Critics generally looked with disfavor at double albums, seeing them as indulgences by the artist. In many examples, this is exactly true, such as Bob Dylan's 'Self Portrait' or John Lennon's 'Some Time in New York City'. Yet it seems that being that indulgent is exactly what a lot of artist need to bring out their best music. Double studio albums are surprisingly littered with the best work many artists ever did, for whatever reason.
Eric Clapton is a perfect example. It's easy and popular to come down harsh on Slowhand, who often seems to be on cruise control. But he was THE ground breaking guitar player in England, the guy who put the Gibson Les Paul together with the Marshall stack and go THAT sound, still copied to this day. He may have at times slavishly copied his blues heroes, but he improved on their skills.
From what Eric did in the Yardbirds, you'd never think that this was the guy who would revolutionize rock guitar. It's only on the last few recording, 'I Ain't Got You' and 'Got To Hurry', that his guitar tone emerges. Then he left in a huff, complaining about musical purity. Not even gigging for a while, John Mayall pulled him out of his funk and back on stage. That was the moment when Clapton's career exploded.
The lead guitar on the fifteen or so songs Clapton did while a member of Mayall's Bluesbreakers are classic, even when the songs are not. In truth, while John Mayall was a great finder of new talent, he was a second rate musician himself, a little too earnest. It also became apparent that Eric became bored after around eighteen months, with an almost compulsive need to change musical environments. This time, he formed the rock world's first supergroup, Cream. It took a bout a year, but in the wake of Jimi Hendrix, the band took off like a rocket ship.
Cream was not Clapton's group, although the management, Robert Stigwood in particular, pretended it was. Clapton didn't sing much and could barely write a song, although when he did either, things usually turned out well. Instead, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker tried to outdo each other, Eric acting as mediator and referee. They even managed a double album, 'Wheels of Fire', although one disc was live material.
Finally tired of all the arguments and bad blood between his other two band mates, Clapton broke the band up at the height of their popularity. Robert Stigwood's management ensured that anything Clapton did was going to be recorded and spread in the music press. Unfortunately, Clapton wanted to disappear into even a more sideman role. It took nearly a year, but Eric was finally coaxed to record his first solo album, a mixed affair with a few really good songs on it.
Forced to tour, Clapton, while working of George Harrison's 'All Things Must Pass', hooked up with some refugees from Joe Cocker's 'Mad Dogs & Englishmen' group, bassist Carl Radle, keyboard player and singer Bobby Whitlock, and studio drummer Jim Gordon. They were a sympathetic collection, with Whitlock able to supply both songs and a voice, both as lead and in harmony. Clapton was not yet a powerful singer, and long live concerts would be difficult for him. Eric decided to hide this excellent group under the moniker 'Derek and the Dominoes', much to the frustration of Robert Stigwood.
After recording well over half of Harrison's album and a single under the production of Phil Spector, the group moved to Miami to record their debut. It was only supposed to be a single album, and it wasn't going very well at that. The songs were there but the arrangements were turgid and process was slow. That is until producer Tom Dowd suggested the band take a night off and see one of the other acts he was working with, the Allman Brothers. Then things changed immediately for the better.
After a couple of round-the-clock jam sessions with the entire band, Derek and the Dominoes added master guitarist Duane Allman, a veteran of many studio sessions. After going back to jazz up the older tracks, they settled into finishing an album that quickly grew to mammoth proportions. Duane was a huge fan of Clapton's and the result was a meeting of guitar titans, one of the half dozen albums that every guitar slinger in the world must own and study. Yet it was met with a lukewarm reception at the time.
Part of it was the group's title, hiding Clapton's participation too well. It eventually sold like hot cakes for years, but as the group slogged across America and England in a support tour without Duane, Clapton started sinking into heroin addiction. The group had always been intended to be a two guitar band, with musical gadfly Dave Mason brief a member at the very beginning. A combination of Eric's slow decision making and Stigwood's insistence of product and touring ensured that it was a four piece that eventually hit the road.
The band fell apart as Clapton did, first when good friend Jimi Hendrix died, then Duane Allman a year later. A second album was more-or-less finished, pretty good but not quite a classic, before Eric stopped showing up or answering the phone. Snorting as much smack as he could with his current girlfriend, he was heading for oblivion despite repeated attempts by friends and management to rouse him from his heroin haze. Stigwood kept him in high profile, highlighting his one appearance at the 'Concert For Bangladesh'. It took Pete Townshend, coming over in the pretense of reviewing the second album tapes, to start the long process of detoxification.
