ERIC CLAPTON - On The Road, July 1974

I travelled around America so much between 1973 and 1976 that if air miles were collectable in those days I’d never have to buy a plane ticket ever again. Unfortunately they didn’t come in until 1988. One of the oddest airlines was Braniff which operated a sort of loop service where the plane flew around all these Midwestern cities and you just got on and off when you wanted, a bit like the Circle Line on the London tube.

          In July 1974 I got off at Pittsburgh to see Eric Clapton and travelled with him for three nights, though he declined to be interviewed. I referred to this little adventure in another post about EC but this is the longer version!

          Aside from how incredibly pissed Eric got before and after concerts, the other thing I remember about this trip (and which I mentioned in the other post) was that halfway through the show in Pittsburgh Pattie Harrison arrived and was ushered up on to the side of the stage by Robert Stigwood, Eric’s manager. I knew who she was but couldn’t for the life of me figure out why she was here, though I ought to have guessed from the affectionate glances between her and the chap in the middle with the guitar around his neck. Her liaison with Eric was yet to go public, of course, and had I been the kind of journalist now condemned by the Leveson Inquiry I’d have had a nice little scoop on my hands for the red tops. As it was I kept schtum, which is why I was welcomed by the entourage. My report, lacking any references to la belle Pattie, is below. Extra-marital relationships weren’t the stuff of the music press in those days. On this tour he looked a bit like this picture, the cover of a bootleg I found on the internet.

PITTSBURGH, PA. – The tint on the TV screen gave the newscaster a peculiarly reddish face, almost as if he was genuinely excited about the news item he was reading.

          “The Eric Clapton show at Three Rivers Stadium,” he was saying, “is the largest gathering of people ever in Pittsburgh. Upwards of 42,000 rock fans have assembled there overnight for the evening’s concert. The attendance is higher than the previous record at Three Rivers Stadium which was held by the British rock group Led Zeppelin who drew 38,000 in 1972.”

          “For the uninitiated,” he added as an afterthought, “Eric Clapton is considered by many to be the world’s greatest rock guitarist.”

          Among the uninitiated was the taxi driver who brought me from Pittsburgh International Airport to the centre of the town earlier in the day. As we passed Three Rivers Stadium in the cab he turned around, muttering something about the traffic jam. “Who is this guy?” he asked. “Some kind of hero?”

          A few moments before the news item appeared on television, the world’s greatest rock hero was experiencing some frustration in discovering the whereabouts of The Band, who were also playing on his show that evening, but were staying at a different hotel. Each time he asked someone they’d reply something along the lines of, “right here, Eric.”

          “Not my band, THE Band,” he’d say, a trifle exasperated. “It’s Robbie’s birthday today and... there’s gonna be some bovver tonight.”

          The Three Rivers Stadium at Pittsburgh is normally used by the Pittsburgh Pirates, the local baseball team. The Pirates’ fortunes have waned of late, lost matches and subsequent lost revenue, so this year they opened their massive arena to rock to boost the team’s income.

          As usual, The Band put in a flawless performance, Rick Danko’s bass playing coming over tremendously vibrant in the open air. It’s difficult to see them from over 100 yards distance (someone thoughtfully provided Eric with binoculars), but the music spills forth with that effortless Band precision.

          Then Clapton walks to the stage, acoustic in hand, followed by his group and preceded by Legs Larry Smith, the English country joker hired to act as “compere”, specifically to play down the superstar angle that Eric would like to shake off. That’s one of the reasons why Yvonne Elliman has been recruited to his band, her main contribution to the set coming early on, during the only pre-rehearsed segment, the acoustic songs. Eric opens the show with ‘Smile’, the old standard written, oddly enough, by Charlie Chaplin that comes as something as a surprise on first hearing but seems more and more apt after continued hearings. It sends out a message of good vibes from the start – ”Smile, when your heart is achin’” – and quietens down an audience eager for hi-power rock.

          ‘Smile’ moves into ‘Let It Grow’, another easy going acoustic song with Eric and Yvonne singing harmoniously together and George Terry turning in filler licks that gain Eric approval between verses. Slotted hurriedly in at Pittsburgh was a spontaneous ‘Happy Birthday’ for Robbie Robertson who was standing at the side of the stage. Its significance was lost on the crowd.

