Search and Destroy: Eric Clapton and his bands

so far Layla seems okay but is not blowing me away
a lot of it feels like Rick Danko Band songs that I wish were Rick Danko Band songs instead

er The Band songs sung by Rick Danko (not Rick Danko Band which I'm sure there was at some point)

https://i.imgur.com/QPAjz1r.png
iirc this is a pleasant album

I saw Rick Danko & Friends (incl. Butterfield, I think) on "Soundstage," the Chicago PBS show: a long set, and opening for Graham Parker & The Rumour, who were very hot---but Danko's crew more than held their own, if memories of the 70s can still/could ever be trusted. Might be on youtube etc. this very second!

I retain some affection for various bits of various periods of Clapton's career but I will not stan for him in any specific incarnation. He's like a mostly-middling buffet with some flourishes of quality. Standing in front of this buffet I will happily put onto my plate some Cream, some Blind Faith, a dab of Dominos, some mid-period solo work, a bit of Unplugged.

And since the thread title mentions bands, I suspect I may be the only person here with abiding affection for the August lineup: Phillinganes, Collins, East. That record may have aged badly but if you meet it where it is, it is full of a very particular kind of precise cool. I'll put it on sometimes and remember that at the time, it kinda rocked.

Also he's a fucking racist and was doubling down on his Enoch Powell comments at least into the 21st Century.

― papa don't take no meth (stevie), Tuesday, March 20, 2018 2:43 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sadly, this is OTM - it's difficult to buy into the excuse that he was off his face on drugs and alcohol when years later he was asked about it and, indeed, doubled down on the Enoch Powell comments. This is after being sober for decades.

i should hear that album - rick danko had his own album to do iirc

aww keep listening to layla (the album), my friend, it'll hit you one day i swear

kinda feel you on The Band thing, though.

August does nail the vibe of yuppies performing authenticity. I like it. Anyone see the recent documentary?

some of it is good, I could see getting into it. though honestly Clapton isnt a bad singer but there's something so uncompelling about him as a vocalist

More like Eric crapton amirite

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S60M5X4Rqr4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q53twA7I02Q

I've tried with Derek and the Dominoes, but aside from a couple of (obvious) tracks it just doesn't stick, which is the same problem I have with Blind Faith, Traffic and a few other groups of that era. Just in one ear out the other, even when I appreciate the playing or sound when they're on.

Cool. Before I clicked on that I meant to type two important questions:
Will he flap his elbow(s)?
Will he sing “Java Blues”?

August does nail the vibe of yuppies performing authenticity.

A 42-year-old alcoholic with multiple country homes = "young urban professional"?

I love “bell bottom blues”

The tabla is distracting though

Layla's one of my very favorite albums...and it was downhill from there. (I do enjoy 461 Ocean Boulevard, at it's best it conveys a sense of relief and gratefulness from someone who realizes how fortunate he was to escape heroin addiction - would've been a nice way to end his career.)

*its best

Yeah I love Layla the album though it does seem very coked out

Will check out 461

I love “bell bottom blues”

I could happily live with this and "I Am Yours" from this record (and maybe hearing the title track on the radio once a decade).

The tabla is distracting though

The Layla album was one of the first to receive a "modern" remix, back in 1990, which I would assume buries the tabla a bit. One change I remember was moving the bass from one channel to the centre.

I hate Clapton but will grudgingly add that his cover of Little Wing is second to Bell Bottom Blues in my list of Derek tracks I'd save in a fire

Is it absurd to wonder if Richard Lloyd and Tom Verlaine took any notes from the sublime interplay on eg Bell Bottom Blues?

“I met all the great guitarists because I grew up in Greenwich Village. Hendrix, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck — and I was not a fan of Eric Clapton. He was definitely not God. Although I missed him at the beginning when he was a superb bluesman.” - Richard Llloyd

*Lloyd

FWIW, one reason I liked Clapton during his peak years (through Derek & the Dominos) is that he was very critical of himself in a good way. I think the Yardbirds got much better when he left, but his assessment wasn't wrong - "For Your Love" wasn't a great moment compared to what they were doing best before and what they would achieve with Jeff Beck, and his own strength at the time was playing electric blues as heard on that Bluesbreakers album. And he was right about Cream - he knew they weren't achieving their full potential, and when he got wind of the Band, his instincts were totally correct, that he wasn't going to achieve much more with Cream. And he was rightfully and sensibly embarrassed by the ridiculous "God" graffiti. I much prefer Jeff Beck and especially Hendrix as guitarists and (at least in the '60s) recording artists, but for a guy who didn't have a compelling vision or identity as a recording artist, Clapton navigated that limitation extremely well until he was too debilitated by heroin.

my dad saw him a bunch in the 60s with the bluesbreakers and i remember him buying the 'crossroads' box when it came out (and rebuying it when he finally got a cd player) (i still have his vinyl copy because i can't quite bring myself to part with it, because i remember him buying it when we were on holiday once), and he played clapton's records a lot, but i've always found him to be a really dull guitar player. is it because the way he played became codified as the "correct" way to be a guitar god, and thus hendrix running everything through wah and breaking the rules and townshend smashing shit up and managing to wring out these amazing shards of lead before the final destruction are always so much more thrilling to me, in terms of classic rock guitar heroics?

