Cocaine

What is the Cocaine guitar tone?

The Cocaine guitar tone is a swaggering, two-chord Stratocaster riff, heard on Eric Clapton's 1970s blues rock recording. It is a distorted riff tone, and Eric Clapton reportedly tracked it with the Stratocaster known as Blackie, which Wikipedia says Clapton played almost exclusively on stage and in the studio from 1974 to 1985, recording hits such as Cocaine: he bought six 1950s Strats at the Sho-Bud guitar shop in Nashville, gave one each to George Harrison, Pete Townshend and Steve Winwood, and Nashville luthier Ted Newman Jones assembled Blackie from the best parts of the remaining three, built around 1956 and 1957; his tech since 1979, Lee Dickson, told Vintage Guitar that Clapton took a '56 body, a '57 neck and the pickups from a third guitar to make it, and the magazine says the two-chord anchor of Clapton's cover of J.J. Cale's song came from it, and Guitar Player also names Cocaine among its recordings; Willie Spears, his tech from 1975 to 1979, called Blackie his favourite studio guitar, remembering that they saw Cale perform in London, that while Slowhand was being recorded Clapton sent him to get the lyrics to Cocaine, and that Clapton always had several guitars in the studio but always went back to Blackie; Spears also notched its three-position pickup switch to make a five-position one, and Dickson says its vibrato is blocked behind the bridge with the springs tightened, though no source read here names the amp on the take; Songfacts says Cale, who put the song on his 1976 album Troubadour, had pictured it as a jazz number until his producer Audie Ashworth talked him into a rocker, that Cale did three single-string overdubs of the riff, and that Clapton's version has a much more complex guitar line and more prominent vocals; Glyn Johns produced Clapton's recording, which Wikipedia credits to Clapton on vocals and lead guitar, George Terry on rhythm guitar, Dick Sims on Hammond organ, Carl Radle on bass and Jamie Oldaker on drums; Clapton called the song quite cleverly anti-cocaine and later added the line that dirty cocaine in concert to underline it; Slowhand came out on RSO on 25 November 1977, the song was also the B-side of Lay Down Sally, and a live version from Just One Night charted on the Billboard Hot 100 as the B-side of Tulsa Time, a number 30 hit in 1980. This lives right on the edge of breakup, where the volume knob on the guitar does the real work between clean and dirty.

You do not need that exact gear to land in the same place. What carries this sound is the gain structure, the EQ curve, the pickup choice and the order of the effects, and all four can be rebuilt on equipment that costs a fraction of the original. The numbers change from amp to amp, because a high-gain head and a small practice amp reach the same voicing from different knob positions. That translation is what Tonelify works out for the rig you actually own.

What gear did Eric Clapton use on Cocaine?

The Stratocaster known as Blackie, which Wikipedia says Clapton played almost exclusively on stage and in the studio from 1974 to 1985, recording hits such as Cocaine: he bought six 1950s Strats at the Sho-Bud guitar shop in Nashville, gave one each to George Harrison, Pete Townshend and Steve Winwood, and Nashville luthier Ted Newman Jones assembled Blackie from the best parts of the remaining three, built around 1956 and 1957; his tech since 1979, Lee Dickson, told Vintage Guitar that Clapton took a '56 body, a '57 neck and the pickups from a third guitar to make it, and the magazine says the two-chord anchor of Clapton's cover of J.J. Cale's song came from it, and Guitar Player also names Cocaine among its recordings; Willie Spears, his tech from 1975 to 1979, called Blackie his favourite studio guitar, remembering that they saw Cale perform in London, that while Slowhand was being recorded Clapton sent him to get the lyrics to Cocaine, and that Clapton always had several guitars in the studio but always went back to Blackie; Spears also notched its three-position pickup switch to make a five-position one, and Dickson says its vibrato is blocked behind the bridge with the springs tightened, though no source read here names the amp on the take; Songfacts says Cale, who put the song on his 1976 album Troubadour, had pictured it as a jazz number until his producer Audie Ashworth talked him into a rocker, that Cale did three single-string overdubs of the riff, and that Clapton's version has a much more complex guitar line and more prominent vocals; Glyn Johns produced Clapton's recording, which Wikipedia credits to Clapton on vocals and lead guitar, George Terry on rhythm guitar, Dick Sims on Hammond organ, Carl Radle on bass and Jamie Oldaker on drums; Clapton called the song quite cleverly anti-cocaine and later added the line that dirty cocaine in concert to underline it; Slowhand came out on RSO on 25 November 1977, the song was also the B-side of Lay Down Sally, and a live version from Just One Night charted on the Billboard Hot 100 as the B-side of Tulsa Time, a number 30 hit in 1980.

Sources: Wikipedia: Cocaine (song), Wikipedia: Blackie (guitar), Vintage Guitar: Eric Clapton's Blackie, Guitar Player: Eric Clapton on letting Blackie go, Songfacts: Cocaine, Wikipedia: Slowhand

Tonelify's tone matcher reads that chain and translates it to the amp and guitar you already own, returning gain, bass, mids, treble and presence values along with a pickup position.