“Eric’s standing there drinking an orange juice. He looks at me and says, ‘Been doing this a while, have you?’” When Eric Clapton saw an up-and-coming Tommy Emmanuel play for the first time

Back in 1990, Tommy Emmanuel opened for a certain Eric Clapton on the Australian leg of the Journeyman tour. For Emmanuel, it was a pivotal support tour, helping him gain further prominence in his home country – a few months after the release of his album, Dare to Be Different, his first top twenty album on the ARIA Charts.

“I went from selling 500 tickets to a 1000 almost like the next week, doing that tour with Eric,” he tells Ed Struijlaart on the Gitaarmannen podcast. “He was so nice to me. He was so professional.

Clapton Watched Tommy Emmanuel Play… Then Said This 👀 - YouTube

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“Eric was very quiet, and he was a kind of recluse. And so he would turn up three minutes before he was due on stage, and they would put the guitar on him, and he would stand at the side, and then the intro to Layla on the piano would come on, the lights had come down, and then he'd just walk out and go straight into the song, Pretending.”

However, this doesn’t mean the two never interacted. Indeed, one of Clapton's guitar techs was visibly impressed by Emmanuel's immense talent from the get-go and made sure he was properly introduced to the former Yardbirds guitarist.

“He's working at the side, tuning guitars and doing strings and all that,” Emmanuel relates. "And we set up quickly and do a quick soundcheck. As soon as I finish the song, he comes running up on stage and says, ‘Eric needs to see you. I'll make sure he'll be here tomorrow night.’

“So, sure enough, the next night, I open the show with a song by the Shadows. And I look over at the side, and there's Eric watching from the side.

“Then I got invited back to Eric's dressing room – and Eric's standing there drinking an orange juice, and he looks at me and he says, ‘Been doing this a while, have you?’ That was his compliment, and we got a photo together, and then I had to leave.”

Emmanuel goes on to say that right after every show on that tour, he went straight to playing a club show – just to make sure he had enough money to cover the tour expenses.

“[As] an opening act, you'll be lucky if you get $300 to $500,” he says, shedding light on the less glamorous side of touring. “I was playing the set, opening for Eric, and then racing out and doing a show in a club somewhere so I can pay my band and my crew and accommodate them. So this is all grinding.”

In recent Tommy Emmanuel news, the acoustic guitar virtuoso gave his take on what differentiates a “guitar player” from a “guitarist.”