LITTLE GIRL Guitar Cover :: Blues Breakers :: Eric Clapton :: John Mayall

A cover of Eric Clapton’s guitar parts in ‘Little Girl’ by the Bluesbreakers, from the famous 1966 'Beano' album. When choosing amp or amp-simulator settings for this tune, don’t be tempted to add too much distortion. If you listen to the original track you will hear that the guitar sound is only moderately overdriven.

I found that the trickiest part was remembering the different turnaround phrases after the six verses. The third and fourth are remarkably similar, as are the fifth and sixth. But when you have got them down it is excellent practice to invent phrases of your own.

The solo includes something that Eric did a lot around this period, and that is the variable string bends, where the string is bent a full tone or even a tone and a half, then played again with the bend released slightly, then again back to the original bend. The examples on the record are masterful and very worthy of study.

It was originally recorded, of course, with the 1958-’60 Sunburst Les Paul Standard that is known as the ‘Beano’ Les Paul, through the equally iconic Marshall JTM combo. The present whereabouts of both are currently unknown. For my own take I used my 2010 Les Paul R0 (1960 reissue) which is fitted with Shed pickups. As with all of my videos to date, I ran it through Garageband. For a backing track, I took the cut from the stereo version of the Beano album and panned it all the way to the left to remove Eric's guitar.

Thanks for watching and good luck with your playing!