[Slowhand] Devil Road mystery

[S K]

I stumbled upon the
old Dominos track 'Devil Road' the other day. The song is the most interesting
of the unreleased Dominos material. Renee Armando on vocals and there are two
killer guitar solos on this 13 minute track. BUT who's the guitar player? The
solos are clearly NOT usual EC playing. Can anybody shed more light on this?
(This is a long post, bear with me).
 Kevin posted this on
the Digest last year: "The mystery of Devil Road, generally added to
unofficial releases of the Dominos second album, continues. Don't know if its
been mentioned before, but Altar Rock, the 4th track on the Bobby Keys
self-titled album, is basically the same song, without vocals, with sax instead
of guitar, and somewhat shorter. The Bobby Keys album has been remastered and
was re-released in late-2012".  I
haven’t seen a follow-up on this. A quote from
Dimeadozen: ”I've been obsessing over Devil Road for over a
year now since I first downloaded this.  Does anyone have a clue as to who
the guitar player is?  It's clearly not Slowhand, nor is it likely
Whitlock or Radle on the track either.  It sounds more like some of Jim
Gordon's Steely Dan cohorts.  This song (and the preceding instrumentals)
just scream for official release, and show what a HUGE loss Jim Gordon was to
the music world”. From Collectors Music Review: “ ‘Devil’s Road’ is thirteen
minutes, features female vocals and sounds like early Steely Dan. This along
with the last two instrumentals has had speculation on whether or not Clapton
had any involvement. The solos can be very different from Eric’s usual style.
Whoever it is deserves proper credit, as the playing is unbelievable”. >From the BigO site: ”I just
listened to the 3 cuts from Clapton’s home studio which are certainly
interesting, but is Clapton playing guitar? Definitely sounds like the other
Dominos, but the guitar playing is not typical Clapton at all. There are all
sorts of tones and licks that I’ve never heard him use before or since. –Bill”.
”Hey Bill, The 3 EC home studio tracks don’t sound like EC to my ears, more
like Jeff Beck. Also the tone sounds like a humbucker equipped guitar, Les
Paul, 335, SG. –Bruce”. From YouTube: “Clapton's guitarwork is so different here you could be forgiven for
thinking it was someone else - the solos don't start until 2'37" into the
song. Some may say this has all the usual 70's faults on it but I really like
this track - it's really a home recording”. “I have the bootleg too and I think
it's safe to say that, this act of genius is from Clapton himself. This song is
one of the best I've ever heard”. On the opposite side: “I have the bootleg CD
of the whole session and it’s not Clapton playing the guitar, sorry”. “That
guitar sounds more like Dave Mason than Clapton in my humble option”. As we all know, EC doesn’t touch on this
in his autobiography. Bobby Whitlock mentions the song in his memoirs, but only
to the extent that it is a ‘cool song’. Whitlock wrote on the Steve Hoffman
Forum: “Devil Road", "High", "Tender Love" and
"Snake Lake Blues" are the only tracks that I really like from those
sessions...The rest of it was mindless crap...A bunch of diddley, diddley
clever nothing...”. Bobby’s recollection at least helps define the song as a
Dominos song, not entirely a Jim Gordon side project. Maybe the closest we’ll get to solving
this issue is a statement from another thread on the Hoffman Forum where Marc
Roberty refers to his research for his newly released EC Day-by-day vol. 1. A forum member
asks: “The question is whether or not this track is a Jim Gordon project that
just happened to be on the same tape(s), or if it was really part of the
Dominos sessions. (…) To my ears, the recording does not sound all that
different from the others in terms of recording style, and we have the same
band format (one guitar, piano, bass and drums). Only the guitar tone and song
style are unique, but then like I said, as usual for these sessions, we have
wah wah pedal use and I wouldn't be surprised if Eric chose to forgo the
stratocaster to play a gibson instead on a track that's in the jazz style. All
just guesses though. It would be great to get a real answer on this some day!” Then Roberty
writes: “While doing research for my next project I can confirm that it is Eric
playing guitar and it was recorded at Eric's home studio in April 1971. I spoke
directly to Renee who remembers the session very well. She says it was just
her, Jim and Eric messing around and was not seriously considered for release.
She was going out with Jim at the time who also produced her "Rain
Book" album. A lot of this material was taken from Olympic Studio reels
that were thrown out into rubbish skips by the new owners in 1988. I am
guessing that the Renee track was recorded on some spare space at the end of a
session reel that was later taken to Olympic for potential use or overdubs”. So – is the
case closed? I am still in doubt whether this really is EC, since there
are licks on this song that I've never heard from him. The guitarist also repeats
many licks in a way that EC never really does, at least to this extent. On the
other hand, there are recognizable guitar parts, Whitlock’s account puts the
song in the Domino catalogue, and then Renee Armando confirms that it is EC
playing guitar. If it is EC, I think it shows an (even more) amazing variety in
his playing, that I wasn’t aware of… Before putting
this to rest, I wanted to hear the view of the Digest. Thanks for your time. Kris