Legendary rock musician Eric Clapton has been widely criticized for his anti-vaccine stance. Now, Queen guitarist Brian May has joined in, calling Clapton’s view “fruitcake.” Clapton has stated that he will not perform at any venue where there is a “discriminated audience present.” This was in reference to the United Kingdom announcing that it would implement a plan to require a “vaccine passport” for certain large events. “Unless there is provision made for all people to attend, I reserve the right to cancel the show,” Clapton said.
Speaking to The Independent, May — who is outspoken about being pro-vaccine — explained that he does not see eye to eye with his rock music peer on this topic. “I love Eric Clapton, he’s my hero, but he has very different views from me in many ways. 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,” May began. He then added, “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.”
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In addition to his anti-vaccine stance, Clapton also previously collaborated with Van Morrison on an anti-lockdown song titled “Stand and Deliver.” The two men were openly opposed to countries shutting down in order to try and decrease the spread of Covid-19, and their opposition led them to craft the protest tune. “There are many of us who support Van and his endeavors to save live music; he is an inspiration,” Clapton said at the time, via Variety. “We must stand up and be counted because we need to find a way out of this mess. The alternative is not worth thinking about. Live music might never recover.”
In a statement posted to his website in 2020, Morrison called social distancing “pseudo-science,” and called for musicians everywhere to band together and demand that venues be allowed “full capacity audiences” once again. “Come forward, stand up, fight the pseudo-science and speak up,” Morrison wrote in the since-deleted statement, per Consequence. “It’s not economically viable to do socially distanced gigs. Come forward now, the future is now.”
