The show Eric Clapton said could never happen again
No band is meant to put on the same show every single time they play. It might get a bit monotonous on tour trying to play the same tunes every night, but the beauty is being able to put some little inflexions into the song that makes every single show feel special for everyone who bothered showing up. Even though Eric Clapton falls into the category of someone who never liked to play the same lick twice, he knew that he was witnessing a bit of music history a few times when he got up onstage.
When Clapton was first starting, a lot of his best work was captured better onstage than on record. The Yardbirds still had plenty of moments where they could fly off the handle in the studio, but their first record was called Five Live Yardbirds for a reason, and hearing ‘Slowhand’ live up to his name by playing some of the most blistering blues rock of the early 1960s was half the reason why the band made it big.
But as soon as the group started gaining a reputation as a bluesy pop group, Clapton knew he needed a better outlet. What he was doing didn’t need to be hampered by someone forcing him to write pop tunes, and Cream became the next best thing when he started going into jazzy territory with Ginger Baker providing the backbeat. Then again, all of the greatest moments still came from their live material.
Disraeli Gears does do a great job at showing what all of them were capable of in the studio, but listening to Wheels of Fire, every member is on fire on the live disc, especially Baker delivering the definitive version of ‘Toad.’ And despite Robert Johnson writing the tune ‘Crossroads,’ no one is going to capture the energy that Clapton did on the live take, even managing to turn his mistake into something classic when he goes out of time and turns the entire beat around during the solo.
So when someone is at the top of their game like that, how the hell are they expected to do the same thing over again years after the fact? That kind of show shouldn’t really be possible, but once the band played the Royal Albert Hall in the 2000s, they all held their own and even managed to throw the odd surprise into the mix, like handing the mic over to Baker when doing ‘Pressed Rat and Warthog.’
“If we do it again, I don’t think it will ever have that kind of impact.”
eric clapton
Even for someone who had been playing for decades at that point, even Clapton knew that there was something special about that night, saying, “It was heightened to a high degree, and it made me want to get it really right, and we never had that. We were very careless in our attitude. It was quite a large responsibility for us to do our best. If we do it again, I don’t think it will ever have that kind of impact.”
Now that Clapton is the last one standing of Cream, though, those Albert Hall performances are still the best way to remember them. The infighting may have still been there behind the scenes, but hearing every one of them push them aside to give fans ‘Sunshine of Your Love’ and ‘White Room’ one more time was a great way to close that chapter of their lives.
Then again, Clapton was never destined to be in a band for the rest of his career. His playing had grown too big to have one singular group hold him, but looking back at those Albert Hall shows, it’s easy to see him getting back to those roots he started from and rediscovering what made him love playing with Jack Bruce and Baker in the first place.
