When the CD player made its appearance in the Woestenenk home (in Eefde), I was about eleven years old. I thought it was magical! The drawer opened and closed, you could quickly click on to any song and be completely surprised by the shuffle function (also called random, I found out later). I was in grade 8 in elementary school and sometimes I would go play at a friend’s house where there was a CD player. If I was very careful, I was sometimes allowed to put a CD in the drawer, but now we had one ourselves. When, after much deliberation, we had selected a JVC tower in Doetinchem, the system stood gleaming in our living room. My parents bought two double CDs with it. One of those thick boxes with a CD on two sides and a protective foam in the middle. CDs were very expensive in those days. I think as much as 40 guilders. Both CDs were by Eric Clapton. We also had them on elpee, so an apt choice. ‘Backtrackin’ (a collector) and ‘Just One Night’: Eric Clapton Live. The cover alone: Clapton with his black Fender Stratocaster up front! I dreamed of such a guitar and also knew immediately that I wanted a beard when I grew up. My parents’ record closet had been a magnet for me for years. The smell, the pictures, the stories on (or in) the cover, the link between the artists…. and most of all, the music. I loved it. There was no Internet yet, so if I wanted to know more besides the information on the covers, I would bike to the library to pick up the pop encyclopedia or a biography of an artist I had rediscovered. Cycling a little further was to Deventer. There was Musica, the music store. There were real Fender and Gibson guitars. With a little luck I was allowed to hold one. On a shopping night my parents allowed me to pick out an electric guitar. I had been taking guitar lessons for some time and wanted nothing more than to exchange my Spanish (rental) guitar for a real electric one. The black stratocaster of the Hondo brand fit the budget exactly, and it came with a red strap, just like Clapton! Once home, I discovered a button on the amp: drive. When I pressed it, my guitar sounded exactly like Clapton. “Sunshine of your Love” and “White Room” suddenly sounded very different from my Spanish guitar. My enthusiasm for Clapton became even greater, because in the same year I was allowed to go with him to see Eric Clapton in the Statenhal in The Hague. There I saw him live. Ten years earlier, when Clapton was 34 and I was still in diapers, he recorded the album ‘Just One Night’ during a tour in Japan. Clapton had already lived a glorious life. Music was his passion, but a life of drugs and booze obscured his talent for a long time. In the late 1970s, he replaced his regular American backing band for a group of English musicians. The fresh wind of new musical friends and especially the input of Albert Lee made Clapton play with more fire again. ‘Just One Night’ is a record where for me a lot of emotion can be heard in Clapton’s playing and singing. I played the album and later so the CD over and over again. I took a self-recorded cassette tape to my bedroom to practice and practice on my own stratocaster. The drive button pressed, of course. To this day, this album is a comfort, inspiration and frustration (because I want to be able to play it myself, just like him). Some nights when I travel through Eric Clapton’s songs with my band Claptunes for another evening, there are moments when I am back in my bedroom in Eefde. Then I dream again that I will become as good as Eric and for a moment it seems like that is really the case. Wonderful! The double CD is still in my parents’ closet. Sometimes I take it out, the yellowed foam is still inside. Funny really, how hearing a sound or seeing a simple CD case opens up a whole barrel of memories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-9548","bluesvdmaand","type-bluesvdmaand","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n