          But rock was what the 42,000 had come to hear, even though their appreciation was shown in odd ways. During ‘Blues Power’ Eric was hit hard on the side of the face by a well-aimed missile. It turned out to be a New Testament, wrapped in a small chain with a message from the local Jesus freaks. Not knowing what had hit him, Eric fumed for a bar, picked up the tune again and bellowed his disapproval down the microphone. Much of the set is derived from Eric’s new album 461 Ocean Boulevard, with ‘Motherless Children’ and ‘Mainline Florida’ offering ample opportunities for the band to stretch out.

          The set ends with ‘Little Queenie’ and a re-appearance of Legs Larry Smith who smashes a plastic ukulele in the manner of Pete Townshend, hurling the debris out into the crowd. By this time they are crammed tight against the raised, temporary stage. For an encore, Eric steams into ‘Crossroads’ and produces some of the most exciting music of the night.

          The following evening’s concert in Buffalo, a half hour flight away, wasn’t up to the same standard. Again The Band were on the bill and again over 40,000 fans jammed a baseball stadium. Clapton’s immediate impact was taken away when he chose to go up and jam with The Band on their last number, ‘Stage Fright’, and the result was far from spectacular.

          When it came to his own set, Eric surprised everyone – including his band – by opening with an acoustic rendering of ‘Crossroads’ before moving into the rehearsed schedule. The highpoint of the set was during ‘Have You Ever Loved A Woman’ when Freddie King (flown in specially) arrived on stage to jam. King was superb and a rather lazy Eric allowed him to steal the show instead of competing in a guitar duel. Sunday’s concert was at the Roosevelt Stadium, just outside New York and 30,000 turned up.

          The Roosevelt show was a vast improvement on the previous evening, with Eric in a more serious frame of mind, running through the same set as before. Again, Freddie King came on for ‘Have You Ever Loved A Woman’, but this time Eric matched him lick for lick in one of the most impressive blues duets I’ve ever seen. At one stage third guitarist George Terry gave up in a resigned fashion, taking off his guitar and retiring backstage to allow the masters to continue uninterrupted.

ERIC & GEORGE

Last night I drove my son Sam over to Cranleigh to spend the night at a friend’s house and on the way passed the Windmill, a pub in the Hurtwood forest behind which there is a lane that leads to Eric Clapton’s Spanish villa, Hurtwood Lodge. I strolled down the lane once a year or two ago, only to come up against the sturdy wooden gates that protect Eric from prying fans and nosey buggers like me. It always amazes me that until John’s murder George Harrison permitted fans to wander around the grounds of Friar Park, his estate on the outskirts of Henley, to admire the gardens which he tended so lovingly.

         Just before he died my friend Timothy White proposed to me that he should write a book about the intermingling lives of Eric and George for Omnibus Press to publish. It sounded like a great idea and he was obviously the right man for the job. At the time Timothy was the editor of Billboard, America’s foremost music industry trade paper, but he’d cut his teeth as a writer on Rolling Stone. He’d befriended George and was one of the few writers to have been shown around Friar Park. He told me about the underground grotto accessible through a trapdoor in the kitchen, the boat on which you could sail through underground caverns, and the lake with pillars built up from the bed that enabled George to ‘walk on water’. In the event Timothy never wrote the book, but Graeme Thomson’s superb George biography Behind The Locked Door, published late last year by Omnibus, somehow made up for it.

Although I got to know John and Paul during my MM days I only ever met George once, and briefly at that, in the company of Derek Taylor at a small reception at the Carlisle Hotel on Madison Avenue in New York in 1975. I never really got to know Eric Clapton either, although I went on the road with him and his band in July 1974, just before 461 Ocean Boulevard came out. I was standing at the side of the stage at a show at Three Rivers baseball stadium in Pittsburgh when who should arrive on the arm of Eric’s manager Robert Stigwood but Pattie Harrison – much to Eric’s delight. What’s she doing here?, I remember thinking, ignorant as I was to the infatuation that inspired Eric to write ‘Layla’ and the love triangle that existed between her and these two great guitarists.

Actually, Eric was pretty much sloshed every time I encountered him on this tour – for Slowhand read Legless – including on stage but somehow – just – he held it together to play well. In the early seventies he was a very different character from the sober, Armani-suited, philanthropic elder statesman of blues guitar we see today. The Band was also on the bill at this show and back at the hotel I befriended their bass player Rick Danko who a year later would try to put the make on my sister Anne when she visited me in NY – but that’s another story.

CREAM AT THE ROYAL ALBERT HALL, May 5, 2005

I wrote this for Tony Fletcher’s ijamming website the morning after the show.

