E.C
AMAZING GRACE
Guitar Legends 06-94
Philipp Ollerenshaw/Starfile
In a world-exclusive interviex with MTV unplugged producer Alex Coletti, Eric Clapton discusses the tragedy and triumphs
that inspired the record of the year.
As producer of MTV's Unplugged, Alex Coletti is often asked by fans to pinpoint what it was about Eric Clapton's
performance on the show that made it so special. Other episodes of the program have been terrific; some have been
genuinely exceptional. But Clapton's appearance has already attained the level of myth-and people want to know why.
"Eric Clapton," explains Coletti, "was 'unplugged' in more ways than one at that performance. There, in front of a large
studio audience, an artist who is known to be very shy dealt with the most painful experience anyone could ever imagine-die
tragic loss of his son, Conor." Clapton looked his grief "square in the eye," notes Coletti, performing not only "Tears In
Heaven," but "Father's Eyes" and "Circus Left Town," two songs which deal with his loss in similarly stark, powerful terms.
(While "Father's Eyes" didn't make the final versions of the show or album, it will probably appear on Clapton's next studio
release.)
Coletti believes that the unique intimacy afforded by the Unplugged format made it the ideal place for Clapton "to
unplug his soul for us with such great dignity and grace." The guitarist also used the warm environment of the show to
"teach his listeners a lesson in music history, not only introducing a generation of MTV viewers to a world of country
blues songs, but also demonstrating that a man with an acoustic guitar can seriously rock out."
In a larger sense, Clapton's achievement can be explained in terms of something even more powerful than anything described
above: the power of love and memory. Rock and roll guitarists, like baseball players, welders and housewives, are often
masters of the art of denial. Not Eric Clapton. He is a devoted servant of his memory, and he clearly remembers everything.
His incredible performance on Unplugged was fed by some of his most powerful recollections-and loves. His set
list tells the story: country blues tunes he played in his youth, reworkings of songs from Layla, his most passionately
romantic album, new compositions about his lost son.
Hours after his Unplugged performance, Eric Clapton met with Alex Coletti on a darkened stage, and provided some
background to the memories he had just celebrated so beautifully.
By Harold Steinblatt
ALEX COLETTI: Eric, how did you come to compose the opening instrumental, "Signe"?
ERIC CLAPTON: It was written on a boat of the same name last year. I was on holiday with my manager and we chartered
Signe, a beautiful yacht. It was a difficult time in my life, and I was writing to heal myself. "Signe" was the first
thing I started to write. It, s just a melody which I dedicated to and named after the boat.
ALEX COLETTI: Why did you decide to perform Bo Diddley's "Before You Accuse Me"?
ERIC CLAPTON: That was one of the very first records I ever heard. I tkink it was on an album that also featured "Hey Bo
Diddley," "I'm A Man," "Bring It To Jerome" and lots of other good things. [Ed. note: All four songs are available on
the Bo Diddley Box (Chess/MCA).] I chose "Before You Accuse Me" because it's a straight blues and can be played any
way you like. I play it live with electric guitar, and I thought it would be nice to try it on the two acoustics.
ALEX COLETTI: It seems that whenever you decide to perform a cover version of a song, they become your songs-people forget
the originals.
ERIC CLAPTON: Well, I hope that's the case. I heard most of the cover songs in this set when I was very young, and I've
always wanted to play them. This was a great opportunity for me to pay homage to the things that originally influenced me.
For example, "Hey Hey" was written by Big Bill Broonzy, and it was probably the first blues song I ever heard. I used to
play it in pubs when I was very young. I never felt that I mastered it, so I wanted to give it another shot.
ALEX COLETTI: Tell me about the writing process for "Tears In Heaven."
ERIC CLAPTON: It was written for the film Rush. The timing was perfect, because they needed a song about loss and I
had plenty of them. "Tears In Heaven' was actually in a very embryonic stage when I was approached; I needed the film to
finish it, because otherwise I probably would have let it go. It was also a good opportunity for me to write about the
loss of my son, and have somewhere to put it-to channel it because it didn't look like I was going into the studio in the
near future. I really wanted to be able to say something about what happened to me and the opportunity that this movie
presented me was excellent, because it meant that I could write this song and express my feelings and have it come out
quickly. After the song was done, I thought that it would be nice to put it out as a single as well. There were other
songs like it of course, but that was the one.
ALEX COLETTI: "The Circus Left Town 'is one of several songs you debuted on Unplugged What can you tell us about it?
ERIC CLAPTON: Some of the songs are still in a very early stage of development, but they will be on a record someday. "The
Circus Left Town" is about my son and the last night I spent with him, which was, in fact, at the circus. It's... there's
not much I can say about it except that these songs helped me get through a very hard patch in my life, and I wanted to
make them public. In fact, my performance on MTV was the first time they were played publicly in any form.
