Eric Clapton - MEN Arena 9/5/06

First off I have to admit to being a seriously lapsed Clapton fan. I was converted after hearing Cream in the early 80s not long after picking a guitar up for the first time and subsequently followed his career into the mid 1990s taking in many RAH gigs in the process. For the last ten years I’ve hardly listened to his music and what few tracks I’ve heard from his recent Simon Climie solo albums sound bland, slick and soulless. Nevertheless, I was quite excited about seeing where he was at in 2006 now aged 61.

Support was provided by the Robert Cray Band who I also lost track of mid 1990s around the time I was getting into Metheny, Scofield, Stern, Frisell etc. For better or worse, Cray’s music has changed not one iota over the twenty year period since “Strong Persuader” climbed into the top 10; it is sadly unimaginable that such music could do so today. Cray has a great expressive soulful singing voice and no one digs into a clean sounding strat quite like he does. His music, however, can ultimately be frustrating; it never seems to take off or offer any real surprises. Nevertheless, he provideded a good warm up act enthusiastically received by an audience that, at least in part, was familiar with Cray’s better known material like “Phonebooth”, “Right Next Door” and “Our Last Time”. The vast cavernous space of the MEN Arena wasn’t really conducive to the “low down and funky” ( his words ) groove of Cray’s music but Cray is an experienced and resourceful performer who made the best of the venue’s acoustic shortcomings.

Clapton arrived on stage with an 11-piece band including three-piece horn section and two backing singers at exactly 8.45. Opening with “Pretending” from his 1989 Armani-suited period when he was in the tabloids as much as the music press, Clapton 2006 is definitely playing down the legend/rock star glamour side of things ( he now sports knackered jeans, a plain shirt and very short army regulation cropped hair). The band is a distinctly more gritty than the late 80s/early 90s Nathan East/Steve Ferrone/Greg Phillinganes lineup; Clapton still favours a tightly grooving A-List American rhythm section but this time drummer Steve Jordan offers a big wide open, pounding beat that opens the music up a bit and replaces the rough edges that were smoothed off Clapton’s music in the late 1980s (interestingly, Jordan produced and played kit on the latest John Scofield album). Clapton has also gone for a “three headed beast” frontline with Doyle Bramhall providing Jimmie Vaghanish Texas Strat tones and 25 year old up and coming slide wunderkind Derek Trucks playing a Gibson SG through Fender amps. Trucks is causing quite a sensation in guitar circles with his warm and bluesy slide tones betraying a heavy eastern influence, kind of Ry Cooder meets Ravi Shankar.

Clapton was happy to share the lead guitar spotlight with these two great players in their own right while also asserting his authority just when they might appear to be stealing the spotlight. Clapton obviously chose this lineup hoping for, you suspect a) a bit of a rest now and then; b) some young upstarts to keep him on his toes; c) he probably sees it as his duty to nurture new talent and introduce them to a public who might otherwise be oblivious to their existence. This lineup enabled him to revisit early 1970s classics from the Derek and The Dominoes/461 Ocean Boulevard period, with Trucks providing the slide parts very much in the spirit of Duane Allman (Trucks plays in The Allman Bros. Band as well as leading his own band, check out his great new album “Songlines”).

This set list was largely an interesting one, with only one Cream song ( he got all that out of his system last year presumably with the Cream reunion), plenty of Robert Johnson songs and the inevitable Layla/Wonderful Tonight/Cocaine finale. Highlights included the solos on “Little Queen of Spades” (inevitable slow blues in C) Trucks’ Hawaiin-style slide on “I Am Yours” and a few Cream-era licks on the final chorus and finale of “Crossroads”, with Jordan pounding the hell out of his kit and kicking Clapton’s ass into a higher gear for this one and only encore. Other highlights included “Motherless Children”, “Anyday” from the “Layla” album and new song “Back Home”, played as a duet with Trucks.

Clapton played consistently and crisply throughout the gig, offering a masterclass in string bending and playing with great timing, articulation and accuracy very high up the neck indeed! Detractors may grumble about his limited harmonic palette but Clapton’s timing, phrasing, intonation are pretty much flawless. A musician friend of mine recently remarked that Clapton is “basically” just a pub-blues guitarist; this is largely a lazy received notion that ignores the fact that Clapton invented this shit in 1966 as well as having invented and perfected the Gibson/Marshall sound everyone is after again. Clapton took blues guitar and created rock guitar as we know it; he wrote those cliches that everyone from Van Halen to Satriani fall back on. Also, the guy can sing well and writes/interprets good songs; most non-musicians don’t just want to listen to a guitarist widdling away for two hours. Clapton offers a great sort of Rock/Blues/Folk Revue with a high level of musicianship all delivered with a tight gutsy groove, stripping everything to the essentials and doing away with pretension.

Clapton’s set, drawn from a now legendary back catalogue, delivering great songs, class guitar playing and singing that is probably best compared to other great singer/guitarists such as Richard Thompson, Ry Cooder and Neil Young. Comparing Clapton to Van Halen/Vai/Whoever is pointless and irrelevant. Clapton has more in common with grizzled veteran singer/guitarists such as Bob Dylan and James Taylor but plays better guitar and offers a unique experience rooted heavily in the blues.

It is perhaps notable that Clapton was a little Van Morrisonesque in his rapport, or lack of it, with the audience; he managed to bark the occasional “Thangyew” between songs, but didn’t even introduce the band. Clapton 2006 seems to be making no concessions to “sell” his music or himself, he just does what’s on his job description (singer/bluesy rock guitarist) and is clearly disillusioned or bored with the trappings of fame and the accompanying bullshit. You can’t help but like him all the more for it when he’s on this kind of form offering a great evening’s worth of music with a crack American band.