I never saw Cream in their heyday. It wasn’t that I was too young but they never came anywhere near where I lived. In any case, I was into The Beatles, Stones, Who and Tamla/Stax in those days, and Cream’s brand of heavily improvised blues and psychedelic uproar needed a bit of getting used to. I was aware of them and I respected them, but they were on another plane, one that I’d reach eventually before deciding that this sort of music was a bit of an acquired taste. By this time, of course, Cream were long gone and the style of music they pioneered had started to parody itself and become boring, formulaic and clichéd.
         Cream were never boring, though, and I certainly wasn’t going to turn down the free ticket (floor, 7th row centre, as good as it gets – thanks to my sadly departed friend and Clapton freak Virginia Lohle) for last night’s show at the RAH, the third in a series of four that saw Eric Clapton, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker re-united on stage for the first time in 38 years.

         Welcomed on stage by a great roar, they steamed into ‘I’m So Glad’ and kept up a remarkable pace through 18 further songs in an hour and three-quarters, barely stopping for a break apart from the gap before the predictable encore of ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’. And mighty good they were too, excellent even. I was especially impressed with Ginger, a skinny, sinewy, snappy little chap, fit as a fiddle, wide-awake and smacking those drums like the crack of a whip. He’s not ginger any longer, more off-white actually, bespectacled too, and looks a bit like old man Steptoe. Conversely Jack looks like someone who’s just got out of bed, staggering around with the gait of a rough sleeper who’s been plugged into a whiskey bottle for years. He’s skinny too, but in a sickly looking way, and pale of features. Someone said he was on his third liver, and from time to time he sat on a tall stool to play, but he can still handle a bass like a maestro, jiggling it up and down and playing fat chords or plucking upwards, always hard and inspired. Eric maintained his usual dignified presence, shortening his solos to 2005 standards and looking pleased to be back with his old chums. Indeed, all three habitually grinned at each other, a good sign. 
         What struck me most was how these three guys managed to sound like a much bigger band, with a really fat sound, probably a reflection of the drums as much as anything, though when Eric played chords there was a density that most quartets and even quintets lack. He played a Stratocaster throughout which gave him a crisp tone, even through a Lesley speaker; quite different from the sound he made in the Sixties when he played Gibsons that offered a much warmer tone. Jack played an old Gibson violin bass which he swapped for a sturdy looking fretless job half way through, and Ginger had twin bass drums, the first I’ve seen since Moonie in the 70s. In days of yore they’d have had a backline of speaker cabinets resembling a row of seaside chalets but today they use much smaller gear; looks better too.
         As for the highlights, I rather liked Ginger’s novelty song, ‘Pressed Rat And Warthog’, which he concluded with a droll announcement: “I’d like to inform you all that [a very long list of items of clothing] are available, all with the word Cream written on them.” He made it sound for all the world as if he was completely new to (and much delighted by) the concept of merchandising, a nice touch. In general stage announcements were minimal, most numbers segueing effortlessly into the next.
         I’ve always loved ‘Badge’, with its graceful descending arpeggios that bisect the verses, and tonight's version was peerless. ‘Politician’ truly growled and was particularly apt on polling day. Ginger kept time like a metronome during a quick ‘Rolling And Tumbling’, designed as a vehicle for Jack’s harmonica but the drums took gold for me, and Eric habitually dashed off solos that most guitarists would die for, particularly on ‘Stormy Monday’, his best solo of the night. He makes it look so easy too, as if he has all the time in the world for his nimble fingers to alight on exactly the right note time after time after time. It’s called fluency and it comes only after years of practice.
         I thought ‘Crossroads’ lacked the bite of older live versions by Cream, though, as the crackling little riff didn’t come through as it does on my old records. ‘White Room’ was lively and brought the house down, as did ‘Toad’, Ginger’s solo; the first drum solo I’ve heard in years which, contrary to expectations, I found myself enjoying. It was as if the coiled spring inside this wiry little fellow, which had kept the band on a fairly tight leash throughout the night, was finally allowed to unravel. They closed with a terrific ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’, featuring as its coda what sounded like the first and only genuinely improvised passage of the night.
         One final thing. Annoyingly, almost all the reviews I read of this and other 2005 Cream shows dwelt on the age and appearance of the audience (what do they expect: a bunch of teenagers?) which I considered to be very lazy journalism, pointless too, as if today’s reviewers were incapable of discussing – or ignorant about – the actual music. I suppose it was easier to describe the audience than the music but they even got this wrong too. As it happened, I was staggered by how many I noticed around me who were obviously far too young to have seen Cream first time around, not teenagers I grant you, but folk in their late twenties and thirties, men and women, whose obvious appreciation of this trio knew no bounds.