I don’t like Eric Clapton. He’s an overrated guitarist and immigrant-hating right-wing jerk with no chin who put out the worst live album in history (see, but don’t listen to, 1992’s Unplugged) and took the Tulsa sound and sent the whole world into an irreversible coma with it. Oh, and he also released the worst song I’ve ever been ear-mugged by (I’ll give you two guesses) and have I mentioned he has no chin?
And despite the fact that he’s been making music since Jesus hung on the cross saying, “God, why hast thou abandoned me to ‘My Father’s Tears’?” he’s only managed to put out one truly great album, and that one was largely his collaborators’ doing. Oh, and all three of his supergroups are over-hyped bores and someone should have passed a law forbidding him from even uttering the word “reggae,” and every time I hear “Wonderful Tonight” I have to fight an almost insurmountable urge to seal my ear canals shut with Gorilla Glue. And have I mentioned the fact that someone should start a Go Fund Me to buy the guy a fucking chin?
I don’t need proof that Eric Clapton’s long and largely painful to the ears career has been for the most part a massive waste of vinyl, but if I did it’s right here in my hands in the form of 2004’s 20th Century Masters – The Millennium Collection: The Best of Eric Clapton, which zeroes in on Clapton’s seventies work. The legend has been making music for ninety years or so but produced his only essential music during the Me Decade, and you’d think the folks at Polydor Records who put the compilation together would have been able to come up with a mere ten piddling greats from that era.
But no, they couldn’t do it. The best they could do was put together a compilation that has a small handful of his truly great songs rubbing elbows with some of his dullest offenders. And we should all be praising the Lord the compilation’s time frame is limited to 1970 to 1978. Had Polydor opened the floodgate to his subsequent product we’d have found ourselves confronted with the twin evils of “Tears in Heaven” and “My Father’s Tears.”
I’m trying, believe it or not, to be fair to Old Slowbland here. I could have cherry-picked any one of the mediocre records he’s been releasing since the before the dawn of the eighties and eviscerated it. I’d have had dozens of LPs to chose from because Clapton has been a musical nullity for decades who’s grown blander by the album and has worked harder than just about anyone (far more so than fellow legend Sir Paul McCartney) to stake his claim to the middle of the middle of the road, and when all is said and done his only real contribution to music has been to take rank sentimentality to heights undreamt of by the Hallmark Channel. Otherwise he keeps to state-of-the-art AOR pap and yawn-worthy forays into the hoary old blues. Instead I’m giving him the chance to strut his stuff and show himself at his very best, and wouldn’t you know it–he comes up fatally short.
The compilation opens with E.C.’s cover of Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff” from 1974’s 461 Ocean Boulevard, which many consider the best thing he’s ever done aside from 1970’s Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs but which I’ve always suspected owes at least part of its overrated reputation to the fact that everyone at the time was happily surprised to discover its heroin-addled creator was still alive.
In any event Clapton sounds like a mild-mannered English chap awkwardly trying to sound like a victim of injustice, which is to say he comes off as politely offended. It’d have been funny had he tossed in a “I do say, I believe there’s been a misunderstanding” at song’s end, but Clapton has never (so far as I know) said a funny thing in his life. And speaking of Jah, the reggae cross-over that is his 1975 cover of Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” (which was released as a non-album single) is less a song than a cautionary tale on the dangers of reggae blandification, and how anyone could have come to the conclusion that this is one of Clapton’s “best” is beyond me. Clapton completely saps the song of its emotional power, and if anything makes croaking after being shot in a pointless war seem an almost perky proposition.
Clapton’s cover of J.J. Cale’s “After Midnight” (from his 1970 debut Eric Clapton) has real blood running through its veins and is that rarest of all things—a song that came out of Tulsa that doesn’t make you want to take a long nap. Its breakneck pace and frantic tambourine give it authentic boogie power, the female vocalists give it a gospel shove, and Clapton sounds like he’s actually enjoying himself. And he throws down with a great guitar solo to boot.
“Wonderful Tonight” is one of three, count ‘em three songs from 1977’s Slowhand, which tells you something about the uneven nature of his seventies’ work, especially when you consider the compilation completely ignores 1975’s There’s One in Every Crowd and 1976’s No Reason to Cry, the latter of which actually features a pair of very good candidates for inclusion in the ferocious “Hungry” and his duet with Bob Dylan, “Sign Language.” “Wonderful Tonight” is Clapton’s first foray into cringe-worthy sentimentality and he nails it—the song’s an exercise in romantic gloop, although even I’ll admit that if you can force yourself to listen to the thing the sadness in Clapton’s voice has a certain poignancy to it.
