The albums Eric Clapton always wanted to change: “It’s a little embarrassing”
The number one rule of any guitarist like Eric Clapton is to keep things moving forward.
There was no real sense in him looking back and trying to capture his past glory, and every single one of his projects felt like getting to see yet another side of the blues journeyman that he always wanted to be. But even though the records make up the bigger picture of what he wanted to be, there are more than a few times when he would have gladly changed a few things to make his songs sound more perfect.
Then again, isn’t the basis of all great blues songs the imperfections? ‘Crossroads’ by Cream is one of the finest blues rock songs of all time, but even if Clapton complains about getting distracted from the time, it’s not like that makes his solo any less memorable, especially when he starts reaching for some of the notes towards the end of the section. But even ‘Slowhand’ needed to leave his old bands behind after a while.
Forming one supergroup after another never stopped being a thrill for the fans, but it didn’t exactly have the outcome that he wanted when he kept switching things around. Derek and the Dominos was the first time where he seemed to reach absolute perfection every single time he played off of Bobby Whitlock and Carl Radle, but when he had a falling-out with Jim Gordon, it seemed like his entire spirit had been crushed.
He wasn’t taking care of himself by any means, and while his gift for guitar never left him, you could tell that he wasn’t in the best of spirits every time he played. All you have to do is look at his performance during the Concert for Bangladesh to see the state he’s in. Everyone might have been there to benefit a worthy cause, but as he walked out onto the stage to play the solo in ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’, he was clearly strung out on a few things after not taking Patti Boyd’s rejection that well.
And while he did eventually get back up on his feet as a solo artist, the 1970s are basically a non-stop drug escapade for Clapton. There were still some fine songs to be found across his catalogue, but there were more than a few times where he could look back and hear all of the roughnesses in his playing a lot more when he heard his own voice.
Aside from the occasional record that didn’t land, Clapton pointed to this era of his career when asked if there was any part of his career that he would have changed, saying, “I would like to have gone back and extracted all of the alcohol out of my body. I can listen to that album and say, ‘Well, there’s coke on that one. There’s brandy on that.’ I can hear the state that I’m in. And it’s a little embarrassing from about 1973 to about 1981, I was engaging in a lot of stuff far beyond what my health could allow.”
There were more than a few bright spots throughout that era like the beautiful ‘Wonderful Tonight’, but when he finally straightened himself out, it seemed like he found his muse once again as well. His work with Phil Collins might be an acquired taste for some, but there’s doubt that he had his feet on the ground and was out to live up to his title of ‘God’ when working on records like Behind the Sun.
But even if he is still embarrassed by that era of his career, a lot of it makes him look a lot more human. There’s no doubt that he’s had more than his fair share of rough records and moments where he didn’t need to open his mouth at all, but a lot of times those dark chapters of an artist’s career do a much better job at giving everyone the fuller picture of what their story truly was.
