duggup

here is a line in the movie “Twister” after a town has been destroyed along the lines of “What would that be like?” and the answer is “The finger of god”.

Well folks.. he has ten fingers and he knows how to use them.

Last Night Jools and I went to see Eric Clapton (and thank you so much once again to the people who gave us the tickets), the last time I saw him was in April ‘75 at Festival Hall. It wasn’t one of his better gigs (not by a light year). But this story has a happy ending. Last night was a killer. Not a lot of chat from the stage, but hell I came to hear the guitars not his life story.

TSo lets talk about the band, here we have the list of suspects…
Eric Clapton - guitar, vocals
Doyle Bramhall II - guitar
Derek Trucks - guitar
(three guitars. Going well isn’t it)
Chris Stainton - keyboards (played with everyone from Joe Cocker to Maddy Prior to the Who)
Tim Carmon - keyboards
Willie Weeks - bass (one of the great bass players)
Steve Jordan - drums (my new favourite drummer… seriously)
Michelle John - backing vocals
Sharon White - backing vocals

Doyle Bramhall II and Derek Trucks both turned out to be absolutely brilliant musicians, totally different styles but brilliant. Doyle Bramhall II is an interesting and really inventive guitarist (and we will talk about him in another post at a later date), but Derek Trucks, oh my god. This guy is the real deal. Ian and I had been chatting about the make up of the band and told me I would love Derek Trucks playing, well he got that right ( don’t get smug). I can’t believe I had never heard him, I knew who he was but had just not gotten around to listening to albums yet,

So that this doesn’t happen to you, here is a Keys to The Highway from a live recording at www.archive.org/details/DerekTrucksBand .
Pretty good huh. I honestly could not believe how good this guy was. This was some of the best slide guitar I have ever heard, Truly one of the finds of the year. I wonder if Basement Records lets you open an account?.

And then songs, if Layla and Other Love Songs was your favourite Clapton Album, you came to the right place.
The band opened with Tell The Truth (the hand of god???), Key To The Highway and Got to Get Better in A Little While pausing only long enough to change guitars, a quick hello to the crowd and then straight into Little Wing and Why Does Love Got To Be So Sad? I hadn’t heard this song for ages and it just blew me away.

Now we get to the “Unplugged” part of the show, Driftin’ Blues (which was just Clapton by himself on an acoustic), Outside Woman Blues, Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out (a fab performance) and Running On Faith.

OK Back to business, time to fire up the amps again. Motherless Children (another song I had forgotten about) with all three guitarists playing slide, Little Queen of Spades (everybody got to a solo on this), then Further On Up The Road and Wonderful Tonight (great riff - crap song… sorry) and then Layla (Excerpt here)

This was the song that the crowd (and Thatch) had been waiting for. Were we disappointed? Nope, it was fabulous, Derek Trucks doing the Duane Allman slide part was a highlight. Chris Stainton’s playing held the extended piano ending together but the guitars were a magnificent shambles. Don’t get me wrong, this wasn’t a bad thing, this was the 89th show in the current tour and they were still pushing the edges to see what would happen. I loved it (except that it was over way too soon).

Then the obligatory hang around for a bit and then we got Cocaine and Crossroads to close out on, and that was it, everyone back home in time to catch the start of Rage.

So? Was it fun. Unequivocally YES. Can Clapton still play? Oh yes and the competition was awfully stiff. Am I all guitarred out… not likely.

Oh and before I forget, the support was local musician, Mia Dyson. She put in a good set, has a great voice and she is a good guitarist as well ( it really was my night for guitars), Jools was rather taken and will do a post about Mia later in the week.