(Credits: Far Out / Chris Hakkens)

Any artist that has been around for a while always needs to find a way to keep everything fresh when they get back into performing. It’s not easy trying to keep that fire burning, and when the audience only wants one thing out of you, it can get discouraging every time any experiment doesn’t work out. And while that’s hard on any casual rock musician, it was ten times harder when someone was confined to the blues like Eric Clapton was.

That’s not to say that Clapton wasn’t afraid to take a few chances. He had his moments when working in the sounds of reggae during the 1970s, but when he first cut his teeth as a blues journeyman, it seemed like everyone wanted him to sprinkle his musical fireworks over everything rather than trying to make something authentic.

Considering how many people called him a musical God, though, there was no reason for Clapton to change the way he was working. He had been in some of the biggest supergroups of all time with Cream and Blind Faith, and while both bands had their fair share of surprises, there were always going to be limits if every one of their songs went back to the same blues format with a light hint of jazz-rock thrown in.

It may have paid the bills, but that was never what rock and roll was all about. The genre was built on instability and artist’s needs to branch out from what they had been doing for years, and while Clapton was a serious student of all things blues during his prime, Frank Zappa had already earned the distinction of being one of the few musicians who never played an unoriginal note during his entire career.

From Freak Out onwards, Zappa was never afraid to liven up the charts with something absolutely insane, and considering his work on everything from Hot Rats to Lumpy Gravy, he would have much rather gone down the drain by making something original than trying to recapture whatever people loved him for in the first place. The sense of freedom can make any artist difficult to work with, but Clapton remembered being thrown for a loop when working with Zappa.

While Clapton was never a full-time member of the Mothers of Invention, his various jams with the band were enough to give ‘Slowhand’ one of the most disorienting experiences ever, saying, “I went to see him in concert, and he invited me to play. When I went out to do my solo, he did that famous thing of doing hand signals to the band, and they went through about 10 different time signatures and fucked me up completely! I couldn’t make heads or tails of it.”

But something that confusing is usually the exact thing an artist needs to start working outside of their comfort zone. Clapton was never going to make anything that was as eccentric as Zappa, but listening to some of his later records, you could tell that he was more interested in stretching where his guitar playing could go beyond playing his catalogue of Muddy Waters licks.

Even though being onstage with that kind of musical madman can be incredibly scary, it’s always a good reminder for people to reach out for new influences. There are a million opportunities for an artist to play the same show, but if they go into a show that scares them, it’s important to hold onto that feeling and let it be your guide when working on their own.