CityLife

Eric Clapton

PERSONAL COMMUNION: Clapton

IT'S tempting to wonder whether the average Eric Clapton gig would be much different if every seat in the house were empty.

His has always seemed a very personal communion with the blues.

Many gigs - like this one before a full house at the arena - seem like we are eavesdropping on a jam session convened more for Clapton’s benefit than for ours.

Communication is kept to the odd “thank you”.

In truth, the longest dialogue with the audience came before Clapton had even taken the stage, as Bolton laugh-maker Peter Kay pitched up to introduce his mate Eric, and not for the first time.

There is no new album to sell, no new direction for the man once dubbed God.

So Clapton took us on a ramble through familiar areas of his back catalogue most amenable to him wailing away at length and with accustomed brilliance on his Stratocaster.

The best extended fret-worrying was to be found on the likes of Little Queen Of Spades, I Shot The Sheriff, Before You Accuse Me and Crossroads.

Last time he was here, in 2006, Clapton jousted with fellow axemen Doyle Bramhall II and Derek Trucks, and there was a frisson of competition in the room.

Six-string foil

This time Bramhall was there just as a member of the support band, Arc Angels, and Clapton’s only six-string foil was old retainer Andy Fairweather-Low, giving the evening a more laid-back feel.

The unexpected treat of the night was Clapton’s version of Bob Dylan’s Not Dark Yet, wrought in haunting fashion on a big Gibson jazz guitar, Clapton’s voice sounding quite Dylan-esque.

What with this and the similarly bleak, health-related opener Going Down Slow, it is tempting to wonder if Eric is, at 64, succumbing to the bluesman’s perennial obsession with his own mortality.

Perhaps not, after all he was singing, also from Dylan’s songbook, about Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door a good 34 years ago.

If the years have lent Clapton anything it is a still-developing fluidity and economy about his guitar playing and a convincing burr of maturity to his voice.

Yes, he really has got better with age. And he needs to be better. With the likes of John Mayer, Derek Trucks and Joe Bonamassa there are the most persuasive pretenders to his throne than at any time since the era of the much-mourned Stevie Ray Vaughan.

One song best defined Clapton’s enduring appeal. Old Love - one of three he played from 1989’s Journeyman album - provided an object lesson in how to make the guitar solo not a series of show-off licks but a story with a beginning, middle and end.