“Been doing this a while, have you?”: The simple compliment Eric Clapton gave Tommy Emmanuel after watching him play for the first time
Acoustic guitar virtuoso Tommy Emmanuel has recounted the nonchalant praise he received from Eric Clapton after the guitar icon watched him play for the first time.
Emmanuel was supporting Clapton on the Australian leg of his 1990 Journeyman tour, but as he recalls, Clapton was “kind of a recluse”, and would often turn up to the stage minutes before his sets started.
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“They would put the guitar on him, and he would stand at the side,” he says. “Then the intro to Layla would come on, the lights had come down, and then he’d just walk out and go straight into the song, Pretending.”
But when Emmanuel’s talent caught the attention of one of Clapton’s guitar techs – they made sure to properly introduce him and the former Yardbirds guitarist to one another.
“We set up quickly and do a quick soundcheck,” Emmanuel recalls on the Gitaarmannen podcast [via Guitar World]. “As soon as I finish the song, he comes running up on stage and says, ‘Eric needs to see you. I’ll make sure he’ll be here tomorrow night.’”
And sure enough the next night, as Emmanuel was opening the show with a track by The Shadows, he spotted Clapton watching from the side of the stage.
“I got invited back to Eric’s dressing room,” he remembers. “And Eric’s standing there drinking an orange juice, and he looks at me and he says, ‘Been doing this a while, have you?’
“That was his compliment, and we got a photo together, and then I had to leave.”
According to Emmanuel, supporting Clapton on this tour was a turning point in his career, putting him in the spotlight in his home country. “I went from selling 500 tickets to 1,000 almost the next week,” he recalls. But at the time, he had been playing at clubs right after every show at Clapton’s tour, just to make sure he could cover all the expenses.
“[As] an opening act, you’ll be lucky if you get $300 to $500,” says Emmanuel. “I was opening for Eric, then racing out and doing a show in a club somewhere so I can pay my band and my crew.”
Despite all of his success, Emmanuel previously revealed his dislike of being called the best acoustic guitar player. “Self-centredness – it’s such a bullshit thing,” he told the Beyond The Vibe podcast. “And it destroys a lot of people, you know? Since when do we care what other people think of us?”
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Source: www.guitar-bass.net
