Clapton recorded “Cocaine” for Slowhand with producer Glyn Johns and his Tulsa-heavy touring band — Carl Radle on bass, Jamie Oldaker on drums, George Terry on rhythm guitar — which is precisely why his version swings the way Cale’s does. He has never claimed the song, and he has said more than once that Cale is one of the most important figures in rock; this was already the second Cale composition he had turned into a hit, after “After Midnight” in 1970. He reads the song as an anti-drug one, calling it “quite cleverly anti-cocaine” on the grounds that a lecture would never have landed. The error here is entirely chronological: his record is superb, it is just second.