On July 9, 1986, Eric Clapton walked onto the stage at the Casino de Montreux and began playing a song he had known for years.
But “Double Trouble” was not his song.
Standing beside him was Otis Rush, the Chicago bluesman who had written and recorded it in 1958. Rush sang the opening lines and controlled the performance. Clapton entered as the famous guest, but the musical hierarchy was unmistakable: the song, the tension and the emotional language all began with the man standing next to him.
For one night, one of rock’s most celebrated guitarists was back beside one of the musicians who had helped make him.
Clapton Had Already Carried the Song for a Decade
Clapton had recorded “Double Trouble” for his 1976 album No Reason to Cry. His version was slow, heavy and brooding - the kind of performance that suited his preference for notes that carried emotional weight rather than technical display.
Ten years later, he was performing it with its creator.
Rush had written and recorded the song for Cobra Records while still in his early twenties. Built around a minor-key progression, it described romantic betrayal and financial insecurity with none of the release or swagger common to more conventional blues numbers. The Blues Foundation later recognised the original recording as a landmark performance.
Clapton did not discover “Double Trouble” as an old standard without an identifiable source. He knew exactly whose musical world he was entering.
Otis Rush’s Influence Was Written Into Clapton’s Playing
Rush was one of the central architects of Chicago’s West Side blues style. His music combined minor keys, gospel-influenced singing and sudden guitar phrases that could sound wounded one moment and violent the next. A left-handed player using a right-handed guitar turned upside down, he bent the strings downward, producing a distinctive attack that other guitarists found difficult to reproduce.
His influence extended far beyond Chicago. Rush’s official biography identifies Clapton among the musicians shaped by his work, alongside Peter Green, Carlos Santana, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Michael Bloomfield.
That influence did not mean Clapton simply copied Rush. Clapton developed his own tone, phrasing and increasingly restrained approach. But Rush had supplied part of the vocabulary: the minor-key darkness, the sustained bends and the idea that a guitar phrase should sound almost like a human voice under pressure.
At Montreux, the source and the successor could be heard in the same performance.
Clapton Did Not Try to Take Over the Stage
The surviving footage is valuable because it does not present “Double Trouble” as a guitar contest.
Rush remains the centre of the song. Clapton watches him closely, places phrases around the vocal and answers rather than overwhelms him. His fame does not require him to turn every available space into a solo.
That restraint gives the performance its meaning. Clapton was not there to demonstrate that he had surpassed one of his influences. He was there to participate in Rush’s music while Rush was still present to lead it.
Clapton joined Rush for “Crosscut Saw,” “Double Trouble” and “All Your Love,” then remained for “Every Day I Have the Blues” with Luther Allison. The concert was broadcast on Swiss radio, filmed for television and eventually released in full on CD and DVD on March 21, 2006.
Fame Had Not Been Distributed Equally
There is an uncomfortable truth beneath the performance.
By the 1970s and 1980s, white rock musicians influenced by the blues had reached enormous international audiences. Rush continued touring, but his official biography notes that he remained severely under-recorded even while blues-derived rock dominated the charts.
Clapton became far more famous than the man who wrote “Double Trouble.” That does not invalidate Clapton’s talent, nor does it mean his success came only from imitation. It does mean that any honest account of his greatness must identify the musicians whose innovations made that greatness possible.
The Montreux performance does exactly that.
Eric Clapton arrived as the bigger star. Otis Rush remained the author, the singer and the musical authority.
For five minutes, rock history corrected its own billing: the world-famous disciple stood beside the blues master who had helped teach him how to speak.