Eric Clapton’s mid-Eighties trifecta of studio albums, starting in 1985 with Behind the Sun followed by August, peaked in November 1989 with Journeyman. Thirty-five years on it has aged remarkably well, a combination of some of Clapton’s strongest song choices, superb players to support him, and a sympathetic yet discerning producer the likes of which we had not seen since Slowhand.
Confident by then in newly-found sobriety, supported by veteran producer Russ Titelman and a superb band, Eric Clapton chose arguably his strongest songs to interpret in decades including his “Bad Love” co-written with Mick Jones; “Old Love” with Robert Cray; a truly swinging cover of Bo Diddley’s “Before You Accuse Me”; and no less than FIVE from the late great Texas songwriter Jerry Lynn Williams including “Pretending”,”Anything for Your Love”,” “Running on Faith”, and “No Alibis”! Eric Clapton joins me here In the Studio for the thirty-fifth anniversary of Journeyman. -Redbeard
Two titans of rock’s last half century, Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood, join me In the Studio to explore the days in 1969 surrounding the one-off Blind Faith, a #1-seller in both their native UK as well as America. Until recently, the two friends chose not to talk much about the short-lived Blind Faith experience. Maybe it was the fact that the media hype of what Time magazine dubbed as “rock’s first supergroup” resulted in a single solitary studio album. Maybe it was the frustration with anemic concert sound which they were provided, supported in Summer 1969 by Free, Rory Gallagher’s Taste, and a “family band” which would figure prominently in Clapton’s near future, Delaney and Bonnie. Or maybe the reticence stems from the riots that ensued between Blind Faith concert goers and local police in several US cities. As Clapton admits in his best-selling autobiography, Eric was uncomfortable with his former Cream mate, the late Ginger Baker, as Blind Faith’s timekeeper.
Despite these considerable complications, the flame for the brief Blind Faith music and the obvious potential for more, never extinguished in the fifty-plus years since its August 1969 release. This was evidenced by the enormous positive response to Steve Winwood sharing the stage with Eric Clapton at the latter’s 2007 Crossroads Guitar Festival in Chicago that year, which eventually resulted in a popular 2008 tour. Hear their thoughts in my rare classic rock interview on the times and the music which resulted, including “Had to Cry Today”, “In the Presence of the Lord”, the melodic “Sea of Joy”, and the timeless classic “Can’t Find My Way Home”. –Redbeard
Presented to celebrate her legendary life and now death at age 83, this is the definitive version of “Tearing Us Apart” by Tina Turner with Eric Clapton, seemingly in a dead heat race with her band to see who could finish first!
In early 1969 both guitarist/singer Eric Clapton and multi-instrumentalist/singer Steve Winwood each were emerging from popular English bands Cream and Traffic, respectively as stars in their own right. They formed Blind Faith, released a studio album, mounted a sole US tour marred by problems on and off the stage and, after only seven months, broke up. Nevertheless, rock music writers have carried the torch for that long ago pairing of Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood ever since, keeping the memory of that musical unicorn alive as much for its promise of what might have been. Concertgoers to Clapton’s 2007 Crossroads Guitar Festival in Chicago got a thrilling glimpse of that potential when Steve Winwood accepted Clapton’s invitation to perform together, and the response was immediate. The duo decided to stage three nights in February the following year, and the reunion for which intrepid rock fans had longed for forty years became reality when Eric Clapton joined Steve Winwood at Madison Square Garden in New York City. Fans of the fleeting one-off Blind Faith album were rewarded with muscular, time-tested versions of “Had to Cry Today”,”Presence of the Lord”, and “Can’t Find My Way Home” as well as some of the best of Traffic, Derek and the Dominos, and Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood solo catalogs! Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood guest here In the Studio. –Redbeard
By the time of Summer 1968 and their third album’s release Wheels of Fire, London-based trio Cream had quickly earned their dual reputations as 1) makers of artsy psychedelic records which fused jazz, blues, and rock’n’roll, with 2) an equally enviable benchmark as the most powerful live act in concert for its time. Cream’s breakthrough album Disraeli Gears only nine months earlier tee’d up the English/Scottish trio’s June 1968 third release, Wheels of Fire, for some impressive numbers. It went almost immediately to #3 sales in the UK and a bonafide #1 in the US, becoming the first double album to sell over a million copies.
