Clapton’s new single
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narabdela
who?
Tony L
Administrator
I suspect some, but likely very few. The only ones I can think of is Elisabeth Schwarzkopf’s Strauss Four Last Songs on HMV, and IIRC she was an actual Nazi. Karajan is obviously another, but it is always hard to ascribe specific intent here given the culture of fear at the time. This was after all a police state/dictatorship that routinely murdered dissenters. It would be all too easy to accuse everyone who didn’t flee in advance as being a Nazi, and I don’t think that is fair. I just don’t know the full story here. I don’t venture far into the mono or shellac era (aside from some jazz 78s) so only know these artists from long after that period. I have one Furtwangler LP for investment reasons as much as anything, I’m not sure I’ve even played it (its my oldest HMV ALP, a Beethoven piano concerto IIRC). As I say I’m stereo era to present when it comes to classical. Anyway my suspicion is Schwarzkopf was a Nazi by choice, I’m far less convinced about Karajan. I can’t think of anyone else.
I’m also a huge Krautrock fan, but that is obviously the later opposite reaction; the music kids make when they begin to grasp their own parents and grandparents were genocidal fascists.
Anyway my point was Clapton appropriated the black protest culture of the blues, cashed the royalty cheques and became a multi-millionaire, and then announced he didn’t want any black people in his gigs or “his” country. That’s in a whole class of its own IMO.
PS I have no hate or anything for the Stones etc, they also appropriated black blues culture, but in a kind and respectful way and helped shine a spotlight on the whole genre and were directly or indirectly responsible for a large number of original blues artists touring the UK, selling vinyl etc. As it could be argued did Clapton for a while, which makes his National Front/Conservative hate-speech even more incomprehensible. Anyway, I thank him for being the spark that ignited Rock Against Racism. That did more good and spawned more raw creativity, original art and fresh political ideas than he could ever dream of bleaching the blues of any meaning or burping up Enoch Powell hate rhetoric.
tones
Tones deaf
Herbie was somewhat of a musical enfant terrible, very hungry, very ambitious, with his eyes perpetually on the big prize (the Berlin Philharmonic, led by the very non-Nazi Wilhelm Fürtwangler). He probably joined the Nazi Party merely to further his ambition, and, unlike Fürtwangler, was prepared to go along with the Nazi propaganda. However, he then married wife No, 2 Anna Gütermann, of the sewing machine thread company, who was one-quarter Jewish, something hardly designed to endear him to the Nazi authorities.
I like the story of Otto Klemperer, an anti-Nazi who had fled Germany, meeting Karajan after one of the former's concerts. Klemperer's daughter had begged him notz to be horrible to Herbie, just to say "two nice words to Herr von Karajan". Klemperer looked at Karajan and said, "Good. Night".
Cheese
Bitter lover
...which apparently wasn't too much of an obstacle when he finally reached the Holy Grail in 1955, ten full years after capitulation, and under rule of semi-god Konrad Adenauer. It took some time to kill off the weeds.
In truth I try not to judge Schwarzkopf and Karajan (and Wagner, and Böhm, and Mengelberg, etc.) too harshly because I don't know how it feels to have an exceptional talent, to have worked from very early on in life in order to make it to something, and see all plans annihilated for a reason you are not responsible for. Oh and propaganda was intense enough to make you believe that the situation was the enemy's fault (which could actually be true to some extent, but that's another vast debate).
TheDecameron
Unicorns fart glitter.
TBF, it was organically and sustainably grown heroin he was jacking up.
Finnegan
I like a bit of a cavort
Not really, after years of insisting he’d been right all along, there was a half-arsed attempt at apologising a couple of years ago, but it was all about him and how effed up he’d been at the time, no hint of an apology in relation to how offensive his comments had been, how they’d contributed to the virulent racism of the period (this was a time when the NF were beginning to poll worryingly high votes), or how his comments impacted on black people.
Rob998
Scimmia Nordoccidentale
I don’t have much time for Clapton, post Dominos, apart from maybe Tears In Heaven, given the circumstances it was written in.
But, re the outburst that, quite rightly, was the starter pistol for Rock against Racism,
He was smacked/coked/speeded up to the eyeballs through the late 60s and most of the 70s. He’s apologised profusely in public time and time again for what he said in that period and acknowledged his debt to the pioneers of the blues.
As for this latest song, it’s seems to be Grandpa Simpson shouting at the clouds type stuff?
Tony L
Administrator
I’m not convinced. Reading the Wikipedia entry just below the Birmingham speech entry suggests he’s not really ever got beyond the “I’m not a racist, but that Enoch Powell, eh?!…” stage, and was still championing Powell’s far-right racism and xenophobia as late as 2007. That’s over 30 years later. The whole Wikipedia article is hardly a glowing character reference.
Cheese
Bitter lover
I have recently given away his autobiography, but I vaguely remember a paragraph long of about a page, where he apologizes for what he presents more or less as a single event. I don’t know the full extent of what he actually said back then, but as I stated already here, when I look at all the rubbish I said in my life between 1976 and now (and there’s no reason for this to end
) I can consider myself lucky not to have Clapton’s notoriety.In the past decades, other stars have been involved in events with much more severe consequences, like car accidents under alcohol, dealing with drugs, armed robbery, street violence and all sorts of thuggery, but all this is largely forgotten in spite of the fact that people have directly been harmed and some killed. This is worse than voicing ridiculous bull when pissed on stage.
PS Comes to mind right now, what about ‘Get Back’ ? It was written by a man with god-like status in the UK, and this is the difference. Paul McCartney paid back a lot since with all his actions for the animal world and various charities, but so did Clapton with his engagement against alcohol. Isn’t it time to leave it there and then after all?
