• Clapton, 76, claimed people were hypnotised to follow messages against their will – a theory widely discredited by scientists
  • In 2020, the singer teamed up with Van Morrison, 76, to release Stand And Deliver, a song slamming lockdowns 
  • He previously claimed to have suffered side effects from the AstraZeneca jab that left his hands and feet either ‘frozen, numb or burning’

Eric Clapton has claimed that anyone who has taken the Covid vaccine is a victim of ‘mass formation hypnosis’.

The singer, 76, previously claimed he suffered alarming side effects after his AstraZeneca jabs and released ant-lockdown single Stand And Deliver with Van Morrison in 2020.

In a new interview for The Real Music Observer YouTube channel, Eric has claimed that that subliminal messaging hidden in advertising led people to get the jab.

He said: ‘Whatever the memo was, it hadn’t reached me. Then I started to realise there was really a memo, and a guy, Mattias Desmet [professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University in Belgium], talked about it.

And it’s great. The theory of mass formation hypnosis. And I could see it then. Once I kind of started to look for it, I saw it everywhere.

‘Then I remembered seeing little things on YouTube which were like subliminal advertising. It had been going on for a long time: that thing about “you will own nothing and you will be happy.”

‘And I thought, “What’s that mean?” And bit by bit, I put a rough kind of jigsaw puzzle together. And that made me even more resolute.’

Mass formation psychosis – an attempt to hypnotise groups of people to follow messages against their will – has been widely discredited by scientists.

Asked why he felt implored to speak out in the first place, Clapton explained: ‘My career had almost gone anyway. At the point where I spoke out it had been almost been 18 months since I’d been forcibly retired.

‘I joined forces with Van and I got the tip Van was standing up to the measures and I thought, “why is nobody else doing this” so I contacted him.

‘He said “I’m just objecting really. But it seems like we’re not even allowed to do that. And nobody else is doing it.”

‘He sent me Stand and Deliver, which he’d already recorded. And it was during the process of talking about that with another musician, getting excited and sharing the news I found that nobody wanted to hear that.