When it comes to playing the real thing, he’s frequently acclaimed as one of the greatest of all time - one graffiti-favouring fan even referred to him as ‘God’ at one point - but it seems that Eric Clapton has no truck with playing air guitar.
Speaking to Metal Hammer, comedian and British National Treasure Frank Skinner was asked about the time he spoke to Clapton on one of his TV chat shows.
"I asked him if he played air guitar,” recalls Skinner. “He said, ‘Why would I when I can play real guitar?’ It was like, Eric… you don’t understand. Air guitar isn’t to be dismissed like that - in a world where very few people you meet believe in the unseen, air guitar is the last vestige of belief.”
We can only agree: the playing of an air guitar is a simple, healthy pleasure that can give great succour in these relentlessly dark times.
But hang on, because a clip from Skinner’s chat show offers evidence of a slightly different conversation, in which Clapton says that he has played air guitar, but a long time ago.
“Before I got a guitar I did [play air guitar],” said Clapton. “Before my grandparents bought me my first guitar, I did play air guitar before. And I was actually caught one day, on my knees in front of the mirror in my front room, by a friend walking by looking through the window, and I was miming Gene Vincent. It took me days to get over that.”
Perhaps, then, it’s actually this unresolved childhood trauma that prevents Clapton from picking up the air guitar these days. Or maybe we’re just overthinking it.
Elsewhere in the Metal Hammer interview, Skinner reveals that he’s become a born-again metalhead thanks to his son, who’s now 12, and hails the “inspirational” Judas Priest.
Asked which bands he’d banish to Room 101, meanwhile, Skinner says: “Probably The Darkness. Queen were borderline for me - they were to rock music what Showaddywaddy were to ‘50s rock’n’roll. I don’t like comedy heavy metal - my son won’t even watch Spinal Tap because he’s worried it’ll take the piss out the music too much.”
