter Pan Syndrome. Some of them just happened to be more vocal than others.

Clapton's just shit, full stop. I've NEVER understood the hype. Like, even if the sociopolitical garbage wasn't being discussed here, and you'd just posted the video like "hey check out this new Claptop track" I'd still be asking why the fuck you posted it.

I must be wrong here, but I can't think of a single bit of musical lineage that I can trace back to Clapton. Like, even if I think of my own personal musical lineage, all of my influences, and then I think of their influences, and then their influences... I don't think any of them go back to Clapton.

Yet he's always touted as one of the most influential guitarists of all time.

For someone who's done nothing but cop black music his entire career (and then make an incredibly white version of it) the whole racism shtick seems more pathetic than it first appears.

He's a bland, vanilla, insipid hack, and I've always fucking hated him. I hope he continues to do more of this heinous shit so we can further the process of erasing him from music history.

[osiris]

I didn't like his music before it was cool!

[Chris]

For someone who's done nothing but cop black music his entire career (and then make an incredibly white version of it) the whole racism shtick seems more pathetic than it first appears.

Spot on.