Another chapter in the book titled: Why Musicians Are Not Scientists.
Your Back Page correspondent is far too young to remember this personally, but there was a time in the 1960s when musician Eric Clapton was considered a bit of a legend.
Such was his fretboard dexterity, fans of the guitar-twiddler took to daubing “Clapton is God” graffiti upon the walls of London town.
Sadly, in the intervening six decades, there has been precious little evidence to support that hypothesis and significant volumes of material to debunk it.
And the latest entry in the “Clapton not God” category is a real doozy.
Clapton has gone public with his belief that covid vaccines are a “form of mass hypnosis”.
Citing a conspiracy theory spruiked by Belgian psychologist Mattias Desmet, Clapton reckons there’s been a global campaign of subliminal advertising that has been tricking folks into getting the jab.
“Once I kind of started to look for it, I saw it everywhere,” Clapton told YouTube channel Real Music Observer.
“Then I remembered seeing little things on YouTube which were like subliminal advertising. It had been going on for a long time: that thing about ‘you will own nothing and you will be happy.’ And I thought, ‘What’s that mean?’ And bit by bit, I put a rough kind of jigsaw puzzle together,” he said.
Your correspondent has an alternative answer to the question: “what’s that mean?” It means, Eric, that you took way too many drugs back in the day, and it’s really showing.
Clapton, unfortunately, has form when it comes to oversharing his questionable opinions.
One of the most offensive examples was a despicable racist rant delivered on stage in 1976. We won’t dignify the remarks by quoting them, but the thrust was a foul endorsement of the policies of British anti-immigration politician Enoch Powell.
On the bright side, the ageing rocker has pledged not to perform at gigs where proof of immunisation against coronavirus is required to attend.
Small mercies.
If you hear something that hits a bum note, share the squirm with felicity@medicalrepublic.com.au
