Brian May thinks anti-vaxxers are fruitcakes. This includes his guitar hero, Eric Clapton.
Queen guitarist Brian May is not having a bar of rock music’s anti-vaxxer minority. Speaking to UK paper The Independent, May bemoaned the stance of artists like Eric Clapton and the Stone Roses’ Ian Brown, who’ve refused to play shows with Covid restrictions.
He was relatively diplomatic when speaking about the differences between himself and Clapton. “I love Eric Clapton, he’s my hero, but he has very different views from me in many ways,” said May. “He’s a person who thinks it’s OK to shoot animals for fun, so we have our disagreements, but I would never stop respecting the man.”
He pulled no punches when it came to the wider anti-vax movement, however. “Anti-vax people, I’m sorry, I think they’re fruitcakes. There’s plenty of evidence to show that vaccination helps. On the whole they’ve been very safe. There’s always going to be some side effect in any drug you take, but to go around saying vaccines are a plot to kill you, I’m sorry, that goes in the fruitcake jar for me.”
Eric Clapton is a knob, make no mistake—and a bigot to boot. Appearing at a 1976 anti-immigration concert, Clapton called for the ejection of foreigners in order to “keep Britain white” and stop it becoming a “black colony”. This from the man whose entire career is founded on the appropriation of Black blues music. He’s also known to have physically abused his first wife Pattie Boyd (the ex-wife of his good friend, the late George Harrison).
In recent times, Clapton teamed up with Van Morrison on the anti-lockdown song, ‘Stand and Deliver’, and in July, he made it clear he wouldn’t be playing anywhere that proof of vaccination was required. Or as he put it, he won’t perform anywhere there is a “discriminated audience present”.
