The song Eric Clapton thought was “too melodramatic”
Any blues artist like Eric Clapton knows the importance of sharing their pain on vinyl.
No bluesman starts their career talking about sunshine and roses, and the best in their field know how to take the harsh realities that you go through in life and channel them into some of the greatest licks anyone has ever heard. And while ‘Slowhand’ does have a fair bit of those tunes in his arsenal, he had enough sense to see when he was piling on the emotion a bit too thick.
Because there’s a fine line between being one of the greatest blues artists in the world and coming off like you’re complaining. The middle ground always comes from someone that can come off as sympathetic whenever they sing, and even when Clapton wasn’t following a simple I-IV-V progression, tunes like ‘Tears in Heaven’ had as much heartache as any other tune he had ever made.
Considering he was still reeling from the loss of his son on Pilgrim, though, it’s only natural that those kinds of songs would start creeping back in again. ‘River of Tears’ is still one of the most poignant ballads he would ever write regarding the loss he felt in his lifetime, but it was a bit of a different beast to tackle.
Despite having to deal with heartache on all sides of his career, Clapton needed to get some anger off his chest as well. Not everything that happened in his life could be solved in telling off the person that wronged him, but when looking over the lyrics one more time, ‘Slowhand’ went back to the one immortal line from a blues standard: ‘Before you accuse me take a look at yourself’.
Even if he felt a lot of pain in his heart, Clapton felt he couldn’t go through with making a song this vindictive, saying, “It started getting vindictive. It got quite vindictive in some of its early stages, and at some point I started feeling like the lyrics were becoming too melodramatic. I realized that the way to save it was to bring it back to talking about me, and that maybe I’m an unavailable person, maybe it’s me that’s unavailable.”
For what it’s worth, the lyrics that he wrote beforehand don’t sound all that nasty, but playing both sides of the argument is usually the right call. No one can claim that they are 100% in the right when it comes to affairs of the heart, and even if that river of tears continues to flow from his eyes, Clapton realised that it was much better to look at both sides of a story before picking up the guitar.
Given where he was at this moment in time, though, the lyrics are still heartbreaking to listen to. Regardless of his personal beliefs and the harsh back chapters of his life, this was a father who had to go through one of the greatest tragedies that a parent could ever have, so him calling on his higher power and asking for some sense of relief from everything is enough to make someone tear up even if they have no idea what the tune is about.
History may have shown Clapton in a different light for many rock fans, but beyond all of the controversial moments that he has had, it’s tracks like this that help show everyone the human underneath it all. No, he wasn’t necessarily the most captivating singer or even the most seasoned songwriter, but no one could deny that everything he sang came from the heart.
