Some blues revisionists, most recently the musicologist Elijah Wald, have tried to downplay Johnson’s importance as a blues artist, maintaining that his importance was a creation of his later, white audience. I thought to myself, I’m not going to do that, I just don’t think I can. 'There’s a part where Robert sings, Can’t you hear the wind howling? and follows it with a response with his slide, and it’s just like his voice. I regret it because I think it would’ve been possible to do. In fact, the one regret I have about my album is that I didn’t play a particular slide part of his on my version. The slide part in Come On In My Kitchen is a great example of that. His guitar – especially his slide playing – was an extension of his singing. One of only photographs widely accepted to be of Robert Johnson (Image credit: ) When I first heard him I had a very hard time listening to him, because it demanded something of me.” All the music I’d heard up until that time was just pop music made for entertainment. How could he play in front of other people when he’s exposing his emotions so entirely? It seems he couldn’t play in front of them – he had to turn and play to the corner of the room. I don’t know if this is true or not, but it was reported by Don Law, the man who recorded him, that prior to one of his sessions there were some Mexican musicians in the room with him. 'Robert was something else – he sounded like he was naked. When I first heard him I had a very hard time listening to him, because it demanded something of me' Even people I loved, like Leroy Carr or Son House, still sounded like entertainers to me. Music, for the most part, was very artificial. Most were just imitating other people or developing something for the stage.

'There were very few people on record who sounded like they were singing from the heart, or knew who they were or what they felt.

But back in the early sixties, when I first heard him, the culture in England and the US was much more repressed. That is something that’s taken for granted today – there are so many different ways these days to get in touch with your feelings, either through therapy or support groups. What struck me more than anything else was how in touch with his feelings he was.

“When I first listened to him I was completely overwhelmed by his vulnerability.

Erick klapton