[Slowhand] Randolph Restores Clapton's Musical Faith

[ToeKneeF]

 From the AP Wire via Netscape News

Randolph Restores Clapton's Musical Faith
By BRET GLADSTONE

There appears to be two types of people when it comes to Robert 
Randolph: those who haven't heard his music and those like, for example, 
Eric Clapton, who swear he's the next coming.

Of what tends to be the main variable. But even the most devout of these 
fans, even the privileged few who were able to sit within The House of 
God Church in Orange, N.J., and watch a neighborhood teen begin to tame 
the lap pedal steel into something ``Sacred,'' would have had a hard 
time predicting Randolph's year, which has included worldwide touring 
success, a Grammy nomination and performing with guitar icon Clapton.

``We started touring with Clapton in Europe, and it was just so much 
fun,'' Randolph remembers, sitting backstage hours before a June show at 
Madison Square Garden, wearing a Knicks jersey. ``The first day of the 
tour he came in backstage and I was playing acoustic Dobro and he just 
sat down and said, 'Wow, this is amazing. ... We starting talking for 
about 30 minutes, just about music, and as days went on in the tour, he 
came in to ask if we could do a U.S. tour with him too, 'cause we've 
been having so much fun, and then I started playing with him on stage as 
well.''

Clapton has spent his career perpetually accompanied by the specter of 
paternal bluesman Robert Johnson, culminating in a recent album covering 
his songs. So it's entertaining to think of Clapton drifting around 
backstage and being almost unconsciously attracted to Randolph's 
reverberations of gritty Delta blues, like a cartoon dog drawn, toes 
fluttering gleefully off the ground, to an open window by the visible 
aroma of a cooling pie.

Yet for musicians like Clapton, who construct musical spaces just to 
tear them apart and begin again like kids with Lego sets, that could be 
the way things work - if you leave yourself open to change, things tend 
to gravitate toward you. So there's something appropriate and a bit 
haunting about the fact that Clapton should have his musical faith 
restored by a 25-year-old bluesy, slide-driven virtuoso chasing his own 
idea of God - whose name happens to be Robert.

``I often get into a deep depression of 'It's all over,''' Clapton 
confides via e-mail, ``as I was kind of blessed to live during the birth 
and the death of rock 'n' roll. I'm gonna see the beginning and the end 
in my own lifetime. And then I meet someone like Robert and hear him, 
and it gives me belief that the thing is gonna lead ahead for a while.''

When the show begins, Randolph turns in a relatively short set including 
a blazing rendition of Michael Jackson's ``Billie Jean,'' an innovative 
treatment of the ``Beverly Hills Cop'' theme song, band staples like 
``Nobody'' and ``I Need More Love,'' and a searing version of Jimi 
Hendrix's ``Voodoo Child (Slight Return).'' The crowd, sparse at first, 
inhabited by middle-aged suits and small, broken islands of unaffectedly 
boogieing hipsters, ends with an uproarious standing ovation from what 
has become a packed Madison Square Garden.

It's a neat microcosm of the way the band has won over an increasingly 
large contingency throughout the country, as if time slowed and a dream 
materialized before them, during what has really been one vast, 
celebratory set. They just keep playing, and, well, things just keep 
happening.

Later ,as the night grinds to a halt, Randolph comes back out to join 
Clapton in heated renditions of ``Sunshine Of Your Love'' and ``Got My 
Mojo Working,'' laughing and trading blistering solos.

``We've been doing kind of the same songs with him when I sit in but its 
different each night,'' Randolph says, ``because you never know what's 
going to happen within the improvisation - sometimes we solo for a long 
time, sometime it goes shorter, other times we'll just feed off each 
other. He'll take the two solos or three solos, we'll go back and forth. 
And it's fun every day that we get to play with him, as much as just 
sitting and watching him, how professional he is and how great he plays 
and sings every night too, he's on and he's 60 years old and it's just 
amazing.''

On stage with Clapton, electric moments puncturing the night, Randolph 
almost manages to steal the show. Not that Clapton has a problem 
acknowledging the possibility.

``I suppose at some point in my career I might've been very intimidated 
by Robert's ability, and going on after someone like that could be 
difficult,'' he admits. ``He takes every audience to that place and you 
can either use that and enjoy it, or be a little overwhelmed and 
intimidated. And I think I'm probably just about mature enough now to 
not be threatened by it. But I mean, that's a huge talent to go on 
afterwards, really it is. I mean, I'm not kidding - he's a hard act to 
follow.''

Which is the feeling one might have had watching Clapton - get this - 
playing rhythm for Randolph, who's as oblivious as ever while launching 
into a ferocious solo that even had an 80-year-old spectator trying to 
replicate the shimmyings of her daughter and son in law. The revered 
icon shook his head in approval and disbelief and pointed over at the 
lap pedal steel prodigy from the instrumental left field of Irvington, 
New Jersey, who pointed back, laughing, as if to say, no ... YOU.


08/05/04 19:13
© Copyright The Associated Press.

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"Anyone who would take the first step without
having thought through the last step is a fool
and should not be allowed in the councils of war"
..............Clausewitz