Inspired by Eric Clapton: a new story at The RS500

If you've been around here a while you'll have spotted that music is pretty important to me (yes, glam metal counts as music) and you may remember me getting excited about running across a project called The RS500, where each week they're posting two pieces of fiction or non-fiction in response to Rolling Stone magazine's top 500 albums. Today my own contribution is up, a short story inspired by John Mayall's Blues Breakers album with Eric Clapton, which you can read by following this link. But not before you finish reading this post, obviously.

My dad's actual 51-year-old copy of the LP

It's quite a melancholy story which, as the editor said, kind of fits with the tone of the record so that's ok. I listened to the album on repeat on Spotify while I was writing it, mainly because the LP was miles away in my dad's record stash (and I wouldn't dare touch it - look at how pristine it is! Zoom in and you can see one small crease). The aim was to infuse the story with some of the feeling of the album but I did keep getting lost in the music and downing tools for a while. I thought back to my early encounters with this LP as a child in the eighties, and then thought about the context of my dad buying the album twenty years previously (1966, though apparently he saw them perform in '67 or '68, which I guess was post-Clapton). If you want to look back on the era of peace and love with a sort of melancholy nostalgia, I can think of no better vantage point than the Thatcher years, and slap bang in the middle of the Falklands war seemed particularly suitable. Hence the story is set in 1982 (not explicitly stated but Falklands and Fun Boy Three references are there for the sharp-eyed).

I confess I did steal the non-anecdote (and family legend) of seeing Eric Clapton in a bar from my dad ("And?" "And he was probably buying a drink"). However, regulars here will also know that he did read to me a lot so there's not much crossover with the main character. I should also thank him for taking a photo of the record sleeve and emailing it to me as though that was a perfectly normal thing for me to request.

So, now you know the background, and I bet you're dying to read the only story you'll encounter this week (probably) with the word 'antimacassar' in it, so for ease of clicking, here's the link again. Enjoy.