I love finding out a song by a famous artist wasn’t original to them. Especially when that famous artist is also a famous asshole.
Similarly “Clapton’s” I shot the sheriff was originally a Bob Marley song
In fact, being the racist twat he is, Clapton changed a lyric from “I didn’t shoot no deputy” to “I didn’t shoot the deputy”. While only slightly different Clapton’s version implies that those roles are held by two people whereas Marley’s implies it’s the same person. That’s because Marley’s was a protest song saying that the police in his community were sent by colonizers and had no interest in protecting their community. Thus his claim that he did shoot a sheriff (a position he has no respect for) but he did not shoot a deputy (someone the community authorizes to enforce their own rules). That distinction was kind of the entire point of the song and Clapton changed it, presumably due to the aforementioned fact that he is a racist twat
I could equally see him changing it because he’s an English racist twat and those filthy colonials use very poor grammar.
Really, as a whole, his version of the song sounds like “I’m going to correct every bit of English in that awful Jamaican patois the original is sung in and make it sound super white too.”
I think you can tell that I am not a fan of Eric Clapton.
I used to be. He’s a fantastic musician. But as I’ve gotten older (and subsequently have seen more and more of these types of details) it’s become almost impossible to “separate the art from the artist.” And so many artists are giant pieces of shit. It’s depressing.
Well you know what they say. What’s the difference between a baby and a bag of coke? Clapton would never drop a bag of coke out a window
