Eric Clapton's career has followed a long and winding road. From his start with the Yardbirds in 1963 at the tender age of 18, the guitarist went through several bands and reinventions (John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Cream, Blind Faith, Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, and Derek and the Dominos) before striking out as a solo act in the early seventies. Through his entire career, though he explored pop, reggae, rock, jazz, soul, and country, the music that has most influenced and defined him is the blues. Clapton, and others of like mind, have introduced many to music that they would not have otherwise heard, all while pointing back to the originators, like Muddy Waters, Robert Johnson, Howlin' Wolf, Willie Dixon and Elmore James to name a few as their biggest influences.
Although it may to difficult to believe now, Eric Clapton was thought to have reached the nadir of his creative career in the mid 1980s. While he continued to have commercial success with two Phil Collins-produced albums, he was struggling with alcoholism, and his guitar-playing seemed to be relegated to almost an afterthought. But by the early nineties, Clapton had not only returned to his guitar-hero roots, but achieved amazing success, first with his "comeback" album Journeyman (1989), and then with his 1992 MTV Unplugged appearance, which garnered him six Grammies, as well as his first and only number one song "Tears in Heaven," dedicated to his four-year-old son who died in a freak accident in 1991. By the time that 1994 rolled around, Clapton was on top of the world commercially, and he set out to pay homage to his influences by recording an album consisting entirely of blues covers.
From the Cradle finally served to throw off the over-produced polish that had characterized most of his music from the eighties. The album was recorded live in the studio, with no overdubs, and with Clapton obviously singing and playing his heart out. For those critics that speculated that Clapton could no longer play as he once had, "Five Long Years" alone would put that to rest. It features a biting lyric ("I worked five long years for one woman/She had the nerve to put me out") and incendiary guitar work. Other standouts include "Tore Down," "Someday After A While," and "Groaning the Blues." Clapton is here at the top of his form.
The best-selling blues album of all time, some critics carp that From the Cradle is nothing more than a collection of inferior versions of the originals, but those critics would be missing the point. Clapton isn't trying to outdo the original blues artists, or to somehow improve on their legacy. He is paying tribute to them, and turning in my favorite album of his to date.
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