So far I haven't mentioned the myth behind all this, the inspiration behind the song 'Layla'. It is the stuff of legends, and like a lot of legends, it stops before the end because things didn't quite work out as they were supposed to. Patti Boyd was a very pretty young English model, appearing in 'A Hard Day's Night' when she caught George Harrison's fancy. They married a year later, moving out to the London suburbs. George still had a roaming eye, not as bad as Ringo but still constantly looking for a little something on the side.
Clapton and Harrison became deep friends in 1967, helping each other write songs the next year. Harrison even had Clapton do the magnificent lead parts on his song 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps', the only other guitarist to appear on a Beatles record. They even toured together as lowly sidemen in the Delaney & Bonnie Revue, traveling across Europe anonymously on a lark. The problem came when George started using Eric as his shit screen for assignations with other women.
It seems that Eric fell hopelessly in love with Patti but couldn't tell her about it, or about her husband's philandering. When it did finally spill out, things got messy and Patti asked him to leave. Just another reason for his downward spiral into self-destructive behavior. The myth is that when they finally did get together in 1974, everything came up roses. That was most definitely not the case at all.
First, Clapton had only traded certain addictions for others, an all too common occurrence. Off smack, he now drank like a fish and smoked weed like a Rasta. Patti was at his side, often a little picked as well. It was the 1970s, it was the rock lifestyle, and it was the constant touring. Eric may have not been a heroin addict, but coke was perfectly acceptable. He was far from a healthy man.
It took an exploding ulcer on a fishing trip in Canada, a near death experience in 1983, to made it clear to Clapton that he needed to set his demons aside and start taking care of himself. To his credit, he did over the next few years, even giving up tobacco. But a sober Eric developed a roving eye as well, hooking up with a string of supermodels until one got pregnant and Patti left. Nobody mentions that, just the part where Clapton's son fell out of a New York City skyscraper window to his death.
It took a third marriage for Patti Harrison to find real happiness. Clapton managed to resist temptation, showing maturity in not using his child's death as an excuse to fall back into bad habits. I will defend Clapton, all too often pilloried as the whitening up of the blues. Frankly, without guys like Eric and the Rolling Stones, the blues would be stone cold dead today, completely forgotten.
Clapton was always a fabulous guitar player, even in his earliest days. The fact that everything he played turned to cliché' later is due to how influential it was, not because it wasn't good to start with. Unlike Hendrix, a mere mortal can play most of Eric's licks. More importantly, during the 1970s and 1980s, Clapton learned how to sing from his gut, not just his throat. Listen to him on the 'Layla' album, then fast forward to 'From the Cradle'. It doesn't sound like the same guy. The older Eric has infinitely more confidence and range.
It's not easy to learn to sing, especially when you are already famous. Clapton managed to keep the hits coming for decades, playing in many different styles. The legitimate complaint against him is that he is a lazy band leader. Much more innovative as a sideman or in a group, when left to his own devices, all too often he sounds like he is coasting. Considering all the turmoil he's had in his life, maybe he has the right to be that way.
Watch any time where Clapton comes on in a guest role, whether with the Rolling Stones, in the 'Concert For George' for his dear friend (they remained buddies despite the wife switch), or in the many appearances at his Crossroad Guitar Festivals. Given five minutes to shine, there is no better artist on the planet. Give him ninety, and you'll be bored. As a front man and a band leader, he's mediocre at best.
But his heart is in the right place. Clapton has devoted most of the last twenty years of his life creating and funding a drug rehabilitation clinic in Antigua. There have been hundreds of millions of dollars that have helped both the addicts, who get treatment at no cost in a Caribbean paradise, and the local Antiguan economy, too dependent on tourism, perpetually fragile. No other rock star has given back so much as a result of his own suffering. Hats off to the man.
I have my own connection of Antigua, and the place we usually stay at is located directly between Clapton's house and the Crossroads Clinic. I have yet to meet a taxi driver on the island who doesn't claim to have given Eric a ride. Our time share villa is literally a half mile across Mamora Bay, over the hill. The Clinic is on the other side of Willoughby Bay, very shallow and mostly undeveloped, just about the only buildings there. If I ever have to recover from drug addiction, please send me there.
It took a long time, but Eric Clapton finally learned to be comfortable in his own skin. He's now happily married with children, although his career is starting to wind down. He's leaving a massive legacy behind him, as well as one of the primal myths of rock, the unrequited love song 'Layla'. It took a double album to draw that greatest out of him, as well as a whole lot of tragedy.
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