Sticks to Your Shoes

Eric Clapton's Journeyman is a disappointing collection of apparently left over tracks from the August recording sessions, thrown together with some new, mainly pop-oriented material. A few pleasant tracks contributed by blues musician Robert Cray and three wonderful new covers of some 40-year-old blues tunes fail to carry Clapton's latest album to a level significantly above that of any of his other projects of the past 10 years.

Journeyman

By Eric Clapton

Produced by Russ Titelman

Reprise Records, 1989

The first single released off Journeyman is also the first track on the album, and it epitomizes the problems that plague Clapton's newest release. "Pretending" leads off with a clever little piano introduction which segues into a brief Clapton guitar riff. But, as in much of Clapton's '80s releases, his guitar is kept firmly in the background, behind synthesized horns and a synth organ, dominated by a programmed drum kit which keeps an unnecessarily imposing beat.

When the lyrics come in, it becomes even more obvious that "Pretending" is another pop-oriented track executed under the influence of Jerry Williams, Clapton's songwriting partner who was responsible for much of the August album.

To give credit where credit is due, Williams does have the ability to write a seemingly infinite number of similarly insipid bubble-gum pop tunes about unrequited love. Clever listeners will note that every one of the five Jerry Williams songs on Journeyman covers this topic, each with an equal lack of depth. And if these songs do not sound particularly fresh, that may be because four of the five were written at various times between 1985 and 1988, during the August and Behind the Sun recording sessions.

The new Jerry Williams contribution on Journeyman is "Breaking Point," and it is easily the worst song of the album. So much synthesized funk is thrown into this track that Clapton's guitar can't even be heard. The vocals are multi-tracked, muddied and slurred, and the drums again completely overpower the song.

In the past 30 years, Eric Clapton has performed and recorded with some of the finest musicians ever to play rock and roll, jazz and the blues. Even on Journeyman, Clapton managed to attract talent like George Harrison and Robert Cray, as well as musicians Phil Collins and David Sanborn and vocalists Chaka Khan and Daryl Hall. That Clapton has still found it necessary on his most recent albums to rely on synthesized instrumentation and programmed drums is a distressing sign of just how far he has fallen.

For anyone who respected Clapton for the musical integrity he showed in the '60s and '70s the worst moment on Journeyman comes at the end of the second song, "Anything For Your Love."

A quarter century ago, Clapton abandoned the Yardbirds, the group with whom he first made his reputation, because he felt them edging away from the purity of rhythm and blues in order to pursue pop success. The song which eventually gave the Yardbirds their commercial breakthrough and over which Clapton resigned was the Graham Gouldman tune, "For Your Love."

On Journeyman, "Anything For Your Love" fades out with Clapton crooning the words "for your love" over and over again. Struggling alongside friend Robert Cray, Clapton is completely overpowered by synthesizers and programmed drums. Now so far removed from his blues roots, the journeyman that Clapton has become seems willing to do anything for a song that can play on today's top-40 radio. The unfortunate link that "Anything For Your Love" provides with Clapton's past is a sorrowful, reproachful look back to what was and to what could have been.

Brighter links to Clapton's blues-based past are provided on Journeyman in the guise of three fresh covers of old blues tunes--"Hard Times," "Hound Dog" and "Before You Accuse Me."

"Hard Times" is a traditional blues song from 1961, and while Clapton's vocals and arrangement may be a little too close to Ray Charles' original version, the guitar licks that Clapton inserts add texture and counterpoint to the song. Overall, "Hard Times" comes across as beautifully relaxed and soulful, and contrasts nicely with a swing version of "Hound Dog," which follows it.

"Before You Accuse Me" is the best song on Journeyman, sounding like something Clapton might have done with John Mayall 20 years ago. With some help from Cray and a real live drummer, Clapton concludes his newest album with this wonderful update of E. McDaniel's 30-year-old blues tune. Clapton's vocals do sound a little weak, and the song was not mixed with any particular technical insight. But "Before You Accuse Me" has lots of raw energy, and the subdued vocals and lack of mixing actually lend the track a feeling of authenticity.

If you close your eyes during the final guitar solo at the end of "Before You Accuse Me," you just might think you're listening to an old Bluesbreakers tune. But you're not. Eric Clapton's Journeyman has planted him firmly in the 1980s world of synthesizers and drum kits. The few blues songs that prop up this album seem sadly anachronistic in an arena of bubble gum pop.