Though Rolling Stone magazine ranked Cream’s Disraeli Gears most recently at #170 album of all time, and the late Ginger Baker as one of rock’s three greatest drummers (along with The Who’s Keith Moon and Led Zeppelin’s John Bonham), the other key numbers for Cream’s quicksilver career are startlingly single digits: years together- 3 ; albums released- 4; number of reunion albums/tours in the half century since – 1.At the time, nothing sounded quite like the songs on Disraeli Gears and Wheels of Fire: “Strange Brew”,”Sunshine of Your Love” (rivaled only by “Purple Haze” that same year as the most subversive single to ever penetrate Top 40 radio ), the elegant romantic falsetto of “Dance the Night Away”, and the psychedelic lyrics of “Tales of Brave Ulysses” absolutely mesmerized me with each repeated playing. That went double (pun intended) for Wheels of Fire less than a year later, which included “White Room”, “Born Under a Bad Sign”, “Those Were the Days”, and two live performances, Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads” sung by Eric Clapton, & the epic extended jam around Willie Dixon’s “Spoonful”. Wheels of Fire also resides on Rolling Stone‘s Top 500 list, at #205.
When I talked to Eddie Van Halen, Gary Rossington of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson of Rush, Sammy Hagar and Joe Satriani, or guitar phenom Eric Johnson, they and countless other musicians easily cite Cream as the gold standard which inspired them all to make the transition from rock music fan to rock musician. The degree to which my guests Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce (who passed 2014), along with the late Ginger Baker as Cream, influenced multiple generations of bands is incalculable. Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, and frequent lyrics contributor Pete Brown are all gone now, leaving Eric Clapton as the sole spoonful of Cream left.-Redbeard
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Eric Clapton’s Crossroads Guitar Festival came full circle in 2019 back to Dallas Texas where the first one was held ( Cotton Bowl 2004 ). Just some of the players who appeared: Billy Gibbons, Bonnie Raitt, Buddy Guy, Gary Clark jr, Jeff Beck, Jimmie Vaughan, Joe Walsh, Peter Frampton, Robert Cray, Sheryl Crow, Sonny Landreth, Vince Gill, James Burton and Albert Lee!
As always with the Crossroads Festivals over the years, this too raises money for the Crossroads Rehab Center in Antigua founded by Eric, himself a recovering substance abuser. Here’s a flashback to Eric Clapton and southpaw slide guitarist Doyle Bramhall II at the 2007 Chicago GuitarFest combining like EC did with the late Duane Allman as Derek and the Dominos on “Tell the Truth” . –Redbeard
My exclusive classic rock interview with Eric Clapton for the compilation Forever Man covers a lot of ground, simply because no matter what era or decade you pick since 1965, EC was there in a remarkably consistent, influential way: Yardbirds, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Cream, Blind Faith with Steve Winwood, Derek and the Dominos with Duane Allman.,,and that was just the start of the Seventies! And yet he has made a long string of mostly highly-regarded solo albums as well, dating back to his first in 1970. Friends and musical peers including George Harrison, Pete Townshend, and Phil Collins helped to revitalize Clapton’s career through periods of drug abuse and turbulent love affairs in the early Seventies, and again in the mid-Eighties.