ALEX COLETTI: If these songs are part of a healing process, does playing them in front of people further that process?
ERIC CLAPTON: Yes. I think that with what happened to me last year-the loss of my son-my audience would have been very
surprised if I didn't make some reference to it. And I wouldn't want to insult them by not sharing my grief with them in
some way. So I do intend to make these things known and I will play the songs in concert and put them on record. It is a
healing process for me, and I think -it's important to share that with people who love your music.
ALEX COLETTI: Is "Lonely Stranger" part of this "healing process" cycle?
ERIC CLAPTON: Sort of I wrote that in Los Angeles while I was doing the score for Rush, and I was just very lonely in L.A.I
felt like an English exile trying to beat the odds. You can get a lot of very strange vibrations, coming in from the
outside and doing something with the film industry. I really wrote that song to try to kind of cheer myself up.
ALEX COLETTI: Tell me about "My Father's Eyes."
ERIC CLAPTON: It was another song I wrote on holiday last year, when I had a kind of revelation about my son. It's a very
personal matter, but I never met my father, and I realized that the closest I ever came to looking in my father's eyes was
when I looked into my son's eyes. So I wrote this song about that. It's a strange kind of cycle thing that occurred to me,
and another thing I felt I would like to share.
ALEX COLETTI: You recorded "Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out"' on the Layla album, and again now. What is the
song's history?
ERIC CLAPTON: That's an old Bessie Smith song which goes back to 1910 or 1915. I heard a guy play it in the pubs when I was 14
or 15, and I learned it and played it around the pubs myself It was part of my early, early repertoire. In fact, it was
one of the first songs I felt I could sing because it was very melodramatic and I could put all this angst into it. I did
also do it with Derek And The Dominos, but this is the way I originally did it with the acoustic guitar.
ALEX COLETTI: When was the last time you played it this way?
ERIC CLAPTON: Oh God-maybe 30 years ago.
Jeffrey Mayer/Starfile
ALEX COLETTI: Your arrangement of "Layla" is very different from the original.
ERIC CLAPTON: Yeah. "Layla" sort of mystified me. I've done it the same all these years and never considered to revamp it the
way a lot of artists might. Bob Dylan, for instance, changes everything every time he plays a song. I thought this was a
great opportunity to just take "Layla" off on a different path and put it to a shuffle. For a start, malting it acoustic
denied all the tiffs - which I think would have really sounded a bit weak on the acoustic. So it just seemed to naturally
become jazzier. And, of course, I'm singing it a whole octave down, which gives it a nice atmosphere.
ALEX COLETTI: Did you experiment with the arrangement?
ERIC CLAPTON: Well, [guitarist] Andy Fairweather Low and I were at my house, doing some pre-rehearsal rehearsal for
this, and I just picked up the guitar and said, "What do you of this" And it just happened-it clicked straight away. So
we, kept it like that.
ALEX COLETTI: "Running On Faith" was on Joumeyman.
ERIC CLAPTON: Yeah. Jerry Lynn Williams wrote that, and I'd heard him play it on piano and on acoustic and electric and a
lot of different ways and arrangements, so I knew that the song was easily adaptable. So that made it an obvious song to
do. I also wanted to include it because it's a regular part of my stage repertoire and thus fairly well-known.
ALEX COLETTI: It was good to see you play dobro.
ERIC CLAPTON: Yeah. I played one on the record. I usually don't play it on stage, so that was another opportunity.
This program is great to have given me these opportunities to do things that I've always done at home but don't do on stage.
ALEX COLETTI: Do you often play slide at home?
ERIC CLAPTON: Not so much actually, but I would like to play more slide, and I think it's something you have to be careful with
on an electric. I mean it is ideally suited for acoustic guitar, and all of my original heroes played the slide and
bottleneck, so maybe it's something I'll get into again.
ALEX COLETTI: Speaking of original heroes, you played Robert Johnson's "Walking Blues."
ERIC CLAPTON: I did, but I've turned it into a hybrid song, really. I borrowed the guitar part from one of the first Muddy
Waters songs I ever heard, "Feel Like Going Home," and then superimposed Robert Johnson's lyrics. It's sort of my
simultaneous tribute to both of them. It's a piece I've played since I was 14, but I only recently decided to start
singing it.
ALEX COLETTI: Speaking of singing, the sound of your voice really penetrates in an acoustic setting. Are you feeling more
comfortable, vocally?
