Artist: Clapton, Eric
Label: Polydor Records
Released: 1970
Duration: 36.41
Rating: 3/5
After the bloody shipwreck of the Blind Faith experiment, Eric Clapton tried to keep out of the public eye. Mentally battered and totally unmotivated, he soon hit on the idea of making music in circumstances that were wildly unusual for him: as a sideman guitarist in Delaney & Bonnie and Friends. As would happen to him many more times in his career, the adventure with the Bramletts found Clapton at exactly the right moment. Dug in deep in the peace and quiet twilight of anonymity, the sideman gig kept him close to music, and at the same time, for the first time in his career, Eric was free from the merciless pressure of the madness of the media circus. Clapton used the middle ground he’d reached to clear his head and get a badly needed emotional sobering-up that shed his negative feelings, like anger and above all stage fright, and the results of that necessary psychological rehab finally crystallized in the birth of this exceptional musician’s debut.
The legendary guitarist’s solo debut, predictably titled simply Eric Clapton, sprouted during two breaks in the Delaney & Bonnie and Friends tour. So it’s no surprise that the album’s musical cast is basically a carbon copy of the lineup of the Bramletts’ concert caravan. To get his solo career off the ground, Clapton managed to recruit a whole slew of excellent players. Besides names like Clark Radle, Bobby Whitlock and Jim Gordon (all three would later, as the frontline of Derek And The Dominos, write the high points of their musical careers), Stephen Stills and Leon Russell also contributed to the album. Fittingly for the situation, the album was produced by none other than Delaney Bramlett himself.
Eric Clapton is an extremely cautious record, one that clings desperately to the known, shying away from venturing into the unknown and, just as much, from going back to the past. The album’s 11 tracks are stitched together, conciliatory-style, into a cohesive whole with a super compact sound, deliberately stripped of any real instrumental outbursts. For the first time, Clapton tests the punch of his own songwriting, which, with a few exceptions, ungratefully gets stuck in the category of underseasoned rock & roll stew, with the occasional sloppily patched-up detour toward soul and blues. With the guitar ammo carefully rationed, here we meet the subtlety of the creations Lonesome and a Long Way From Home, Easy Now and I’ve Told You For The Last Time, all reasonably decent ideas, but nothing that goes beyond that. Lovin’ You Lovin’ Me and the slightly more successful Don’t Know Why, Eric’s melancholically mellow excursion into soul waters, selflessly add to the album’s recreational pulse. The closest thing to blues Clapton serves up is the inventive riff-play of Bad Boy, which, together with After Midnight, Let It Rain and Blues Power, forms the lonely fellowship of the album’s four sure favorites.
Despite the lack of spontaneity and creative energy, Eric Clapton is without a doubt a career milestone, the record with which the guitarist finally dared to stand up to the woes of his own creative deadness. Ironically, it was precisely the lukewarmness of the debut that helped cement Clapton in the confident development of the artistic inspiration that had never truly left him. In the still-shy crackle of sparking creative ideas, the old fire and determination slowly but surely awoke in a musician whose sensibility, flexibility of interpretation and artistic power only shone in full in the years that followed.
Lineup
Eric Clapton: vocals, guitar
Delaney Bramlett: rhythm guitar, vocals
Leon Russell: piano
Bobby Whitlock: keyboards
John Simon: piano
Carl Radle: bass
Jim Gordon: drums
Jim Price: trumpet
Bobby Keys: saxophone
Tex Johnson: percussion
Bonnie Bramlett: backing vocals
Rita Coolidge: backing vocals
Sonny Curtis: backing vocals
Jerry Allison: backing vocals
Stephen Stills: backing vocals
Production
Delaney Bramlett
Tracklist
1. Slunky
2. Bad Boy
3. Lonesome and a Long Way from Home
4. After Midnight
5. Easy Now
6. Blues Power
7. Bottle of Red Wine
8. Lovin’ You Lovin’ Me
9. I’ve Told You For the Last Time
10. Don’t Know Why
11. Let It Rain
