[Slowhand] Clapton Article

[EFSCHUL at aol.com]

Article on Clapton at the RAH.....Financial Times, 30 May 2006  follows:
 
Eric Clapton, Royal Albert  Hall, London
By Ludovic  Hunter-Tilney
Published: May 30 2006 12:30 | Last updated: May 30 2006  12:30

Unlike his  fellow sexagenarian axe hero Neil Young, who recently complained 
that a dearth  of young protest singers inspired him to record an 
anti-Iraq-war album, Eric  Clapton seems indifferent to rock music as anything other than 
an exercise in  musicianship. For him it begins and ends with technique: the 
rest is  frippery. 
               
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There was nothing frivolous about this concert. No showmanship, no chat, no  
spontaneity. Gone are the wild improvisations and psychedelic guitar jams of 
his  days in Cream. Instead we were treated to a masterclass of technical 
artistry,  not just from Clapton but also from his impressive backing band too. 
There were  slide guitar solos, blues-rock solos, fiddly high-end solos, bass and 
drum solos  – and that was just by the end of the second song. 
The guitar solo is by nature brash and self- indulgent. But Clapton, despite  
his reserve towards the audience, proved a surprisingly generous, relaxed  
performer. He gave ample playing opportunities to two younger guitarist-  
sidekicks, while his own fretwork was fluid and organic: rather than bully the  
songs, his solos stayed elaborately true to their rhythms and tempos. 
On record he tends to polish his music until it gleams like an executive  
saloon. But he was less smooth live, barking out lyrics in the style of a  
bluesman and favouring the harder stuff over the soft rock he lapsed into in the  
1980s. The evening was book-ended by two fierce tracks, “Pretending” and  “
Crossroads”, which found Clapton at his best: dextrous, aware, virtuosic. 
There was the odd longueur – unavoidable in a career as patchy as Clapton’s –
  and some of his best-known songs are either stale (his cover of Bob Marley’
s “I  Shot the Sheriff”) or hopelessly saccharine (“Wonderful Tonight”). Yet 
the good  moments – deft solos, pounding rock songs, supple blues licks – 
outweighed the  bad. When the mood strikes him, he can still put his technique 
to formidable  use. ★★★☆☆
Tel +44 0207 589 8212
Now touring  in Europe
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