Eric Clapton's Unplugged was responsible for making acoustic-based music, and Unplugged albums in particular, a hot trend in the early '90s. Clapton's concert was not only one of the finest Unplugged episodes, but was also some of the finest music he had recorded in years. Instead of the slick productions that tainted his '80s albums, the ...
Wishing to escape the superstar expectations that sank Blind Faith before it was launched, Eric Clapton retreated with several sidemen from Delaney & Bonnie to record the material that would form Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. From these meager beginnings grew his greatest album. Duane Allman joined the band shortly after recording began, ...
Blind Faith's first and last album, more than 30 years old and counting, remains one of the jewels of the Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, and Ginger Baker catalogs, despite the crash-and-burn history of the band itself, which scarcely lasted six months. As much a follow-up to Traffic's self-titled second album as it is to Cream's final output, it ...
Disregard the title of this 2007 compilation: there is no way that any double-disc, 36-track set could be called The Complete Clapton, not when Eric Clapton has had a career that's spanned over four decades. This doesn't even attempt to cover as much ground as his landmark four-disc 1988 box set Crossroads, which began with his first band the ...
Eric Clapton was contracted to Polydor Records from 1966 to 1981, first as a member of Cream, then Blind Faith, and later as a solo artist and as the leader of Derek and the Dominos. The 19-track, 79-minute Cream of Clapton disc surveys his career, presenting an excellent selection from the period, including the Cream hits "Sunshine of Your Love," ...
After the guest-star-drenched No Reason to Cry failed to make much of an impact commercially, Eric Clapton returned to using his own band for Slowhand. The difference is substantial -- where No Reason to Cry struggled hard to find the right tone, Slowhand opens with the relaxed, bluesy shuffle of J.J. Cale's "Cocaine" and sustains it throughout ...
Fresh Cream represents so many different firsts, it's difficult to keep count. Cream, of course, was the first supergroup, but their first album not only gave birth to the power trio, it also was instrumental in the birth of heavy metal and the birth of jam rock. That's a lot of weight for one record and, like a lot of pioneering records, Fresh ...
The potential for a collaboration between B.B. King and Eric Clapton is enormous, of course, and the real questions concern how it is organized and executed. This first recorded pairing between the 74-year-old King and the 55-year-old Clapton was put together in the most obvious way: Clapton arranged the session using many of his regular musicians ...
Two artists had an enormous impact on Eric Clapton's music in the '70s: Delaney & Bonnie and J.J. Cale. Clapton joined Delaney & Bonnie's backing band after Cream dissolved, an experience that helped him ease away from the bombast of the power trio and into the blend of soul, blues, pop, and rock that defined his solo sound. Delaney Bramlett ...
461 Ocean Boulevard is Eric Clapton's second studio solo album, arriving after his side project of Derek and the Dominos and a long struggle with heroin addiction. Although there are some new reggae influences, the album doesn't sound all that different from the rock, pop, blues, country, and R&B amalgam of Eric Clapton. However, 461 Ocean ...
After a mere three albums in just under three years, Cream called it quits in 1969. Being proper gentlemen, they said their formal goodbyes with a tour and a farewell album called -- what else? -- Goodbye. As a slim, six-song single LP, it's far shorter than the rambling, out-of-control Wheels of Fire, but it boasts the same structure, evenly ...
Since there was a Pure Funk and Pure Disco, it makes sense that a Pure '70s would follow. It couldn't be called "Pure Rock," since a lot of this simply doesn't rock at all -- "American Pie," anyone? However, all 20 songs on this collection (mostly culled from the Polygram vaults) reek of the '70s, and that's why this is a fun listen. Yes, it's ...
Although he is universally considered among the most important figures in rock & roll, Eric Clapton has not had consistent success in translating his stature into record sales, partially because he is, in essence a great blues guitarist rather than a great pop/rock singer-songwriter. Clapton's career was in decline in the early '80s when he ...
Ten years after his first all-blues album, From the Cradle, Eric Clapton released Me and Mr. Johnson, an album-length tribute to his hero, the legendary bluesman Robert Johnson. Not that this is the first time Clapton has paid tribute to Johnson. Throughout his career, Clapton has not only drawn on Johnson for inspiration, but he has covered his ...
Clapton Chronicles ignores Eric Clapton's 1983 Reprise debut, Money and Cigarettes (which sounded more like an RSO album, anyway), starting with the pair of Phil Collins-produced mid-'80s albums, Behind the Sun and August. Though these had a pop sheen, they were album rock holdovers. Clapton didn't get the balance between hard rock and commercial ...
Two Rooms is a wildly uneven star-studded tribute to a wildly uneven superstar songwriting team. Though Elton John and Bernie Taupin wrote many of the best pop songs of the '70s and '80s, they have written more than their fair share of clunkers as well. Some of them were chosen for this collection. Tina Turner, for example, tackles the ludicrously ...
For most of the '80s, Eric Clapton seemed rather lost, uncertain of whether he should return to his blues roots or pander to AOR radio. By the mid-'80s, he appeared to have made the decision to revamp himself as a glossy mainstream rocker, working with synthesizers and drum machines. Instead of expanding his audience, it only reduced it. Then came ...
This three-CD box did a lot of good for rock reissues, though not necessarily for the Layla & Other Assorted Love Songs album. It was the first high-profile reissue to treat rock with the same respect that scholars had long accorded jazz, going beyond the finished tracks to the outtakes and anything else usable that turned up in the vaults. ...
There have been many compilations drawn from the four albums Cream originally released between 1966 and 1969. But the one most commonly available since the early '80s was the ten-track Strange Brew: The Very Best of Cream (1983), a barebones collection focusing on the group's hit singles. Note, then, that this album, despite the similar title, is ...
The "pure" in the Pure series initially suggested the unadulterated, soothing dulcet tones of new age in the Pure Moods discs, but as the series took off, Universal Music realized they had a real marketable brand name here, so they decided to use it for different genres. The one thing that all the collections shared was that they were exceptional ...
For years, fans craved an all-blues album from Eric Clapton; he waited until 1994 to deliver From the Cradle. The album manages to re-create the ambience of postwar electric blues, right down to the bottomless thump of the rhythm section. If it wasn't for Clapton's labored vocals, everything would be perfect. As long as he plays his guitar, he can ...
In his liner notes, Anthony DeCurtis calls Live at the Fillmore "a digitally remixed and remastered version of the 1973 Derek and the Dominos double album In Concert, with five previously unreleased performances and two tracks that have only appeared on the four-CD Clapton retrospective, Crossroads." But this does not adequately describe the album ...
If Disraeli Gears was the album where Cream came into their own, its successor, Wheels of Fire, finds the trio in full fight, capturing every side of their multi-faceted personality, even hinting at the internal pressures that soon would tear the band asunder. A dense, unwieldy double album split into an LP of new studio material and an LP of live ...
If you know anything about rock & roll, you know that Sun Records looms large over the history and mythos of the music -- enough so that it does deserve its own full-fledged tribute (what else could suit the home of Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Charlie Rich, and the Killer, as well as cult icons like Warren Smith, Sonny Burgess, Billy Lee ...
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