Eric Clapton reveals this week of his declining health


The King of Electric Guitar this week, Eric Clapton, announced to the news media that he is just about completely deaf from severe tinnitus and is suffering nerve damage to his hands that will in just a matter of time compromise his ability to play. When Clapton goes it will be the end of the Rock era as we know it.

Years ago, B.B.King was asked at a press conference who he thought was the greatest rock guitarist of all time, he replied,
"My personal opinion?..."Eric Clapton is the greatest rock and roll guitar player of all time." 1986


                                                 
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Clapton needs to live his life one day at a time (like we all should do).  And if that includes playing guitar that's fine, but it's OK if
he wants to put it down (sometimes) and do other things also.  There's always composing, or writing about what it was like when he was a kid listening to Robert Johnson.  He's done some nice stuff
over the years, And I never tire of hearing him play "Crossroads"- a perfect song if there is such a thing.
I thought Rock era was declining until I heard Muse.  Without Rock there would be no Muse,  so its influence is certainly not dead and in my opinion there is so much in the music surrounding 'Rock', its influence will survive despite the 'opposition'... 
I saw him in 1973 and in 2003. It's a great loss to the music world going forward. But on a personal level, his life isn't over. I hope he makes the most of his life moving forward.
A wise investment....Last fall I purchased Cream's "Wheels of Fire" album on a SHM-SACD from Acoustic Sounds. Paid $60.00. A year ago I went to a friends home who purchased the disc for a listen and was absolutely floored. Since SHM is the current standard for the SACD format, the quality of the album is stunning. Richer, fuller, very smooth, and very analog sounding with no digital artifacts whatsoever. Far better than the Mo-FI gold or re-master disc's from the past. The one tragedy I'll never get over when the album was cut by Atlantic in 1968 was how they butchered the track "Crossroads". When Clapton performed that song on stage, it was a very long piece, it was edited down and shortened so they could fit it in on side three due to the length of "Spoonful". We can only imagine what ingenious guitar work we will never hear from the full length version.