can you imagine...I was going to mention Clapton's christening of the Les Paul, Marshall setup, but others have beaten me to it. I liken it's impact to what happened to harp playing when Little Walter and other's deciding to blow through the PA or an early guitar amp. They REDEFINED the sound of the instrument.
So all I'll add is the rhetorical question...can you imagine being a teenage Brit, having been reared on the sounds of the Beatles, Jerry and the Pacemakers, or even the Dave Clark Five, wandering into a London club because someone had recommended the Bluesbreakers, and hearing THIS STUFF? Probably as epiphanic as being a white guy in mid 50's Chicago and having the nerve to wander into the Dew Drop Inn and hearing Muddy, Wolf, or later, Otis Rush and Buddy Guy. Simply put, a life changing experience.
The most important guitar album of all time!The best guitar player of the time on top of his game. Classic tracks. The perfect combination of guitar and amp. Incredible solos... Listening to this album it is easy to see why rock took the directions it did. This is the blueprint for pretty much every rock/blues album that followed, and in my opinion the closest Clapton ever got to this ever again is on Layla... This is Essential.
The album that changed my life.On a week's holiday with my parent's in Littlehampton in Sussex during the summer of '66, as ever, I found a record shop. Without much money as I was still at school, (just), I had the choice, in my mind anyway, between two albums; The Mother's Of Invention's 'Freakout,' and 'Bluesbreakers.' Maybe there had been a lot of publicity at the time about 'Freakout,' I can't remember, but for some reason I was torn between which one to buy. Probably the fact that I was a Yardbirds fan and had listened to 'Five Live' a great deal made up my mind, and I plumped for 'Bluesbreakers.' It was to be the wisest move and the best purchase I ever made. As a then, and still now, 'would-be' guitarist, this album, for its time in rock history, had everything you wanted and more, and has pretty much stayed that way over the ensuing years. To play with this degree of skill and feeling at Clapton's age of 21 at the time, was and is incredible. At 15, he was almost an old man to me being 6 years older, yet even so, the bluesmen I had heard were in their 30's and over, (really old men!), and even now this album begs the question "Why was Clapton so great at such a young age?" We will never know, and if put to the question, probably neither would he? It was just something he was drawn to and did, and has had the good fortune to do so for the rest of his life. If you're a guitarist, Clapton fan, blues enthusiast, whatever, and you don't own this album, simply buy it now - it will remain a classic for as long as planet Earth keeps turning.
Life Changing...I first listened to this disc as a fifteen year-old and music was never the same thereafter. I started hunting straight away for the original US musicians who had inspired first Mayall and then the unbelievably young Clapton. And I'm still listening to the fruits of that search. Meantime it opened me up to the expanding British Blues scene and subsequently other new British genres, all the way from Fleetwood Mac and Chicken Shack, to The Groundhogs, Steeleye and Fairport. The music itself is quite simply inspired, mainly by the fusion of the very different talents of the individuals involved. I'm not sure that Mayall ever wrote, sang or played as well again 'though Clapton went on to far greater things. Just listen to Track 5, Double Crossin' Time, written by the both of them, which displays their different talents perfectly. This disc is one of those very rare seminal recordings which brings as much pleasure now as on the day it came off the presses.
sheer toneThis is the album that launched the Gibson Les Paul + Marshall amp combination that has defined the sound of rock for so long. It is worth buying for that alone. Absolute, pure, smooth but crunchy, toney goodness! Thankfully, the music is top notch, ranging from the energetic opener to the instrumental "Steppin Out", to the drum solo and tribute to the Beatles' "Day Tripper" on "What'd I Say?". Excellent stuff.
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