E.C. WAS HERE: A Comeback or Swansong?

E.C. WAS HERE: A Comeback or Swansong?

AMERICAN TOUR PREVIEW

by Nigel Burnham

Eric Clapton’s British comeback tour has been getting a mixed reception over here, and knowing how much bad reviews hurt the man, it almost seems like bad taste to say anything against him. But the shame about Clapton is that he has a legend to vindicate, and for his fans, it is not good enough for him to merely show that his fingers are as nimble as ever.

His playing is as fluent and as stylized as it ever was, but Clapton continues to face audiences .who still regard the break-up of Cream as unnecessary, even unforgiveable. Over the last few years, he's changed his musical associates as often as he's modified hjs facial hair, with the restless attitude which has always characterized the man. In these kinds of circumstances, the “comeback” tour has to be difficult, even traumatic.

On opening night at the Crystal Palace in London, Clapton played faultlessly. Even more important than that, he looked happy. But he gambled by choosing Ronnie Wood, Larry Coryell, Freddie King and Jess Roden to play with him. A lot of people suggested that Coryell had stolen the show in his supporting set even before Clapton took the stage, but in the final analysis, it was evident that Clapton had done everything he could.

It seems there is nowhere he can go from here. He doesn’t disillusion anyone who loves him, but he doesn’t win any new friends either. Clapton’s place in rock history has been assured for a long time, but the message of this tour has been that his influence is restricted to the past tense. There are so many guitarists on both sides of the Atlantic who play as well these days. They used him as a master, stole his licks, and exploited the fans’ hunger for glamour and gimmicks, something that Clapton never needed to do.

Clapton has always ridden fate, whereas most rock musicians try to exercise some kind of control over it. In his position, most musicians would have ensured that someone like Coryell^ wasn't around at the Crystal Palace. But Clapton doesn't calculate the things he does, or consider any of the implications. He rarely gives interviews. and has never contrived an aura like Bryan Ferry or David Bowie have done.

If he weren’t so sensitive, that wouldn't matter, but Clapton has all the ingredients of another rock ‘n’ roll fatality, and one has to worry for him. People like Lennon and J agger just get drunk (or whatever) when things go wrong. They wake up, start a new day and try to get things in perspective. | Even if they don't have anything new to | say in terms of music, tl>ey can always N survive on the strength of being | personalities and social phenomena. Clapton doesn’t have this means of salvation because he’s always let his guitar do the talking. When things go wrong for him. the fall is always that much harder.

It is true, and sad, that many people regard Clapton's peak as being synonymous with that of Cream’s. Some of his fans felt cheated" by what they considered to be his premature refutation of a music form they believed need have no end. But Clapton was more critical of his own worth than his fans were. He regarded Cream’s formula of playing twelve-bar blues and breaking into systematized improvisation as unethical. To Clapton, it seemed that three accomplished musicians were taking the soft option, and although the fans perceived Cream’s music as continually innovative, Clapton recognized that once the formula had been perfected. there was no longer any challenge.

He blamed himself for playing music which came only too naturally. But the real answer to his disillusionment lay in the fact that either he was ahead of his time, or he had just matured a lot faster than his audiences' Clapton has always possessed a well-developed critical faculty which makes him cynical about anything which comes too easily. He never correlated “good music” with audience reaction or popular approval, and ultimately turned his back on those people who preferred excitement to taste.

Clapton’s sincerity and integrity have never been in doubt, but he suffers through the absurd reality that he is still alive. It has become almost traditional that the greatest artists die early, and while Jimi Hendrix (who Clapton always rated as a better guitarist) and J im Morrison sealed their epitaphs through death, Clapton devalues his own by being a survivor.

The fans never helped him by trapping him in the Messianic role and failing to respond to his finest work, Layla And Other Love Songs, a record inspired by his love for George Harrison's wife Pattie. Since then, Clapton’s musical output has been good but sporadic, punctuated by a period of heroin addiction and emotional entanglements of the kind which amuse the British gossip columnists.

Having survived the knife-edged limelight which destroyed so many of his contemporaries, Clapton deserves more than he gets.

Perhaps America will give him a better deal. He is still very much revered here, but if anyone wanted to write his definitive biography, they could probably start now. ^ ■