Last Sunday night (8.7.18) Eric Clapton played one of the British Summer Time gigs in Hyde Park. It was a glorious summer evening with the smell of hot-dogs, mixed with high notes of weed, wafting across the Royal Park. As the great sage of the blues guitar ambled on stage he muttered the immortal words: ‘It’s coming home’. Well if the footie’s coming home, the music had clearly missed its connection. The gig was as dull and dreary as cabbage. Perhaps the old boy’s past it.
OK, a little context is needed here. I’ve been a fan, off and on, for years. At school, my trigonometry text book (is trigonometry still a thing?) had the name of his band Cream written in psychedelic bubble letters on the cover.
Then in the 90s, friends of mine, the mighty Kick Horns, were Clapton’s brass section and I remember seeing some wonderful gigs at The Albert Hall.
Clapton made one album with Blind Faith, a band which featured one of my musical heroes Steve Winwood. Their only gig in London was at Hyde Park in 1969. As Winwood was also on the bill, I felt it safe to assume they would get together to thrill the crowds in 2018 as they had done all those years ago. Santana were also playing, and as Carlos and Steve have worked together it looked like a super celebrity mash-up of old mates was on the cards.
Earlier in the evening, both Winwood and Santana played blinding sets, but it was ‘Slowhand’ we had come to see. He started out quite low key with some mid-tempo blues, including Hoochie Coochie Man, and then became all but invisible with four acoustic songs including Layla and Tears in Heaven.
All of which may sound fine, but his heart wasn’t in it. Nobody was smiling on stage (not strictly true, the drummer seemed to have having a good time) there was no chemistry between the band members and Eric’s singing was at best perfunctory. Steve Winwood never showed up to partner with his old mate and it was left to Carlos Santana to spark things up when he came on to jam at the end.
Clapton didn’t even introduce his band which has the wonderful singer Paul Carrack in the ranks playing Hammond organ. If you don’t know the name, you’ll know the songs: How Long? The Living Years, Tempted. He has a fantastic soul voice but the only time we heard it was on the final song, which was the old Joe Cocker shout-a-long, ‘High time we went’.
Trust me, this is not the review I wanted to write, but for an audience to have a good time, the band need to have a good time. In truth Clapton barely turned up, went through the motions, and largely ignored the audience, some of whom started chanting ‘Football’s coming home’ during one of the more tedious segments.
For you completists out there, here’s the set list:
- Somebody’s Knocking
- Key to the highway
- Hoochie Coochie Man
- Got to get better in a little while
- Drifitn’ Blues
- Nobody knows you when you’re down and out
- Layla
- Tears in heaven
- Lay down Sally
- The Core
- Cross Roads
- Little Queen of Spades
- Cocaine
- High time we went (encore)
A Little London Life 