Clapton Rainbow Concerts [Live, Original recording remastered, Import]

In your friend's case, it seems obvious that his love of music has to be the thing that should restore his will to go on living. The problem is, except for an appearance at George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh, ca. 1 1/2 years earlier, the man hasn't appeared on stage, nor has he seen the inside of a recording studio. Before embarking on his slide into addiction, he has been part of a number of true supergroups; but everyone of them has disintegrated over time, many say before they had really had a chance to take off. So what are you going to do? - Eventually you convince a group of top-notch musicians to help you out once you get the guy to agree to appear on stage again, for two shows at London's Rainbow Theatre: Besides Ron Wood of the Jeff Beck Group and J.J. Cale's drummer/buddy Jimmy Karstein, Steve Winwood and Rick Grech agree to lend a hand, forgetting for a moment the short life of their own band with your friend, Blind Faith; and you also get the ok. from two other guys from Winwood's and Grech's more consistent band, Traffic - Jim Capaldi and Rebop Kwaku Baah. Although you guys will be presented as the "Palpitations," nobody is going to make the mistake to bill you as yet another supergroup for more purposes than those two shows. You don't have a lot of time to rehearse, and during the show you will find yourself joking that "none of that seems worth it now" because you "keep forgetting things." But during rehearsal already, it turns out to be your friend who keeps telling people that everything is going to be just fine, and when they are concerned they might not remember the chords to any given song he responds, "Oh don't worry. It's easy, you know. They're simple songs!"

Although absence from the stage and drug abuse had taken their toll, when listening to the recording of what has come to be known as Eric Clapton's "Rainbow Concert" it becomes clear just how much these two live appearances helped to reenergize him. The album, greatly improved in its remastered CD version (both in its sound quality and by its enhancement to more than twice the original number of tracks) opens with the first recorded live version of "Layla" - not quite as painfully torn as the original studio recording, but very powerful and gaining special impact by being played by no less than three outstanding guitarists. From there, it's a tour de force through some of the best song material existing at the time, most of it concert staples of Clapton's to this day. His voice and guitar play are rough, edgy - maybe a tad restrained by his standards, but still on a level other musicians would do anything to achieve it. In addition to songs from Clapton's own albums (with his various bands and from his self-titled and, at the time, only solo release; covers such as J.J. Cale's "After Midnight" and songs written by Clapton himself: "Badge," "Blues Power," "Bell Bottom Blues" and more), the band also gives a very soulful rendition of Jimi Hendrix's "Little Wing," Steve Winwood steps back as lead vocalist in Eric Clapton's favor for Blind Faith's "Presence of the Lord" and Traffic's "Pearly Queen," and "Key to the Highway" becomes almost the blues jam session it has been during the recording sessions for the "Layla" album (now available on the remastered version of that album and first released as part of the 1988 "Crossroads" box set).

Throughout the recording, the genuine camaraderie of the eight musicians is obvious; evidenced by Townshend's introduction of the band (purposely neglecting to mention Eric Clapton at first and then, having been "reminded" by Clapton's persistent fiddling about on his guitar, adding, "Oh yeah ... and Eric Clapton on third rhythm guitar!") and by a number of other jokes. At the end of the show, Clapton asked the audience in a moved voice to thank Pete Townshend "because I wouldn't have done it if it hadn't been for him." And although his struggle out of addiction had only begun and it would take him over another year to record what would become his breakthrough solo album ("461 Ocean Boulevard"), the two nights at London's Rainbow Theatre stand as the beginning of that process, and Eric Clapton's return to the stage. The rest, as they say, is history ...