There was an authenticity to Buddy’s records that spoke to Eric. He has acknowledged many times the way those 1950s singles provided him with the inspiration he needed to take up the guitar. He first saw Buddy play live on the TV show Sunday Night at the London Palladium when he was 14 years old. Buddy was playing a Fender guitar and Eric was mesmerised by what he was seeing on the screen. It was the moment that changed his life.

‘That Fender was the future,’ he said later. ‘I wanted to run away from my past.’ As it turned out, his first guitar was not a Fender at all, but a Hoyer acoustic, on which he practised relentlessly, channelling the anger of his distorted childhood, thrashing the life out of this basic, hard-stringed instrument.

Soon he began to experiment with the possibilities of different sounds, using a Gibson played through a Marshall valve amp. As Eric found his way through some of the greatest bands ever – the Yardbirds, the Bluesbreakers, Cream and Derek and the Dominos – he began to create a layered depth of playing that was as distinctive as it was sometimes dark and compelling. He was elevating the guitar to a completely new level.

Amazingly, he was yet to properly own a Fender, the guitar that had inspired his career … until he arrived in Nashville in the mid-1970s.

He loved the city and bought no fewer than six Fender guitars while he was there, using the best parts of each instrument to morph the collection into one master guitar – a beauty called ‘Blackie’, which he played on stage from then on.

Since then, Eric has demonstrated his enduring love for Buddy at tribute events and concerts all over the world. He even wrote ‘Wonderful Tonight’ while waiting for his girlfriend – later his wife – Patti Boyd as she was getting ready to accompany him to a concert honouring Buddy, organised by fellow fan Paul McCartney on 7 September 1976, which would have been Buddy’s 40th birthday.

Buddy Holly came into Eric Clapton’s life through those fleeting, grainy images on an old black and white television in the analogue days of the 1950s. Buddy Holly has remained in his world ever since.

Bob Harris