The Eric Clapton : The Alien Connection

The many fans of the Velveteen Robot blog have been asking "when will you be publishing another hit post to your blog". Well the staff at Robot have been spending the past year extensively researching the topics that matter to our fans.

And because we post only once per year, we can spend our time scouring the world and really digging in.

One question that comes to us a lot is "what is the relationship between the Alien franchise and Eric Clapton." Well, we have put all of our resources into finding out.

This conspiracy goes very deep. You may not look at life the same way after reading this.

1. Ripley - Both Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker were born in Ripley in the United Kingdom. Thats right, he was born in a section of Surrey England with the same name as the main character in the Alien franchise. Coincidence, I think not. This, my friends, is only the tip of the iceberg.

2. I Shot the What? - We have learned, through inside sources, that the original name of "I shot the Sheriff" was going to be "I shot the Xenomorph". Eric himself pushed for this, under the influence of Ginger Baker, but his producers encouraged him to change it to Sheriff. "Its much more acceptable to shoot a sheriff" they would say.

Please take a moment to read the lyrics for "I shot the Sheriff":

• Every time that I plant a seed
• He said, "Kill it before it grows"
• He said, "Kill it before it grows", I say

"Kill it before it grows"? This is most certainly a reference to a growing Alien spore. Pretty amazing stuff. 

3. The Extra - Through extensive research on the topic, we have learned that Ginger Baker was an extra in the original Alien movie. In the credits he was listed as "man in spacesuit" as he didn't want to be publicly identified. 

Using complex image enhancement techniques we have uncovered this image from the original movie footage:

If thats not Ginger Baker i'm not sure who is.

This all leads us to the ultimate conclusion: Eric Clapton and Ridley Scott are the same person. Here is a picture, you can decide for yourself:

Just look at them, they could be twins. The common theme behind all of these points is of course Ginger Baker. He is most certainly the mastermind behind the Alien movies and Eric Clapton's career.

We hope you have enjoyed the annual post. Thank you for reading. Please leave comments if you would like.

Eric Clapton Stinks

Eric Clapton Stinks

On any list of the top guitarists in human history Eric Clapton inedibly shows up. Why is this you ask? Is it because he is a super great guitarist? I think not.

In this blog post I will seek to prove that several guitarists, including many that are heralded by gullible experts everywhere, are not as great as they are made out to be.

Guitarist Number 1: Eric Clapton

I conjecture that Eric Clapton is a mediocre guitarist at best. This may come as a great surprise but please humor me. Mr. Clapton participated in a number of good songs including 'I shot the Sheriff',  'White Room' and 'Sunshine of your Love'. But, in my estimation he road the coattails of the musical members of these bands. 'I shot the Sheriff' was recorded by Bob Marley and Eric Clapton copied it only 1 year later. 'White Room' and 'Sunshine of your Love' were recorded by Cream of which Eric was a 3rd rate member. After much research it has been discovered that drummer Ginger Baker was the real mastermind behind these hits.

Let us now examine Eric Clapton's solo hits. 'After Midnight' and 'Before you accuse me' have to be some of the most boring songs ever written. 'Wonderful Tonight' is a horribly slow song and 'Leyla' takes a perfectly good name and then ruins it with an extremely dull tune.

Here are some people sleeping at an Eric Clapton concert:

As you can see Mr. Clapton is not all he is cracked up to be. He somehow became a household name when other greats like Jeff Beck and Alex Lifeson are unknown to most. Jeff Beck is the only real reason that the Yardbirds were great. He plays with only his fingers for goodness sake.

Guitarist Number 2: Eddie Van Halen

When  guitarist resorts to using a power drill on his songs you know he is out of ideas. Eddie states in his biography 'I never really knew how to play the guitar, so I resorted to items from my garage in order to make it sound like I did'. If this quote doesn't prove it I am not sure what will.

Eddie Van Halen also has the horrible tendency to place crazy guitar work into slow songs. The song 'Jump' is a perfect example of this. This song is relatively slow and then right in the middle, bam, this awful tapping guitar solo pops in out of nowhere. At the end of the solo its like the song doesn't know how to recover. Unconscionable.

My last point regarding Eddie Van Halen: what about that horribly striped guitar? His taste in guitars follows closely his taste in guitar soloing techniques.

Here is a picture of some sad people who have been watching a Van Halen concert:

These people look super sad. They have probably just finished the 'Jump' solo and he is soon to bring out the drill.

I hope that through this un-refutable evidence I have convinced you that these two guitarists are not great. So why are they always on the top 10 list of the worlds greatest guitarists? I think it is peer pressure. If these two are not prominently displayed the lists will be shunned by other unknowledgeable top 100 list readers. I encourage anyone who is polled for a top 100 guitarist list to not succumb to peer pressure and leave these two off.

Thank you.