ERIC CLAPTON: I often enjoy singing in an acoustic setting more than in an amplified one. When you're on stage with an
electric band going through a massive p.a. system, it's very artificial. You can't really hear your own voice as it comes
out of your mouth - you have to depend on the loudspeakers and monitors. So it's such a joy to sing with a full band
acoustically and be able to hear your voice; I find it so much easier to adjust the volume of my own voice. Here I could
sing quietly, which allows me to have more dynamic range.
ALEX COLETTI: What are the origins of the song "Alberta"?
ERIC CLAPTON: It's an old Snooks Faglin song, which is, again, something I heard when I was very young. Snooks Eaglin's
Street Singer album was an important part of my record collection. He is a great, great player and singer who
originally recorded on the streets of New Orleans. The variety of his repertoire is absolutely amazing, but that song
"Alberta" was accessible to me as a beginning guitar player because it consists of @ chords and just straight s g. It just
lodged in my head as a very sentimental song, and is part of my early influences.
By the way, Snooks is still active, and he's a great artist. [Editor's note: Eaglin's most recent albums, Out Of
Nowhere and Teasin' You are both available on Black Top Records.]
ALEX COLETTI: Why did you do "San Francisco Bay Blues"?
ERIC CLAPTON: I don't know. I've heard several versions of it, but the first one I heard was performed by Jesse Fuller-as a
one-man band. He had two bass drums, a foot bass, harmonica, kazoos and a great big 12-string guitar. It was one of those
songs he played in pubs to get free beer, so it's very accessible on a sing-along level. I just wanted to do this song
because it's never gone away-just like "Hey Hey" and "Alberta." These songs have never left my head; they're always there
in a part of my life.
ALEX COLETTI: You concluded the MTV set with another Robert Johnson song, "Malted Milk."
ERIC CLAPTON: "Malted Millk" is a peculiar song. It's very ironic, because it's quite clear that it's not malted milk he's
referring to throughout the song. It came from a period where Robert was changing his style, and it sounds to me like he
came across [blues and jazz guitar great] Lonnie Johnson in his travels. There was a massive shift in his style of
accompaniment and his style of singing. I've never approached this song before-and probably wouldn't have if I hadn't had
this opportunity to try it out. It's a very beautiful, very simple song, and I wanted to end the set with it because it
sort of brings it back home for me.
ALEX COLETTI: So is Robert the first influence?
ERIC CLAPTON: He's the most important influence I've had in my life and always will be, I think.
Chuck Pulin/Starfile
ALEX COLETTI: Did you start out on acoustic?
ERIC CLAPTON: Tbe first guitar I ever had was a gut-string Spanish guitar, and I couldn't really get the hang of it. I was
only 13, and I talked my grandparents into buying it for me. I tried and tried and tried, but got nowhere with it. I
finally gave up after a year-and-a-half I started getting interested in the guitar again after hearing Muddy Waters,
because it sounded like it was easier-wrong! [laughs] I wanted an electric guitar and, again, I talked my grandparents into
buying me one. And, actually, within a very short period of time I got somewhere with it. So I had two starts, really.
However, the second time around I bumped into people who had the same interests - who liked Muddy Waters, Little Walter,
Big Bill Broonzy, Robert Johnson - they were the original Yardbirds. We used to play together a lot at parties and ended
up forming an official band. That was really when I became a professional; it was within a very short amount of time.
ALEX COLETTI: I'd never seen you play finger-style prior to this performance. Is this a new development?
ERIC CLAPTON: I did play a lot of finger-style when I first started playing. I could never really find the right combination
of flatpick or fingerpick, so playing finger-style is really the easiest way-though it's quite strenuous on the fingertips.
I think you get a nice tone that way; I wouldn't mind trying it on electric. There is a beautiful sound to be gained from
the actual touch of the finger to the string, but that requires a lot of dexterity. Mark Knopfler's got it and Stevie Ray
had it, but I haven't done it for a long time. It's something I just recently started to work on again.
ALEX COLETTI: I was a little bit surprised to see that you decided to use your whole band.
ERIC CLAPTON: When we came in for rehearsals I wasn't sure what I'd do - whether it should just be me solo or with another
guitar and/or bass. So we tried it a couple of days with everyone, and I thought we'd whittle the band down through
process of elimination and say, "Well, that's nice but it's not quite right." And keep going like that until it sounded
right. But everyone had such a nice touch, and they all managed to restrain themselves. I think it's a great experience
in self-restraint and discipline. I mean, guys like [drummer] Steve Ferrone very rarely play this quietly. Anyhow,
everyone held back, so-I ended using almost everyone on almost everything, and I think it still sounds good.
Notons élement un cahier technique sur des morceaux de "Unplugged" ou précédemment
interprétés par E.C.
 |
|
 |
|
Cette page a été réalisée
par Vuibert Jérôme le
. e-mail : cf. mon cv.