I’m going to jump around a bit here and cover his solo career second and then Derek & The Dominoes last so excuse me for the historical gap, though his solo career did begin before The Dominoes. However, the song I’m covering comes way after that period – almost a decade and a half.

For being just one man, Clapton’s solo career can probably be described as the definition of eclectic to some. What do I mean by that? Well, think of it this way: a band like The Beatles had four people with different musical tastes all giving input; Clapton’s one man. Get it? The blues roots are there and prevalent in everything he did, but the musical genres those roots allow him to cross are staggering. Skiffle, rockabilly, pop, country, soul, reggae, et cetera; in the last post when I was referring to all his genres, most of them can be found here. Whereas Cream was psychedelic rock rooted in blues, The Yardbirds were blues-rock, Blind Faith was progressive blues, and Derek & The Dominoes were southern blues rock; Clapton’s solo career covered all of that and more. Why bring this up? Well, do you know how hard it is to pick out your favorite song or album from just one band doing one genre (a la Cream)? Imagine how hard it is to pick out your favorites for such variety.

Eric Clapton, 461 Ocean Boulevard, Slowhand, Money And Cigarettes; these albums are some of his best work and some of the best albums ever, but each is so varied. His self-titled keeps the soul-rock that he just immersed himself in with Delaney & Bonnie Bramlett (didn’t hurt that they helped produce) like the hit “After Midnight” as well as the funky “Bad Boy.” 461 showed the heroin-free Clapton with an extremely stripped down sound which is really evident in his cover of “Willie And The Hand Jive” and his only original on the album “Let It Grow.” Following the intense Layla sessions, this is a huge contrast, but also very symbolic. Then we had the extremely polished and insanely accessible album Slowhand which is most well known for the hits “Cocaine” and “Wonderful Tonight,” but also had one of his best southern jams in “The Core” and an angelically soothing instrumental piece “Peaches & Diesel.” Finally, Clapton seemed like he wanted to get back to some blues foundations and utilizing his guitar way more (the presence of Ry Cooder probably helped this, but will discuss that in the finale of the chronicles) for his album Money And Cigarettes. This album was the first for him since he quit alcohol. When he quit heroin, we got an insanely laid-back album. When he quit alcohol, he must have decided his guitar-leading tracks were really it for him. This album produced the track I’m going to talk about, but I’d be remiss to not to mention the personal attack of “The Shape You’re In,” the rock nostalgic that defined him in “I’ve Got A Rock N’ Roll Heart,” and the extremely driving Clapton anthem “Ain’t Going Down.” I will say that I skipped a bunch of albums here and there, especially some good ones like Backless, and we’re going to stop here instead of going on to his Phil Collins-era and his great album Journeyman, but go ahead and check out “Forever Man” and if you’ve never heard “Tears In Heaven,” now is a good time. The man’s been at it since 1970 with solo stuff; I had to draw a line somewhere!

All those songs I mentioned are among my favorite Clapton songs as is this next one. I can’t really pick it out of the bunch and say I like the most though, but it definitely does show up a lot when I go through my Last.fm playing history. “Pretty Girl” is a song from Money And Cigarettes that really exemplifies Clapton’s ability to make a great, slow, love ballad while keeping his guitar at the forefront. Written for his wife Pattie Boyd (the ultimate rock muse), it basically talks about a man’s wife, all she’s done for him, and his feelings towards her. Pretty straight-forward love ballad, but spectacularly memorable all the same. Musically, the guitar line is a fairly common trick of breaking down chords, but the use here sets the tone wonderfully. The simple riff during the chorus, to me, sums up how simple the message of the song truly is. Then there’s the fabulous guitar solo which does more to speak of the girl’s beauty than Clapton’s voice ever could. It really follows the same formula of “Wonderful Tonight” with using the swooping guitar to send a message of love, but it’s definitely more effective here. I will say that it lacks that instantly recognizable guitar riff, but more than makes up for it in all other categories.

Song: Pretty Girl
Artist: Eric Clapton
Album: Money And Cigarettes
Year: 1983

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Coming soon…

The Red Hot Chili Peppers originally consisted of Anthony Kiedis, Flea, Jack Irons, & Hillel Slovak. However, due to contractual obligations to another band, Slovak and Irons were not around for the first album and only Slovak was around for the second. However, the Chili Pepper’s third album The Uplift Mofo Party Plan (featured “Fight Like A Brave“) is where the original line-up was finally together on an album. What resulted was a clearly better representation of their funk-punk fusion than their first low-rent punk album and they’re second mostly funk album (it was produced by George Clinton: what are you going to do?). Their third album did miles better than the second as it got to 148 on the Billboard 200 as opposed to…not charting before…so there was definite cause for celebration. However, that celebration was short-lived as Kiedis & Slovak both developed horrendous heroin addictions and tragically, it took Slovak’s life. Adding a smaller, but still substantial blow to the Peppers after this was the announcement that Irons would be leaving as he thought the band would keep killing his friends and didn’t want to be part of it. So what to do, what to do? Well, by this point in 1988, Kiedis & Flea had barely scratched their musical potential and with Kiedis clean, they both decided to keep the band going. They quickly snagged up DH Peligro & DeWayne McKnight to play the guitar and drums respectively, but chemistry is very vital in bands & ultimately the lack of it here lead to their departure. As luck would have it though, Peligro knew someone who had not only passed a class on RHCP Chemistry, but was now ready to teach it.

