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I Wish B.B. King Would Have Told Eric Clapton to F@#k Off
“Slowhand” ” was never a god: a former fan’s lament
Like most Medium writers, I built my readership commenting on others’ stories.
But one of my comments has resonated far better than others, registering 102 claps (as of 2/23) on Jason Ellis’s Medium recent piece “Canceling Eric Clapton: When Is Enough, Enough?” My comment:
Clapton’s 2000 album with B.B. King, Riding With the King, seemed to me to be the worse kind of cultural appropriation, a transactional quid pro quo. I didn’t have the same feeling when Keith Richards paid tribute to Chuck Berry with his film Hail! Hail! Rock ’n’ Roll.
I am not about to question why King agreed to do the album. We all have egos and bills to pay. Well, at least on the cover Clapton was driving the convertible, with B.B. smiling in the backseat.
‘Riding With the King’ seemed to me to be the worse kind of cultural appropriation ... I didn’t have the same feeling when Keith Richards paid tribute to Chuck Berry.