This is part one of my two-part career-spanning interview with Eric Clapton, in which he discusses the thirty year period covered by the multi-disc anthology Forever Man. He explores such topics as trading in his longtime band on 1985’s Behind the Sun sessions for a West Coast group of studio all-stars headed up by fellow Brit Phil Collins; his uncanny knack for finding complementary songs by others (dating back to his first solo album in 1970) which showcase his musical gifts; why he modestly titled his 1989 multi-million seller Journeyman; and how he purported to fit a half century of Slowhand into a series of two hour concerts in London’s Royal Albert Hall almost every year. –Redbeard
One of the most unlikely reunions in rock history wrapped up May 6 2005 when Cream performed the final of four nights at London’s Royal Albert Hall, featuring Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce ( died 2014), and Ginger Baker (died October 2019). In his interview with me In the Studio, songwriter/singer/bass player the late Jack Bruce clearly felt that he was under-recognized for writing and singing the bulk of Cream’s iconic songs including “Sunshine of Your Love”, “White Room”, and “I Feel Free”. May 2-6 2005, however, all three performed multiple shows in London’s Albert Hall and later New York City, and the performances from the Royal Albert Hall were released on CD and DVD.
( Cream’s Ginger Baker (l) with the late Jack Bruce ( c) and Eric Clapton (r)
In several In the Studio interviews, major musicians Rush’s Geddy Lee, Eddie Van Halen, Eric Johnson, and Sammy Hagar have credited Jack Bruce, Eric Clapton, and Mr. Baker as Cream for inspiring them to become musicians. One of the great rock voices of all time, Jack Bruce, died in October 2014 at age 71. Jack Bruce was highly significant in one of rock history’s most important bands as the main vocalist, lyrical bass player, and main songwriter in the London-based power trio Cream along with esteemed guitarist Eric Clapton and boundary-breaking drummer Ginger Baker. In slightly over two years, Cream recorded essential albums which have sold over 35 million copies of Fresh Cream, Disraeli Gears, Wheels of Fire, and Goodbye. –Redbeard L-R the late Jack Bruce, the late Ginger Baker (c), Eric Clapton (r) in 2005.
This portion of my in-depth interview with Eric Clapton is gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, yet ultimately life affirming. It finds the acclaimed musician successfully in recovery after more than twenty years of substance abuse, experiencing a spiritual rebirth that can only be described as miraculous; his musical career at an all time high; and then the most tragic of personal losses with the accidental death of his toddler, Conor, threatening to test it all like a modern day Old Testament Job.
Additionally Eric Clapton reveals a surprising humility and lack of certainty when discussing his desire to explore the outer boundaries of the blues while respecting its core absolute values, and how his long storied list of artistic collaborations with other big-name artists clear back to Blind Faith with Steve Winwood, Derek and the Dominoes with Duane Allman, and more recently J.J.Cale, Tina Turner, B.B. King, Robert Cray, and others is by no means a no brainer.
“It’s tough doing that stuff, it really is,” Eric Clapton divulged,”because there is no guarantee that it will work.” –Redbeard
If you run the numbers of the Summer 1989 album In Step by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, just the mere facts are impressive. In Step was the Texas trio’s fourth studio album, but their first after Vaughan’s collapse and near death from substance abuse while on tour in Germany had forced both Stevie and Double Trouble bass player Tommy Shannon into rehab hospitals. In Step won a Grammy Award, one of six that Vaughan amassed, while racking up the best sales of Vaughan’s lauded career because of “The House is Rockin’”,”Crossfire”, “Tightrope”,”Let Me Love You Baby”, and the stunner “Riviera Paradise”.
Yet the significance of In Step as a musical statement of intent cannot be told completely by mere sales or awards. It can only be assessed by the friends who knew Stevie Vaughan best (Eric Clapton), the musicians who inspired him first (Buddy Guy, the late Doyle Bramhall), the players who supported him before and after recovery(Chris Layton, Tommy Shannon), the musicians who in turn Vaughan inspired (Joe Bonamassa ), and the biographer who tried to capture his lightning in a bottle (author Joe Nick Patoski). They are all In Step here In the Studio. –Redbeard
Eric Clapton’s mid-Eighties trifecta of studio albums, starting in 1985 with Behind the Sun followed by August, peaked in November 1989 with Journeyman. Thirty-five years on it has aged remarkably well, a combination of some of Clapton’s strongest song choices, superb players to support him, and a sympathetic yet discerning producer the likes of which we had not seen since Slowhand.
