CLAPTON: Wanted? Dead? or Alive

Maybe by now Eric Clapton is a figment of the hip imagination, a character filling a spot somewhere between death and glory, but here at the Garden, stooped, scared, and looking stoned to someplace you don’t want to think about, he’s only too real. So far, after the long way back we’ve all read about and three numbers into the show, he is weakest member of the band. Can’t hear his vocals, he’s playing acoustic rhythm guitar, wearing sunglasses. It’s Big; Apple third generation doper’s Hallejah blues time here tonight (in more ways than one), and a slow horror is benning to fall upon the people who actually do care about How Eric Clapton May Or May Not Rise From The Dead For Us. What a story.

Wait a minute. Is this a plot or a routine? Does he — even do They — now know precisely what takes to get us off in this most Context? Lubricate them legends, let them rumors rampage, turn them ‘stiles? The old death row to hoe?

Nah. PA system’s fucked up again. Can’t hear him ’cause he doesn’t have enough volts, is all.

Well who’s in charge of the volts here, anyway? And how come they did that Rolling Stone cover with him looking like Jesus on the cross? Could you have blown him away with a feather down at the Bottom Line the other night, and if so, why? Who’s paying to keep who quiet, or not? What we need is a brain bug. Stick it in there behind the sunglasses, wire it right into WNEW, have the Night Bird monitor the whole thing so we know . *;. It’s ridiculous.

But Eric looks bad. The band is carrying him. Yvonne Elliman — Mary Magdalene to JC’s Superstar in her last big. gig, how’s that? — is doing the singing well enough to pass and then some, and George Terry , is playing rather nice Eric Clapton lead guitar while Eric almost shivers out on his own in the middle, white-suited. Firecrackers from the ceiling, frisbees to the stage, crazy Legs Larry Smith (all the way from show-biz, doing the intro in a full-length formal gown), and 20,000 people, many of whom, God forbid, might well be Heavy Blues Guitar freaks; all these portents are enough to render the most benign introvert paranoid, but Eric looks bad beyond all that and we are running out of time. Hope is the victim.

Now, the history of all this is familiar. Clapton fallow for the duration of a junk habit, saved by electro-acupuncture cure, down to Miami for the album, and out on the road with the supposedly new structure featuring Clapton as only slightly more than one of the boys in the band, according himself. There’s the link up with Yvonne in there, which is a good healthy Publicity shove from Mr. Stigwood the manager (who also manages Eric), and then heavy karma and airplay around the. album, which turns out to consist o£ about five (maybe four) hit singles rendered with great taste, and an equal amount of filler. Clapton displays superbly elegant mastery of the Laid-Back Sound and half-accbmplishes a generous, interesting album. There’s lots of soul religion down in there and a kind of keep-them-vibes-bubbling-but-keepit-low angle that may have been copped from Ray Charles with a. layer or two of reggae spliced in, but most certainly had a lot to do with long Florida days and the fact that Clapton came softly unto the sessions with nothing definite in mind to play. CLAPTON CONTROLLED, read the headlines. TURNS OUT TASTY MORSEL, ESTABLISHES SELF-RESPECT.

For all their worth: Yvonne, Eric, Freddie King, Todd Rundgren.

So tjie first three numbers at the Garden are very pretty, well-played, and intelligently chosen (“Smile” by Charlie Chaplin, Clapton’s new, sunny “Let It Grow,” and Stevie Winwood’s “Can’t Find My Way Home”), and everything would be just fine if only Eric didn’t seem so wasted . . but here come the alternative explanations about pacing of the show, gotta have time to get it on, don’t worry until you have to and all that rot — and Eric gets his Fender out. And here comes “Willie and the Hand Jive” with that Bo Didley beat gone reggae. Eric audible now and singing close to well (though the song is not designed to strain anyone’s talents). Something’s happening in the audience, like mud being stirred with a Q-tip. Yvonne’s still singing well and the show’s getting together, but for everybody’s sake it’s good to note that even at a Madison Square Garden Living Legend of the Counterculture concert, the crowd is and can be hip to the quality of the experience coming off the stage ...

“Willie and the Hand Jive” rolls deftly into “Get Ready,” a soupy and mucho fonky duet, and things begin to cook. The song is.a tension-builder, and sure enough there goes Yvonne sliding across to share Eric’s mike — BOMP! That’s it. Eric isn’t alone anymore, and the movement just arrived. Out the window with the mud and Q-tips. It’s all planned? Maybe it even has something to do with the Backup Singer Launches Solo -Career Through Bigtime Tour ploy so well known and loved by managers near and far, especially insofar as Yvonne actually opens the show, so it seems — but a great concert has just begun. Alert, Eric Clapton begins to play, sing, and head his band like a dream come true.

There are wonderful moments in a flow of Greatest Hits from the supreme quality mart of Clapton: his intro to “Key to the Highway,” and the flawless solo there too, and the series of definitive blues phrases with which he closes the song; his playing with George Terry throughout, and the flashes of union" and humor between the two guitarists; his singing, technically and emotionally masterful, of “Presence of the Lord,” his own song; and at all times, his taste. Clapton is an original, and he’s lost none of his touch, it’s all there, the feeling and the almost-perfect sense of timing. After “Blues Power” and before a wild “Layla,” he comes to the mike without his jacket and sunglasses, and says: “Nice. Yeah, nice. You’re nice to play to. Yeah.

“Here’s to you,” he says with a drink, and that’s when he soars into “Layla.” “Layla,” for the uninitiated, is a rare and magnificent masterpiece of rock, no less.

It’s all predictable after that, even Yvonne’s disappointing inability to cope with Eric at his best. Toward the end, NEric lets it hang a bit too loose, but nobody cares because they’re happy. He goes stumbling off the stage with a wave and a “God bless,” this after the WE WON’T LEAVE THE BUILDING encore ritual, and he has to be happy.

But wait again. Downtown at the Bottom Line now, mad limmo czar Ronnie Sunshine shows us his Kirilian photographs of the. Grateful Dead before and after a concert. In the Before photos, the electromagnetic auras recorded by the Kirilian process show as pale, blurred emanations from a deep blue mass, against a black background. The After photographs show a huge, bright yellow ectoplasmic Blob positively throbbing with goodies and flashing off all kinds of lovely lightspears into this brilliant sky-blue atmosphere. Wow, Ronnie, guess that proves it, huh?

There’s a scientific explanation, naturally, but that blob is real and it certainly looks inviting when you figure that you’ve just left Clapton’s blob and there’s no telling how nice that one must have been ... but Greg Allman’s at the bar here in the process of being too warped to play a guest set, and Allan Pepper, proprietor, is out on the street reporting on all kinds of strange opinions, some negative, from patrons who were at Clapton’s concert. So nothing’s definitive, even if you know damn well that it was great. Then Allan — a thoroughly decent man who also knows the business, hears it day and night — begins to venture predictions about Clapton being on the Joe Cocker road to nowhere. It’s this sense that the word’s out on Clapton, even if it isn’t.

It’s a drag to stand out on the street and thinly about it.

(Reprinted by permission from the Village Voice.)