Clapton Week: How John Mayall Helped Eric Become God

By early 1963, when he was just 17, Clapton had already discovered the work of such blues masters as B.B. King, Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson. But he was still trying, in his words, "to find a phraseology that would encompass all these different artists." When he joined The Yardbirds later that year, he was hopeful that he could at last forge something unique within the blues genre.