Be Excellent To Each Other

Do we have any foreigners in the audience tonight? If so, please put up your hands. Wogs I mean, I'm looking at you. Where are you? I'm sorry but some fucking wog...Arab grabbed my wife's bum, you know? Surely got to be said, yeah this is what all the fucking foreigners and wogs over here are like, just disgusting, that's just the truth, yeah. So where are you? Well wherever you all are, I think you should all just leave. Not just leave the hall, leave our country. You fucking (indecipherable). I don't want you here, in the room or in my country. Listen to me, man! I think we should vote for Enoch Powell. Enoch's our man. I think Enoch's right, I think we should send them all back. Stop Britain from becoming a black colony. Get the foreigners out. Get the wogs out. Get the coons out. Keep Britain white. I used to be into dope, now I'm into racism. It's much heavier, man. Fucking wogs, man. Fucking Saudis taking over London. Bastard wogs. Britain is becoming overcrowded and Enoch will stop it and send them all back. The black wogs and coons and Arabs and fucking Jamaicans and fucking (indecipherable) don't belong here, we don't want them here. This is England, this is a white country, we don't want any black wogs and coons living here. We need to make clear to them they are not welcome. England is for white people, man. We are a white country. I don't want fucking wogs living next to me with their standards. This is Great Britain, a white country, what is happening to us, for fuck's sake? We need to vote for Enoch Powell, he's a great man, speaking truth. Vote for Enoch, he's our man, he's on our side, he'll look after us. I want all of you here to vote for Enoch, support him, he's on our side. Enoch for Prime Minister! Throw the wogs out! Keep Britain white!

Quoted in Rebel Rock by J. Street. First Edition (1986). Oxford: Basil Blackwell. pp. 74-75. Street's sources are editions of the New Musical Express, Melody Maker and the Guardian and Times newspapers from the time. Other Sources: Virgin Media: Clapton's Shocking Rant Guardian Unlimited: The Ten Right-Wing Rockers. These statements were allegedly made on stage by a heavily drunk Clapton during a concert in Birmingham, UK, in 1976. Clapton is referring to British anti-immigration Conservative MP Enoch Powell. Clapton later made similar further comments to the audience later in the evening. Clapton has never denied making these statements and has refused to apologise for his remarks or distance himself from them, although he denies that his views are racist and states that he is merely an opponent of mass immigration. This incident was the main inspiration for the formation of Rock Against Racism.

Michael Jackson's dead!

Are you pinning that on Clapton?

This is from years ago, yes?

Yes, 1976 (as noted in the text), but he's never apologised or withdrawn the remarks, which is the more interesting part.

Yeah, but what raised this today?

It went past on Twitter, and I'd never seen it before.

This is from years ago, yes?

A 30 year old being racist in the 70s is hardly that shocking or surprising is it?

What he said was probaby quite tame for the time (send them home, rather then kill them all)

Also he did a duet with Tina Turner 11 years later!

Malc

In an interview from October 1976 with Sounds magazine, Clapton remarked: "I thought it was quite funny actually. I don't know much about politics. I don't even know if it would be good or bad for him to get in. I don't even know who the Prime Minister is now. I just don't know what came over me that night. It must have been something that happened in the day but it came out in this garbled thing... I thought the whole thing was like Monty Python. There's this rock group playing on-stage and the singer starts talking about politics. It's so stupid. Those people who paid their money sittin' listening to this madman dribbling on and the band meanwhile getting fidgety thinking 'oh dear'."[96]

In a 2004 interview with Uncut, Clapton referred to Powell as "outrageously brave", and stated that his "feeling about this has not changed", because the UK is still "... inviting people in as cheap labour and then putting them in ghettos." In 2004, Clapton told an interviewer for Scotland on Sunday, "There's no way I could be a racist. It would make no sense".[97] In his 2007 autobiography, Clapton called himself "deliberately oblivious to it all" and wrote, "I had never really understood or been directly affected by racial conflict... when I listened to music, I was disinterested in where the players came from or what colour their skin was. Interesting, then, that 10 years later, I would be labelled a racist... Since then, I have learnt to keep my opinions to myself. Of course, it might also have had something to do with the fact that Pattie had just been leered at by a member of the Saudi royal family."[98] In a December 2007 interview with Melvin Bragg on The South Bank Show, Clapton reiterated his support for Enoch Powell and again denied that Powell's views were "racist".[99]

Fair enough. I'd thought this was reasonably common knowledge.

I'd never heard of it. It's some pretty appalling stuff.

He never hurt any women or children, though.

He never hurt any women or children, though.

Apart from his own child through neglectfully leaving the balcony door open.

He's a fudge toilet guitarist too.

I think that artists should have fuck all to do with the running of anything.

Hello.

Take away the blues scale and he's proper fucked. One trick pony.

Cream had a few good ones. As a solo artist he's sweet though.

I suppose, but even Cream aren't something I'd ever listen to voluntarily.

I suppose, but even Cream aren't something I'd ever listen to voluntarily.

Ozzy for president

"But some of my best friends are black!"

Cream had a few good ones. As a solo artist he's shite though.