Suffolk Tony
Aim low, achieve your goals, avoid disappointment.
Shame about Eric Clapton, I always considered him an excellent guitarist & still enjoy lots of his earlier work. Enjoyed his autobiography; he's from the same neck of the woods as myself & mentions haunts which I'm familiar with, including the shop where he bought his first guitar.
I do tend to agree with Cheese above; the bloke spent large slices of his performing life completely out of his chump on drugs & booze. That doesn't mean you can discount his racist ravings, but given his various friendships with black musicians, who I can only assume have forgiven him for past nonsense, then he doesn't really line up with yer white supremacist crowd.
I do tend to agree with Cheese above; the bloke spent large slices of his performing life completely out of his chump on drugs & booze. That doesn't mean you can discount his racist ravings, but given his various friendships with black musicians, who I can only assume have forgiven him for past nonsense, then he doesn't really line up with yer white supremacist crowd.
Tarzan
pfm Member
ff1d1l
pfm Member
From https://genius.com/The-beatles-get-back-lyricsI have recently given away his autobiography, but I vaguely remember a paragraph long of about a page, where he apologizes for what he presents more or less as a single event. I don’t know the full extent of what he actually said back then, but as I stated already here, when I look at all the rubbish I said in my life between 1976 and now (and there’s no reason for this to end
In the past decades, other stars have been involved in events with much more severe consequences, like car accidents under alcohol, dealing with drugs, armed robbery, street violence and all sorts of thuggery, but all this is largely forgotten in spite of the fact that people have directly been harmed and some killed. This is worse than voicing ridiculous bull when pissed on stage.
PS Comes to mind right now, what about ‘Get Back’ ? It was written by a man with god-like status in the UK, and this is the difference. Paul McCartney paid back a lot since with all his actions for the animal world and various charities, but so did Clapton with his engagement against alcohol. Isn’t it time to leave it there and then after all?
"A lighthearted, fairly meaningless blues jam by Paul McCartney.
“Get Back” went through numerous iterations, many of which are publicly available. The two most noteworthy versions are the single version and the album version. In one of its earlier forms, “Get Back” was a satirical political tune, with lyrics including “too many Pakistanis living in a council flat”. McCartney later explained these lyrics by saying:
When we were doing Let It Be, there were a couple of verses to “Get Back” which were actually not racist at all — they were anti-racist. There were a lot of stories in the newspapers then about Pakistanis crowding out flats — you know, living 16 to a room or whatever. So in one of the verses of “Get Back,” which we were making up on the set of Let It Be, one of the outtakes has something about ‘too many Pakistanis living in a council flat’ – that’s the line. Which to me was actually talking out against overcrowding for Pakistanis… If there was any group that was not racist, it was the Beatles."
miktec
retired
Fairly typical of the fallacious and bogus 'reasoning' you have wheeled out in this thread - two wrongs never make a right no matter which way you want to twist them ... and the lesser of two evils will always remain an evil regardless of its ranking. Can only presume you are playing Devil's Advocate on this - you would make a lousy RW apologist with this kind of dribble.
Also a good point to remember that this thread is not about Clapton's dubious past per-se but his very actual present as a (musically) vocal anti-vaxxer alongside the other celeb nutjob he collaborates with.
Fortunate that his latest outing is both banal and dire - and very unlikely to get any airtime worth noting beyond GB News and the like.
monkfish
pfm Member
That's Sir Nutjob to you.
Rockmeister
pfm Member
Thought I should take the trouble to go listen and watch the associated video.
One verse seems to be talking about his reaction to the Jab he had (note, this loony anti vaxer did, in fact, have the jab) which made him ill. ? If I'd had a jab a felt shit after, I'd also take to social media to point this out. It's a factor to consider. The rest is about general government over control (totally agree with this) and environmental disaster, worrying about what kind of world his kids will have isn't it. Who doesn't have these thoughts? Small voices are allowed still even in the increasingly state controlled world we now exist in.
Bit of a storm in a teacup held by a very pedantic and nervous shit stirrer I'd say.
Think I'll be digging out 'just one night' again. Double trouble? Not in my book.
One verse seems to be talking about his reaction to the Jab he had (note, this loony anti vaxer did, in fact, have the jab) which made him ill. ? If I'd had a jab a felt shit after, I'd also take to social media to point this out. It's a factor to consider. The rest is about general government over control (totally agree with this) and environmental disaster, worrying about what kind of world his kids will have isn't it. Who doesn't have these thoughts? Small voices are allowed still even in the increasingly state controlled world we now exist in.
Bit of a storm in a teacup held by a very pedantic and nervous shit stirrer I'd say.
Think I'll be digging out 'just one night' again. Double trouble? Not in my book.
Minio
Kind of Sort of Not really...
Never found the guy very likeable, even so I've enjoyed the tunes.
And learnt a few licks from his holiness.
He always seems to be too much up his own ****.
But then, once you get called "God" you can get ungrounded. Similar applies to John Lennon's ramblings, although, in his case, more cringingly self deprecating.
Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker seemed more like the kind of guys to go down the pub with, God rest their souls.
I just love their stuff even though what's in some of their heads might be a bit out of tune.
And learnt a few licks from his holiness.
He always seems to be too much up his own ****.
But then, once you get called "God" you can get ungrounded. Similar applies to John Lennon's ramblings, although, in his case, more cringingly self deprecating.
Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker seemed more like the kind of guys to go down the pub with, God rest their souls.
I just love their stuff even though what's in some of their heads might be a bit out of tune.