Recent years have been challenging for blues guitarist Stephen Dale Petit, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2018, and with a broken heart, romantically. But in 2025, he's standing tall once more with his new album, Be The Love, which features an “insane” guest solo from none other than Eric Clapton.
Previously speaking to Guitar Player, he's discussed the surreal nature of befriending his hero, admitting that “any preconceived notions I had of what he was like went out the window pretty early.” Their budding relationship led to him coaxing Slowhand onto his latest album, but he had to be patient for the magic moment to happen.
“It just felt right,” he tells Guitarist of their collaboration. “I had built this two-and-a-half-minute section of music for him. We recorded the song, and I just told everybody, ‘There'll be a solo there from a special guest.’ Nobody really interrogated me.”
Their link-up, however, got off to a slightly rocky start.
“I sent Eric a rough mix, and he came back to me, a bit grumpy. He said, ‘Well, lockdown is finished and now I'm getting inundated,’” Petit recalls. “So I thought, ‘Oh well, that's his way of saying no.’
“But he got back to me the next day and said, ‘Look, I don't mean to be a grump, but it's going to be a long wait.’ I was just getting ready to start chemo, so I thought, ‘Well, fine, I'm in no hurry.’”
Cancer can rarely be seen as a fortuitous thing, but here it worked in his favor. And their time in the studio together – when it eventually happened – was a moment for the guitarist to savor.
“He was standing two feet from me at Hoxa HQ [in London], facing the speakers,” he recalls. “When he was done, he said, ‘Well, what do you think?’ And I said, ‘I want to cry.’ Because I was so moved.
“But there were some quick glances between Eric and his tech-like, ‘Er, what does he mean?’ – so I quickly said, ‘No, no, I mean that in the best possible way!’
“His solo is fucking insane,” he adds. “He did map out certain bits. But he turned off his thinking brain and turned on his channel – his brain is literally a conductor, channelling the energy from Pluto, Uranus, Jimi Hendrix…”
The session stretched across two days. With Clapton’s guitars – a Fender Stratocaster of some description, and a “gorgeous 60s brown sunburst [Gibson] 335” – left at the studio overnight, Petit chanced his luck.
“I asked Eric, ‘Can I play them?’ And he said, ‘Yeah, of course.’ So he went home, and I had full license to play his guitars. If that isn't guitar-player love, I don't know what the fuck is!”
Petit’s full interview features in the new issue of Guitarist. Head to Magazines Direct to grab a copy.
