I watched the first 50 minutes last night. Exceptionally good. I've read a lot on him, including his autobiography and a biography or two. I learned a lot that I didn't know--including aspects of his relationship with Jimi Hendrix. Thanks, Goldbrick. I'm going to embed it below to make it even easier for folks to watch this.
Use headphones. It puts you right there, inside the music of the era.
my first thought was... who cares. don't get me wrong i am a clapton fan.I just didn't think there would be anything worthwhile, and since goldbrick did not embed the video i was being too lazy to paste the link.
so i changed my mind and watched it, it is a excellent film.i had planned to point out several places in the film where i thought were interesting. for example... the part where he said he found a particular amp that made all the difference. also,it is well known he and duane allman used a fender champ to record the album derek and the dominoes. i always thought it was a tweed amp, looks like i was mistaken, i'll post a picture i took.
i also really liked the john mayall conversations,especially where he said john was the only one playing blues, him and alexis corner.
he had 3 fender stacks right next to this amp, however i find it interesting the the front of house was a mic'd fender champ.
also, in the studio he had a loud marshall at one point. he told the engineer, figure it out, he cranked the heck out of the amp, and had them move the mic away from the amp. turns out that was ground breaking at the time, and no other recording ever sounded the way it turned out.
I saw this film last week in its entirety. The first hour is fascinating and excellently done. The 2nd hour and beyond, after the Derek and the Dominos/While My Guitar Gently Weeps stuff, is pretty lame, in my opinion. It blows off huge parts of Clapton's career, from his first solo album on through to the 80's, to concentrate on his sobriety struggles and tragic death of his son. Important stuff, certainly, and compelling,but the film seems to take a wild turn in tone from a deep dive musically into a personal journey and it seems to wrap up pretty quietly. Granted, one could argue that Clapton's greatest musical contributions were over by 1970, but I've always been interested in those bizarre 70's albums where he seemed to want to become JJ Cale...and I'd like to know how he handled the strange turn the music biz took in the 1980's with studio production and MTV videos, and how he tried to fit blues into all that. Perhaps he has no memory of it, but he was very much in the public eye all those years and the film just seems to blow it off. Just a few scenes.
he actually played his best with cream......with the layla album......skydog made the album......bigtime!!!!.....but eric carried on and has made great music......loved his love for blues
I actually dig some of those boozy 70's Delaney-and-Bonnie and JJ Cale-ish albums...not as much as earlier Clapton, but they are interesting and certainly worth looking into in a documentary on his life. Clapton had quite a few hit songs and successful albums/tours during this period, and obviously made a HUGE artistic decision to play more like an American country blues player than like a British Invasion bluesman...it's not like he totally disappeared or stunk artistically. there's bound to be some interesting stories there....but the film just basically jumped over this 15+ year period. Seemed odd to me.
JJ Cale is one of my favorite artists Clapton was probably attracted by the down to earth simplicity -solid in okie roots grace of Cales music
Eric by his own admission is a chameleon - at times a wanna Beatle and others a junkie Bluesman
Although I am mostly a fan of his Bluebreaker. Cream . Blind Faith era tone ( shoulda never gone to the Strat)- he has always been a very respectful of blues history and an extremely tasteful guitarist. He has also encouraged new guitar talent
I think the film provided pretty good insight in how he was able to channel a weird family dynamic into skill with his guitar as therapy
Not enough about the music qua *music* in the 1:50 hrs I saw. That´s usual, but E.C. has kind of thoroughly documented his boozing and drugging in his autobiography, where not a whole lot is said about music either.
I kind of lost interest in Clapton quite a while ago. Post-Cream, his solo work was pretty lazy, with outbreaks of inspiration , such as Layla or his wonderful blues disc From the Cradle. Others may feel differently,but he seems to have recycling old riffs for decades; I count from Wikipedia that he has released 16 solo albums under his name over the years. It's not so objectionable for a jazz musician to have numerous live albums over the course of a long career since a tenet of the jazz aesthetic is that no two improvisations on the same song are alike. Each performance is a unique work of art, and able jazz players are able to recast,re-imagine, re-brand their signature songs continually. Clapton,though, is not a jazz musician, but a blues player, with a far more limited vocabulary of ideas that simply repeat themselves. There is redundancy in his execution that becomes wearisome with all those elongated solos. These days, where he gets my attention is less the addition of new musical ideas or context, but rather by the quality of fire he brings to the old material, to the signature riffs and phrases. My favorite example is his reunion with fellow Blind Faith member Steve Winwood from 2009. Clapton's guitar work burns hot,fevered, intense, inspired throughout the two discs. This two disc set more than reclaimed Clapton's greatness from drifting, plodding and dispirited money grab that was the 2004 Cream reunion. ---------- www.ted-burke.com
I watched this documentary this weekend and thoroughly enjoyed it.
I think the reason Eric's albums in the 70's was glossed over was because this documentary was more on the personal life of Eric versus his musical journey.
I don't know if anyone else noticed how much screen time included Pattie Boyd versus actual concert footage.
Eric has been a personal favorite of mine for decades.
I was lucky enough to see Eric's From the Cradle (Nothing But The Blues) tour around 1994 and then see Eric again a year or so later touring either Pilgrim or Reptile album.
Last Edited by Blind Melon on Mar 05, 2018 9:28 AM
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