also, and i've doubtless shared this before, but my gf when i was 18 or so was a huge eric fan, her (very middle class) (but also really lovely and decent) parents took the family en masse to see him at the Albert Hall every year, and her favourite song was wonderful tonight. i was an itchy weird little fugazi/public enemy obsessive, and really struggled with that fact. wonderful tonight is genuinely my very, very worst song.

i devoured 'best of cream' when i was a kid so i grabbed the opportunity to see them when they reunited at MSG, and while one side of my brain realized that the strat-ified mellow eric did not really gel with the other two guys, on the other hand -- holy hanna was it cool to see cream. it was like an entry into that older-brother territory of the fillmore etc. like, my friends' older brothers were probably richard lloyd's age. i also saw him on the 461 Ocean Blvd tour, and probably various other times. that blues tour was good. oh and i saw that show with stevie winwood. stevie made sure to keep off eric's rug. the rug he was standing on. it was his turf.

i love the artistry and humor of clapton's best solos, and the way they "fit." it's hard to imagine a different solo in "while my guitar gently weeps." or "white room."

i think he's unbelievably dull also, stevie -- i got mild pushback from sund4r for saying this on twitter once but i stand by it, layla is exciting thanks to duane allman, this is canon (= my correct opinion)

He peaked with the Bluesbreakers. And he sold his soul to the devil by massacring blues standards like I’m So Glad and Crossroads on a regular basis for stadium success with Cream, and it was all downhill from there.

wait, where is sund4r?

I’m still mightily puzzled by the influence of the Band on seemingly everyone at that time, but we already covered that issue in the Band threat back in the summer.

oops - thread

#onethread

layla is exciting thanks to duane allman, this is canon (= my correct opinion)

tbh i've long since decided that layla is actually exciting thanks to rita coolidge, the piano coda >>>>>>> the rest of the song.

Never heard the *album but Mike Nesmith recorded the song "I Looked Away" and it was nice.

(*One of those albums I can't imagine why, when, where or how I'd have ever heard it.)

Never heard that cover! Will seek it out.

Oh, it’s on Nevada Fighter, which I did listen to once or twice when he passed away. Will revisit.

i love the artistry and humor of clapton's best solos, and the way they "fit." it's hard to imagine a different solo in "while my guitar gently weeps." or "white room."

This is kind of how I feel too. It's funny to me how George Harrison famously (well, famously among diehard Beatle fans) compared his own playing to Eric Clapton's during Get Back - George isn't wrong, but I think Clapton's best records were usually the ones where he was at the service of the song, similar to what George's philosophy seemed to be. For example, I'm actually not a big Cream fan but that 20-track The Very Best of Cream pretty much has every track I like by them, and it more or less focuses on stuff that did or could've worked as a singles. I'm tempted to say Clapton's contributions on them outside of the pithy solos were arguably more important. ("Badge" is my favorite example of this - pretty much all of his guitar playing on there is dedicated to constructing a song. I'm not sure if this is the case, but nothing he plays sounds improvised - every note sounds like it was composed ahead of time.) And this carried on with Blind Faith - I don't really play their stuff beyond the two singles, but I love that acoustic guitar part on "Can't Find My Way Home."

I guess Derek & the Dominos is a big exception because he does a lot of soloing on Layla, and it's very plausible having Duane Allman there pushed him to do better, but strictly in terms of musicianship, it's never been about virtuosity to me - there are plenty of guitar albums from that time frame where the soloing is much more impressive on a technical level. Layla may have its share of jams, but I kind of hear them all as songs - the whole album has a very clear theme that carries through every track, and to me a lot of the instrumental work seems apiece to the vocals where I'm hearing Clapton phrasing a lot of the lyrics through his guitar rather than deconstructing the musical content. Like I get the impression the written words are still at the center of his mind when he plays, and it always worked for me in this context. It reminds me of Ry Cooder's great instrumental of "The Dark End of the Street" where a lot of its power is the way it evokes the memory of the lyrics. I don't think it's a coincidence that it also deals with the pain of romance - the approach likely works so well with that kind of material because it plays off of the way people remember the past when they ruminate over a relationship.

I don’t have a problem with unplugged

I've soured on Clapton considerably over the years, and not only because of realizing what an asshole he is. The last time I saw him (well, not counting the Cream reunion) was one of the worst shows I've ever seen. I left after about the 5th straight song from his then-new and boring album. It didn't help that he was doing one of those "with orchestra" tours, which was absurd and awful. (The string section playing the "Crossroads" riff as humorless stentorian eighth notes practically ruined the song for me for all time.)

That said, I could put together 12-15 tracks up through Derek/Layla that I still like a lot. And the Cream reunion show was fun, even tho Jack Bruce had lost most of his voice.