Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton, both born in England in the 1940s, were only a few years apart. Both performers were strongly influenced by the Blues when they initially began playing music, and both eventually joined The Yardbirds at distinct points in time. The Yardbirds were one of the most influential bands in the country during the 1960s.
After quitting the band to perform blues with John Mayall, Clapton formed Cream with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, combining blues with a harsher sound. While this was going on, Page upped the ante by forming The New Yardbirds, which became known as Led Zeppelin. Both groups contributed significantly to the evolution of music, particularly Hard Rock and Heavy Metal.
Eric Clapton has expressed his opinions on some of his contemporaries, including Led Zeppelin, over the years.
Cream had already performed their farewell gig a few months before the release of Led Zeppelin’s self-titled debut album in 1969. Jimmy Page’s band was frequently compared to Jeff Beck’s Group and Cream at the time, but they ultimately became the most popular band in that genre in the 1970s. Jimmy Page and Eric Clapton have always respected one another, but the Cream guitarist has never hidden his affections for Zeppelin.
Led Zeppelin’s book “The Definitive Biography” reported Clapton’s comments as follows:
They were quite loud. I thought it was very loud. I enjoyed some of it. But a lot of it was simply too much. They exaggerated whatever argument they were making, I thought.”
Clapton believes Zeppelin continued what Cream started by combining blues and rock and roll, making the sound harder than it was at the time. However, as he told Uncut in 2012, he wasn’t happy with Zeppelin’s trajectory.
“There was a band named Blue Cheer, and I believe they were the originators of heavy metal. Because they lacked conventional blues roots. They did not have a mission. “It was only about being loud.”
Cream was also pretty loud. We caught ourselves up in having massive banks of Marshall amps just for the heck of it. But we had a solid foundation in blues and jazz. Led Zeppelin took on our legacy. But then they took it somewhere else, which I didn’t quite admire.
In 1991, he made a similar statement during an interview for the Cream documentary “Strange Brew“. Eric stated, “I believe (Cream) was one of the early heavy metal bands, probably without realizing it. Because when Cream disbanded and was no longer around, Led Zeppelin filled the hole. They became the first official heavy metal band. So maybe Cream was a predecessor to it.”
