BEFORE: OK, I'm off the Beatles, but at least one of them will show up tonight in this documentary about Eric Clapton. It seems like nobody associated with this film reported the full cast list to IMDB, so the information there is very sparse. All I can really confirm before watching it is that George Harrison will appear, either in an interview or in archive footage. Only four other people are listed as appearing in this film, and that's ridiculous or at least impossible. Geez, I've updated film casts on IMDB myself, it's not that difficult.
This means I have to watch the film and take notes on who appears, just so I've got a record for my own internal bookkeeping - it's more work than I should have to do as a viewer, obviously. And if I had known the full cast weeks ago, my linking could have been much easier. Oh, well, time to get to WORK.
THE PLOT: A look at the life and work of guitarist Eric Clapton, told by those who have known him best, including BB King, Jimi Hendrix and George Harrison.
AFTER: Well, at least this is a warts-and-all portrayal of a rock star, which seems to ring a little truer than one that tries to gloss over the gory details. I can't say I'm a huge Clapton fan (it took me years just to figure out that "Slow Hand" was an ironic nickname) but I'm obviously aware of his guitar talent and a bit of his back-story - OK, mostly the fact that he was attracted to George Harrison's wife, and wrote "Layla" to express that desire, and I saw this love triangle play out from Harrison's perspective in "Living in the Material World". This film shows the flip side of that story, but also dips into Clapton's winding career though different 1960's groups, and then covers the years of heroin addiction and alcoholism. At one point I think the doctors told Clapton that he could die if he STOPPED drinking, and that's some real rock-star level alcoholism.
There are also depictions of the concerts Clapton gave in the late 1970's when very drunk, and he apparently said some very racist things on stage, ranting about foreigners and such. There's an attempt by Clapton here to back-pedal a bit, but we all know now that drinking doesn't make people racist, that's the Roseanne Barr tweeting defense, and it doesn't hold up. Alcohol just lowers a person's inhibitions, they might do things while drunk that they wouldn't do sober, but it doesn't GIVE people opinions about things, those opinions have to come from somewhere else. Then Clapton moves to the "I've got many black friends" defense, along with "I listen to mostly blues music from black performers." Yeah, nice try, but that's no excuse for racist rants either.
Clapton got himself clean in the early 1980's, and embarked on a series of comeback albums and such, some of which were clearly influenced by working with Phil Collins ("Forever Man") and finally began to assert himself as a solo artist - after being in so many bands and burning so many bridges, it's tempting to think that he had to perform as a solo artist because there was nobody left to form a band with. But I'd never say that.
But hey, he's the only person to be inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame THREE times, for his work with Cream, the Yardbirds and as a solo artist (no induction for Blind Faith? or Derek and the Dominos?) And finally when he was clean he found himself capable of having real adult relationships, not just carrying on affairs with married women that produced secret children. Again, it's one thing to be a rock star on stage, but it doesn't have to carry over to your personal life. At some point, even rock stars need to grow up and relate to other humans in a positive way - it's just too bad so many people have to get emotionally hurt while they take a few decades to figure that out.
As I type this I'm listening to the Derek and the Dominos album "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" off YouTube, because I only know a few songs from it, and I'm curious about the whole double album now. That's FOUR sides of LP music! (Umm, records used to have sides, that was a thing.) I didn't know much about Derek and the Dominos, so tonight I learned that this group came together basically from the bunch of backing musicians who played on George Harrison's album "All Things Must Pass", and they stuck together to make the "Layla" album, which then took two years to chart! Apparently there was much confusion among the public over who was in the band, I mean "Derek" rhymes with "Eric" but how were they supposed to figure that out? It's not like the record company had a publicity department that could get the word out via press releases and such.
We all know the tragedy about what happened to Clapton's young son, which stresses the importance of window guards in places like New York City - what a terrible break, and I'm glad he remained strong throughout the grieving process. I know artists and musicians frequently turn their personal tragedies into art, and that's part of their process, but after "Tears in Heaven" became so successful, I just don't know if it's appropriate to turn a child's death into a bunch of gold records and Grammys. Those all seem tainted somehow, like he should have turned them down or something, it seems a bit morbid to celebrate the success of that song, am I way off base here?
I'm trying my hardest not to sit on my high horse and pass judgement on a man I don't know, but I can't help it when the documentary highlights so many years of bad behavior. Hey, I like to drink beer too, in fact I was out at my favorite beer (and food) festival earlier tonight, but I don't consider myself an alcoholic, or use my drinking to justify any bad behavior. For some people it's a crutch, and also a poor excuse for doing the things they do.
I know that "12 Bars" refers to a set of chord progressions in blues music, but was it meant intentionally here as a play on words, since the film's subject struggled with alcoholism?
Also featuring interviews with Pattie Boyd (carrying over from "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today"), Roger Waters (ditto), Steve Turner (ditto), Eric Clapton, Duane Allman, Patricia Clapton, Sylvia Clapton, Rose Clapp, Ruth Clapton Bartlett, Tom Dowd, Chris Dreja, Ahmet Ertegun, Hughie Flint, Richard Goldstein, Alex Hooper, Cathy James, B.B. King, Charlotte Martin, John Mayall, Jim McCarty, Jamie Oldaker, Alice Ormsby-Gore, Ben Palmer, Howard Smith, George Terry, Mike Vernon, Bobby Whitlock, Steve Winwood, and archive footage of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Mick Jagger, Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, George Martin (all carrying over from "It Was Fifty Years Ago Today"), Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce, Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Aretha Franklin, Muddy Waters, Little Walter, Bill Graham, Jim Gordon, Carl Radle, Bobby Keys, Gary Wright, Lory Del Santo, Melia McEnery, Conor Clapton, Ella Clapton, Sophie Clapton, Julie Clapton, James Brown, Gloria Estefan, Bonnie Raitt, Lyle Lovett, Tony Bennett, Natalie Cole, Larry King. (Come on, was THAT so hard? Somebody, please, update that IMDB page...)
RATING: 6 out of 10 blank stares
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