![]() ![]() The estate is home to the Cowdray family, is world-famous for being the center of British polo, and has welcomed royalty from all over the world, including the Queen and the late Prince Philip. It was recorded at Cowdray House, a grand old countryside estate in West Sussex, England. Frankly, it’s perhaps the most delicate offering he may have ever given the public, inside or out of the studio. ![]() Now, Eric Clapton presents his fifteenth live album, The Lady In The Balcony: Lockdown Sessions, and it’s a nuanced, understated and intimate representation of songs that he and others made famous. The record has great majesty and along with Unplugged, has become a master class on how to put together a live record.Įric Clapton and band. It’s hard to top that, but when it comes to live albums, Eric Clapton has always set a sterling example of how to take well-known material and make it sound fresh and new.Īrguably the finest example of that is 1991’s 24 Nights, recorded at the Royal Albert Hall with all-star guest appearances from Robert Cray, Jimmie Vaughan, Joey Spampinato and Buddy Guy, along with epic string arrangements by The National Philharmonic Orchestra that take songs like “Bell Bottom Blues” and allow them to catch air and soar in the most spectacular fashion. It also earned Clapton six Grammy awards, including Record of the Year, Album of the Year, Song of the Year, (“Tears in Heaven”), Best Male Pop Vocal Performance, Best Rock Male Vocal Performance, and Best Rock Song. The record not only went on to sell 26 million copies, it became the best-selling live album of all time. For MTV Unplugged, Clapton rearranged many of his classic songs and added a few blues classics. Slowhand my keister Slowbland is more like it.In 1992, when Eric Clapton recorded an episode of MTV Unplugged at Bray Studios in London, the series featuring artists playing acoustic instruments was already well into its third season, having started in 1989 with a session by the band Squeeze. After Derek and the Dominos released Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs in 1970, I would have gladly concurred with those messages on London walls proclaiming, “Clapton is God.” But the times they are always a changin’, and rarely for the better, and nowadays I’d be more inclined to agree with the proclamation, “Clapton is God Awful.” That’s no easy feat, and Clapton deserves credit-along with a gold watch and forced retirement-for pulling it off. Second, that the public ate up the slowed-down 1992 acoustic version, and that it went on to (how? why? gak!) win a Grammy for Best Rock Song-beating out Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” in the process-just adds fuel to the fire of my belief that the American public (and its ruling classes) have been spoon fed pap for so long they’ve become addicted to the stuff.Ĭlapton may well be unique in that the very same song should mark both the high-water and low-water marks of his career. I know what makes the original “Layla” such a landmark, but evidently poor Eric hasn’t a clue. Two points: First, that Clapton liked the resulting work speaks volumes both about his sad slide into schlock, and his own inexplicable inability to judge the merits of his own work. ![]() Take all the yearning and desperation out of the vocals, reduce the song’s marvelous momentum to a slowed-down slacker shuffle with a vaguely Spanish flavor, and as for the coda-that brilliant and magical piece of musicianship that still moves me all these years (and thousands of listenings) later-eliminate it altogether. It was genius, really, the simplicity of it. I’m not certain Jesus could have pulled it off, but Slowhand made it look easy. And you’ve got to hand it to the “Clap” he hit upon the perfect way of turning a diamond into a 4-day-old piece of sushi. Suffice it to say by the time Clapton’s 1992 MTV Unplugged appearance came around, reducing the great “Layla” to saccharine and ashes must have come as naturally to the English guitarist as spouting racist National Front bile. Once a musician has succumbed to recording treacle there’s no turning back it gradually becomes easier and easier to produce treacle (after all, it sells!) until one becomes a habitual and hopeless treaclemonger, and before you can say “Change the World” or “My Father’s Eyes” it’s second nature, and the jig is up. Me, I suspect the answer lies in another of his hits, the unbearably sappy “Tears in Heaven” (or the earlier “Wonderful Tonight”). What causes a man to start fires? More importantly, what causes a man to burn down his greatest song, transforming it from genius to schlock as if possessed by the spirit of evil spirit of Lionel Richie? This is a question only Eric “Slowhand” Clapton, whose original recording of “Layla” with Duane Allman is one of rock’s most transcendently lovely songs, can answer.
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