Crossroads? Clapton in the Royal Albert Hall

Feature aus dem "The Independent Online" vom 09.05.2004. Von Simon Price.

Woke up this morning, got those "I'm going to see Eric Clapton" blues. Said I woke up this morning, and... OK, let's be honest. For any pop critic except the most slavishly sycophantic, slagging Slowhand is the easy stuff. He's become a byword for a certain kind of sterile virtuosity, a shorthand signifier for a multitude of rock dinosaur sins. It barely needs re-stating. Fish in a barrel. Candy from a baby. Cow's arse with a banjo.

So much so, in fact, that my natural contrariness rebelled against it, and I pondered whether I could make a case for Clapton's defence. Sadly, for two long hours at the Royal Albert Hall, Eric Clapton proves that some clichés are clichés because they're true.

I haven't been this bored since Double Maths in 1983. Rarely have I been to a gig which is so "good" (where "good" equals compact disc, digitally-remastered, Dolby-compressed perfect), but seldom have I been to one so bereft of all those things like sex, danger, passion and excitement which, surely, we all got into rock'n'roll for in the first place. (Oh, there are plenty of songs about sex, but hearing the grey, bespectacled Clapton singing "I want my little girl to love me", lusting after a "milk cow" and boasting that he's got his "mojo working" is just a little stomach-turning.) This is blues as a dusty museum exhibit, not a living spirit.

And there's the rub. The generation who declared Clapton "God" may have had beards and straggly hippie hair, but they had secretly inherited the stiffness of their (pre-rock'n'roll) parents, impressed by such virtues as sobriety, rectitude and professionalism (leaving aside the awkward fact that Clapton spent much of his heyday in a drugged, alcoholic haze).

And they're here tonight, looking (and dancing) like their stiff, sober parents, and applauding the professionalism of Clapton and his band. It all begins when some tricky piano work from the (admittedly brilliant) keyboardist - who happens to be soul legend and Beatles collaborator Billy Preston - draws an individual mid-song ripple of clapping and "woohs" and "yeahs". From then on, every time Clapton, or Preston, or another band member does something showy, they get the same reception. Once it's started, it becomes consensually agreed that this is what you do at an Eric Clapton concert. Hits like "I Shot The Sheriff" and blues standards like "Hoochie Coochie Man" are mere pretexts, loose frameworks for Clapton's spotlight-hogging fretwork, stroking and bending the strings of his red Stratocaster. With every ear-splitting top-note - I've never heard a lead guitar pitched so squealingly high in the mix - the crowd goes wild.

Suddenly, it becomes clear to me that this crowd is applauding musical feats on the basis of how difficult they are to execute, not on whether they were worth executing. It's a fundamental misunderstanding of what music is, and what it's for. These people don't like music, they like musicians. They are, therefore, the absolute antitheses of everything I believe in.

Midway through, Clapton sits down for a section of Robert Johnson songs, as featured on his latest album, Me And Mr Johnson. The picture on the cover is a monumental conceit, depicting a time-travel meeting between Clapton and the soul-selling bluesman. In real life, we all know this would never have happened: Clapton would have been at the airport, shopping Johnson to Immigration.

Yes, I know. You've been counting down the paragraphs until I raised that one. Eric Clapton's infamous drunken speech in support of Enoch Powell, in which he spoke of his fears that Britain was becoming a "black colony" and his wish to "get the foreigners out", was 28 years ago now. Surely, if some of my antipathy towards Clapton is caused by residual resentment over something he said off the cuff in 1976, I should get over it? Well, it might be easier if Clapton had actually retracted. He's been given countless opportunities and every time he's refused. Only last month, he justified his position to Uncut magazine, with a dubious philanthropic spin: "We were inviting people in under false premises... inviting people in as cheap labour and then putting them in ghettos." He unrepentantly described Powell as "outrageously brave... he spoke from the heart."

As Clapton's set rattles through its inevitable hit-packed finale - "Badge", "Wonderful Tonight", "Layla", "Cocaine", "Sunshine Of Your Love" - I stop listening to his awful singing (those inadequate, imitation bluesman growls), and contemplate his band, which has as many black members as white. How must they feel, knowing that their boss would have had them (or their parents) turned away at the docks?