Brian May and Eric Clapton look back on their 1988 collaboration on 'The Two of You'
Brian May and Eric Clapton of Queen. The two guitarists were good buddies until May called him "fruitcake" after Clapton's anti-vaccine activism came to light.
[Watch video] Brian May and Eric Clapton performing together in 1988
Brian May made a lot of headlines this week after criticizing Eric Clapton for his anti-vaccine remarks and his refusal to perform at a venue that required everyone to be vaccinated.
"I love Eric Clapton. He's my hero, but he has a lot of different points of view," May told The Independent. "He thinks it's OK to hunt for his hobby, and I have a lot of disagreements with him, but I will continue to respect him."
"But I'm sorry for the anti-vaccine people, but I think they're doing something about it. There's a lot of evidence that vaccination works, and overall it's very safe. It always comes with side effects, and I think it's crazy to go around saying that vaccines are a conspiracy to kill people."
Clapton and May have performed together in a number of charity shows, one of the most notable being at the Royal Albert Hall on June 6, 1988. The concert featured Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, Elton John, Leonard Cohen, the Bee Gees, Mark Knopfler, Joe Cocker, Howard Jones and Tu Pow.
The concert ended with everyone playing "With a Little Help From My Friends" by Joe Cocker. During rehearsals, Clapton shocked May by asking him to play the opening riff. “I kind of froze,” May recalled in 2018. "I thought Eric Clapton would play it himself. (That riff) every guitarist wants to play. He said, 'Why don't you do it?' I was happy to do it,” he recalls.
As you can see in the video that follows, May played very well. However, the next day, the engineer told May that he had failed to record his guitar part. "It hit me down," May says. "So I decided to play it exactly as I had played it the night before."
The two guitarists reunited at Queen Elizabeth's Golden Jubilee concert in 2002, but now that May has put Clapton in a "fruitcake jar," it's hoped that they'll be together again. not in It's a vase that's hard to come out of.
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From Rolling Stone US.
