In The Studio with Redbeard

Tag: Forever Man

  • Eric Clapton- Journeyman 35th Anniversary

    Eric Clapton- Journeyman 35th Anniversary

    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

  • Eric Clapton- Forever Man- Best pt 1

    Eric Clapton- Forever Man- Best pt 1

    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