Lessons learned from Beck and Clapton

Rolling Stone has just published a very good interview with guitarists Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton, amazingly the first time they've been interviewed together despite tasting stardom in the early 1960s.

Two guitar legends in the mid-60s, and looking a bit shaggy behind the earsI'm stunned this is the first time these two have sat down for an interview, given their close ties in The Yardbirds, blues-rock supergroups in the late 1960s and '70s and their general reputations as two of the best, if not the best, guitarists of all time. Both are co-headlining a brief tour, which sadly won't make it to the West Coast.

Rolling Stone offers a glimpse of David Fricke's interview online, but has reserved the juice for the print edition. If you're a fan of their music or musicianship in general, it's worth the $5.

I've always been a fan of Beck, whose mastery of blues, hard rock and jazz, and to a lesser extent rockabilly, is mind blowing. That inability to focus on one genre  -- or what All Music Guide describes as the "haphazard way he approached his career" -- was a double-edged sword. He's a god among musicians but his commercial success pales next to Clapton.

Clapton, on the other hand, had never won me over. His playing was soulful and technically brilliant, but he was often a jerk and tended to deliver a lot of half-ass performances. One of the worst concerts I've ever attended was a Clapton show (thankfully opener Robert Randolph ensured the evening wasn't a total waste).

But the Rolling Stone interview captures a remorseful side of Clapton, one who regrets some of his decisions and streak of laziness in the 1990s. Clapton comes across as sympathetic, almost as if the tour and growing fondness for Beck is waking a sleeping lion. Let's hope so. It's be great to hear Clapton polish a somewhat tarnished legacy.

The key takeaway for me, however, was a passage describing Beck's work ethic. Beck's public image is one of a man who can't decide whether to play the guitar or restore old cars (he once jokingly said he recorded a new album simply because he needed money for a new band saw). But as Fricke notes, "He still practices for long periods every day, when he's not on tour or in the garage -- working on chords, melodic phrases and fingerpicking exercises.

" 'I fnd it inexcusable not to get up and play,' Beck explains, 'especially now with big shows coming up. I've got a guitar on every sofa, leaning up against walls, telling me, 'Don't forget what's about to happen.' That's the way it's been for 35 years.' "

I admire people who still have passion for the hard work that creates greatness. Anyone who's seen Beck's new DVD "Live at Ronnie Scott's" is blown away by his masterful mix of detail and flash. Author Malcolm Gladwell suggested in his book "Outliers" that anyone can be great at something if they put in 10,000 hours of practice. His key example was The Beatles played multiple live shows nightly for two years before they hit it big. And so while it's amazing that after nearly 50 years in the business, one of the all-time greats still finds the passion -- and the need -- to work on the basics, it's a lesson we all can take to heart.

Update on Thursday, February 18, 2010 at 8:14 AM by Logan Molen

OK, the Clapton karma appears to be fleeting.

After posting this take last night, I was reading The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times, and ran across two reviews of the Beck-Clapton concert in London (yep, both have rock writers who know their stuff).

Both the WSJ review and the FT review noted that Clapton seemed distant and unmotivated while Beck was energized. Maybe it's a matter of Beck still feeling like he'll always be David, not Goliath.

The NFL's head problem

Malcolm Gladwell's New Yorker is long but a rewarding readThere’s been a lot of media coverage in recent weeks about the high number of retired NFL players who have suffered severe mental degradation as a result of years of head-to-head contact. The numbers and the severity of injuries are stunning, even for a game where players are meat.

Malcolm Gladwell’s excellent New Yorker story seemed to kick off the media frenzy, with his suggestions that the NFL is hypocritical in opposing the savagery of dog fighting while allow its own players to beat their brains into mush. I like Gladwell but he seemed over the top in suggesting on “Pardon The Interruption” that the NFL as we know it would cease to exist within a decade (his theory was that concerned parents would prohibit their kids from playing youth football, thus drying up the pool of players).

My question since this all started was “Look at Australian Rules Football,” an awesome game featuring heavy contact -- but whose players wear very little padding and no helmets. The Wall Street Journal’s excellent sports page did just that todaAussie Rules Football is violent but head-to-head combat is rarey with a story with the provacative headline “Is it time to retire the football helmet?”

As the WSJ story notes, Aussie “footy” players suffer periodic concussions but rarely severe or lasting head injuries. The reason is that players know that with their heads exposed, they tackle differently. Makes sense. Helmets on the other hand, while protective in isolation, can’t insulate the brain from damage caused by thousands of hits over one’s career. The damage is slow, and symptoms harder to notice.

I actually prefer watching Aussie Rules to the NFL, and wouldn’t mind seeing the NFL ditch helmets, taking the game back to the 1930s. But it won’t happen. Without some remarkable advancement in helmet design, I suspect the NFL will relunctantly implement rules changes to further restrict head-to-head combat without gutting the game of the intensity and violence that makes it our most-popular sport. But can you imagine a scenario, as the WSJ story suggests, where lineman are prohibited from taking three-point stances, thus robbing them of power off the line? Me neither.  

I don't know what the solution is, but the status quo isn't acceptable.

Update on Saturday, October 30, 2010 at 5:44 PM by Logan Molen

Sadly, it's taken Sports Illustrated a year to tackle the issue, but in the wake of the NFL's crackdown on violent hits, the magazine has published an impressive package of stories tackling a variety of angles on head injuries.

Perhaps most startling is a piece titled "The Damage Done." The subheadline says it all: "While concussive hits dominate the debate, a groundbreaking new study suggests that minor blows -- and there can be hundreds each game -- are just as traumatic." 

The story examines how high school students involved in non-concussive hits are experiencing clear evidence of short-term memory loss within a very short period of time, as opposed to decades of play. It's a must-read for any parent of school-age children wanting to play football. It's scientific reinforcement of the Gladwell piece that kickstarted the national debate last year.

Here are other stories in the package worth checking out:

• "Concussions: The hits that are changing football." Sadly, despite evidence that their predecessors suffered severe brain damage, current NFL starts bemoan the crackdown on the punishing hits that make the TV highlights.
• "Staggered by the Impact: How do we feel? We love the game, hate the injuries"