John Frusciante was one of those crazy guitar kids. You know, the ones you see on YouTube these days. Well, he was that kid in the 80s playing guitar from the moment he woke up to the moment he fell asleep. He played so much that he got his parents’ permission to drop out of school, passed his equivalence test, and moved to LA to continue his guitar learning. And of course, when he got to LA, he ended up seeing a RHCP concert and quickly fell in love with them. He went to all their concerts, learned all the guitar & bass parts, and even stayed late after shows to talk to Slovak. Frusciante was an undiscovered guitar god at this point simply by spending every waking minute in music, probably half of which were the Chili Peppers’. By the time ’88 rolled around, Frusciante just needed a band to be apart of so he could show off his skill and believe it or not too, he was dangerously close to two other bands besides the Chili Peppers. He almost auditioned for Frank Zappa’s band (one of his guitar heroes), but decided against it as he could not live the rock lifestyle (the one that killed his idol, you know). He also almost signed a contract with a band called Thelonious Monster (Bob Forrest was the leader of the band – remember him, he’ll come up later in the blog) and had been playing gigs with them for two weeks. But also during that time, Peligro had introduced Frusciante & Flea to each other and they began to jam. It wasn’t long before the switch went off in Flea’s head that this guy was born to be a Chili Pepper and Kiedis & he quickly snagged him up from their old friend Bob Forrest (who jokes about it to this day). After that, Chad Smith soon auditioned and nailed the part (albeit a hiccup with a hat incident at the actual audition) & RHCP was back as a quartet. They would go on to make their biggest album yet, Mother’s Milk, which contained their biggest hit yet, “Higher Ground.”

All right, back story out of the way, let’s talk about the song. When I mentioned the jams that Flea & Frusciante did, I actually understated them as they proved to be pretty beneficial to the band’s setlist for the next album. The bass riff for “Nobody Weird Like Me” was made up in these jams by Flea and the very initial jam between the two musical legends was actually remembered and re-done in the studio as the song “Pretty Little Ditty” as a throaway instrumental between odes to Hendrix & punk rock. The song, in my opinion, is pretty amazing especially for the initial session between the two, but it was obviously never released as a single and like most songs on album, most people never gave it much mind or even heard it.

Thirteen years later, nu metal (which many artists pay tribute to RHCP for) was taking the musical scene by storm with bands like Linkin Park & Limp Bizkit dominating the laughable things that people listen to in the car. In 2001, one nu metal band became a complete one-hit wonder with a song when their frontman wrote a song about his ex-girlfriend. Despite being a nu metal band, the band, named Crazy Town, recorded an unmistakable pop song called “Butterfly” and scored a crossover hit at the beginning of this decade. Butterfly dominated Cuba Gooding Jr’s mentally-challenged character and enjoyed much success. But the catch is that that memorable hook that everyone remembers to this day from the song…wasn’t theirs. Lifted right from that initial jam between Frusciante & Flea in 1988. To even grab more from RHCP, the band reportedly told their producer to make the song mellow sounding like “Under The Bridge.”

A crossover hit all thanks to the guitar prodigy John Frusciante and you know what’s funny? Well yeah, radios, but you know what else is? That jam that nobody paid any mind to…it was never ranked as one of the worst songs ever. In fact, it’s been on many best guitar tracks of all time lists. Funny, huh?

Song: Pretty Little Ditty
Artist: Red Hot Chili Peppers
Album: Mother’s Milk
Year: 1989

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Anyway, the year is 1987 and George Harrison hasn’t released anything since 1982 when his last album bombed. He spent the time working on his film production company, Handmade Films. That went over swimmingly as their biggest picture, Shanghai Surprise starring Madonna and Sean Penn, was nominated in virtually every Razzie Award possible and won for Worst Actress. However, that movie is very vital to this record as Harrison recorded around five original songs for the soundtrack, two of which made it onto the Cloud Nine record. Two were later added on the album as it was re-mastered and re-released. The album itself is also important historically to music as it was the recording sessions which led to Harrison and Jeff Lyne (Harrison’s co-producer at the time & long time friend) starting the Traveling Wilburys in 1988 with Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, and Roy Orbison. We will definitely cover them in the future here on this blog.

Back on subject though, the song below, Someplace Else, was originally from said movie, although stripped down a bit. The album version, far superior, is a bluesy number with a memorable riff and a very good guitar solo (could be Eric Clapton as he played on all of Harrison’s albums under aliases and vice-versa due to contract disputes). As I said before, this is my pick for the best of the album which is saying something with songs like When We Was Fab, Cloud 9, This Is Love, and Got My Mind Set On You. I doubt I can get you all to check out the whole album, but here is that song which I’m sure you’ll like.

Title: Someplace Else
Artist: George Harrison
Album: Cloud Nine
Year: 1987

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