Also from Slowhand we have Clapton’s cover of Cale’s “Cocaine,” which he muscles up a bit but doesn’t make any more exciting. And it can’t really be said that he adds anything to the original, in part because both he and Cale sound the same and they’re true confederates when it comes to producing songs that sound like they were recorded while sitting in a Barcalounger after taking 20mgs of Valium. And to complete the Slowhand trifecta we have “Lay Down Sally,” a lightweight Tulsa sound ready made of no real consequence that just sort of percolates along doing nothing much. Don’t think Eric’s going to have too much trouble getting Sally to lay down—perky it may be, but “Lay Down Sally” never fails to lay me out with a near terminal case of who cares.
“Promises”—the comp’s sole take from 1978’s Backless–is yet another dose of Sominex disguised as a song—it shuffles along okay, but its only real notable attribute is its total lack of ambition, It’s as if Eric woke up one morning and said “I have discovered my life’s mission and it is to eliminate every trace of electricity from my music.” You’ve heard the phrase “slow boil”? Well Clapton is all about the no boil, and if it’s thrills you’re looking for you’ll have to go back in time to 1970 and Derek and the Dominos or “Let It Rain” from his eponymous debut.
“Let It Rain” is an up-tempo guitar raver that generates real sparks and would have fit quite nicely on Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs—indeed, it was one of the few solo Clapton songs Derek & the Dominos deemed worthy to play live. Great guitar riff, backing vocals by former Crickets’ Jerry Allison and Sonny Curtis, and to cap it off a guitar duel between Stephen Stills and Clapton, who doesn’t come off the winner. Which says something—first he plays second fiddle to Gregg Allman, then Stephen Stills. One can only imagine what short work Neil Young would make of him.
“Let It Grow” from 461 Ocean Boulevard is a lovely and gentle number—the loveliest Clapton song I know. The song exudes real spirituality, which is something you’d expect more from Clapton’s frenemy George Harrison. Clapton practically whispers, then duets beautifully with Yvonne Elliman, and when he sings “Love is lovely, let it grow” he his vocals convey real emotional power. His electric guitar playing is also passionate, and the long guitar take out, while low key, sings.
The compilation also includes two songs from Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, and you have to wonder why only two when Slowhand gets three. You also have to wonder if the folks who put the best-of together weren’t cheating—there’s nothing in the album’s title that would lead you to expect anything but Clapton’s solo work. But be that as it may you can’t go wrong with “Layla,” one of the very best rock songs of all time. Clapton has never been and will never be a great singer, but his vocals on “Layla” are freighted with an all-too-palpable desperation.
That said, thinking of “Layla” as a Clapton song does it a great disservice and is a gross distortion of the truth. Duane Allman came up with the song’s unforgettable guitar riff and plays the crying bird guitar during the coda, which was drummer Jim Gordon’s—not Eric Clapton’s—invention. So yeah, cry shame you on the album’s compilers you may.
Also from Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs we have “Bell Bottom Blues,” a slow simmer of a blues that is anything but Okie lazy. Clapton’s vocals convey real emotional intensity, and what we have here is the best song about hippie bottom wear this side of Redd Kross’ “Elephant Flares.” And it never fails to bring back memories of the denim bell bottoms my older brother passed on to me way back in the day. He’d sewed a patch of the Rolling Stones lips logo to the bottom of the right flare and they should have gotten me laid but they didn’t. I was un-layable at the time.
I find it hard to think of a rock and roll “legend” who will leave less of a legacy—the supergroup wonks will praise him for this tenures in the Yardbirds, Cream, and Blind Faith, while the insane will commend him for such “classics” as “Tears in Heaven” and “My Father’s Eyes.” Me, I’ll give him Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs—his only sustained work of brilliance—and a sad few other songs, most of which you’ll find on this compilation, albeit along with an equal number of songs that demonstrate his myriad faults.
Even his status as a guitar god is suspect—who can’t come up with a long list of guitarists they’d sooner hear? He once said, “I can’t play long solos anymore without boring myself” and he isn’t alone. Eric Clapton went from being God to dullish ambassador of the terminally laid back to mawkish MOR mediocrity. As Robert Christgau wrote of Clapton’s 1989 LP Journeyman, “What did you expect him to call it—Hack?”
GRADED ON A CURVE:
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