PART I of III
Eric Clapton's recent admission he's going deaf because of his own concerts is not great news for those of us who sat up-close at a Clapton concert or two over the last 30-some years. I mean, those 100-watt stacks were facing in our direction, too.
Throw in the fact that Clapton's shows were not, by any stretch, the only concerts that people were regularly attending and, well, Houston (and the rest of the audio world), we have a problem.
In the interest of international public health, I offer the following alternative to further ear damage: "The SILENT Clapton Concert." The next time Mr. E.C. comes to town, stay home and take in the quiet-as-a-cemetery show that appears below.
Just read, song by song, and you'll be sidestepping all sorts of troubles with travel and tickets... and tinnitus.
New York, April 2, 1990 — Salutations to Charles Dickens across wheelbarrows of shiny Stratocasters: it is the best and worst of rock 'n' roll times to anticipate writing about Mr. Eric Clapton after watching him ply his transcendent craft at Madison Square Garden for a couple of hours. And from front-row-center no less!
How to catch the smoking-blue gem of his talent without dimming its luster with the dust of post-facto interpretation? Musically, in all of rock 'n' roll, there may be no single note as admirable as a well-bent Clapton riff.
In terms of personality, "Eric Clapton" might be the four most enigmatic syllables since "Mona Lisa." Let's face it: if the man were a place, he'd be Stonehenge. And so far as status is concerned, his position is merely pharaoh-like.
Add to the dilemma that I caught the guy tonight at a show when he was not at his best, but somewhere over it — one of those extraordinary nights when a musician so takes you by the ears that he makes you try to see the world through him.
My fear, then, is that whatever I might write here in the early-A.M. cool of aftermath could lower the artistically ferocious temperature of the performance. That is to say, this hottest of shows might lose something in its word-by-word transmogrification through the thin lines of a sun-faded legal pad.
Perhaps a fair approach would be to use the sun-faded pad as a launching pad back through the evening. Since the subject at hand is an in-concert experience — and the focus is the quality of that experience — let us return to the front row.
Maybe take the show song-by-song — the better to catch my breath with — and report impressions and reactions hot-off-the-head. Maybe then there will also be less heat loss.
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