[from left] George Terry, Carlos Santana and Eric Clapton on stage in Palo Alto, California, August 6, 1975
FROM 1974 TILL very late in the decade, George Terry was the second guitarist to Clapton, and sometimes his understudy. “There were live concerts back then when Eric would be too drunk to play,” says Chuck Kirkpatrick, who was a childhood friend of Terry’s. “As a guitar player, George is technically perfect. There’s his intonation, his sense of time, his ability to learn parts. But he was not in Eric’s league in terms of blues guitar.”
“He was the perfect number two for Eric,” Albhy Galuten adds. “It was like the Don Felder-Joe Walsh [Eagles] relationship — Don being absolutely meticulous, Joe playing whatever strikes him in the moment.”