[.ca] Eric Clapton

From Amazon.com:
The album that launched Clapton's solo career takes most of its cues from his then-recent collaboration with Delaney and Bonnie. In fact, Delaney produced the album, which explains its loose, jam-session feel that sometimes finds Clapton battling against a cast that includes guest stars Stephen Stills, Sonny Curtis, Rita Coolidge, Leon Russell, and Delaney and Bonnie. Yet this is the album on which Clapton established himself as a forceful singer, and it also produced some of his most enduring classics, including "Blues Power," "After Midnight," and "Let It Rain." --Daniel Durchholz

Good But Overrated:
Eric Clapton's self-titled debut is actually a disappointing mistep. "Easy Now" is a beautiful ballad, and "Let It Rain" is a classic, but the album as a whole is just a bit too mellow, and the all-star cast of supporting musicians simply overwhelm the main attraction. In light of the masterful performances Clapton was recording as part of Derek & the Dominoes around the same time, the overall weakness of this album is astonishing.

Clapton's first is also one of his most solid solo albums:
Eric Clapton is surrounded by a cornucopia of musicians and vocalist on this his first solo album. Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett, Stephen Stills, Rita Coolidge, Bobby Whitlock, Jim Goron, Carl Radle, Leon Russell and several more lend a hand or two, and Clapton has co-written about half of the album's eleven songs with Bonnie Bramlett, the half-decent instrumental "Slunky" and the fine blues-rock numbers "Bad Boy" and "Bottle Of Red Wine" among them. There is perhaps a little less pop-rock and a little more blues-rock here than on most of Clapton's seventies solo albums, and many of the songs that were to become concert standarts throughout the decade came from this album: J.J. Cale's "After Midnight", the rockers "Blues Power" and "Bottle Of Red Wine" and the grand "Let It Rain". "Eric Clapton" is a fine debut, and while it is certainly not among Clapton's best-known solo albums, it is actually among the best, filled with good melodies and excellent musicianship.

A good first solo attempt:
Eric Clapton (1970.) Eric Clapton's first solo album. In the sixties, Eric Clapton did a good job making a name for himself as a musician. He'd played with some of the most popular musicians of the day, including Jimmy Page, John Mayall, Jack Bruce, and Ginger Baker - all of whom only added to his credibility. Following the disbanding of Cream at the end of the sixties, Clapton started his solo career. For his first solo album, he brought together an all-star cast of musicians, including Stephen Stills and Delaney and Bonnie Bramlett - two fairly popular country rockers of the day. In fact, Delaney produced the album and Bonnie co-wrote most of the songs present! Read on for my review of this - Eric Clapton's 1970 solo debut. Just by looking at the tracklist, you probably would have noticed that three of these songs went on to become pretty popular, and have remained popular to this day. The first of these is Clapton's cover of J.J. Cale's After Midnight. Of all the songs on this album, this cover tune probably became the most popular. And then, of course, we have Let It Rain - my favorite song that Eric Clapton EVER recorded with ANY band. Admittingly, I was only going to give this album a three and a half, but this song boosts it up to a solid four. The last of the popular tunes is Blues Power, which (as the title implies) is a blues-based rocker. While those three songs are the only really popular ones present, they aren't the only good ones. Slunky, the opening track, is a rock instrumental that incorporates the usage of horns - and does a pretty good job of it. Bad Boy and Lonesome And A Long Way From Home are severely underrated tunes that should have gone on to become more popular. All in all, this is a good album, but it's far from perfect. Although I like Delaney and Bonnie, I think their presence here detracts from the overall unity of the album somewhat. Bonnie co-wrote most of the songs here and Delaney was the producer, so in many ways this comes off sounding more like a Delaney and Bonnie album than an Eric Clapton album. That's not to say it's a bad album, though - it's solid through and through. Give it a chance, and I'm sure you'll enjoy it. Overall, this was a good first solo attempt for Eric Clapton. Following the release of this album, he'd form a new band, Derek and the Dominoes, but they would only release a single studio album, and before long, Clapton would resume his solo career. Usually a debut album by an artist is either an underrated masterpiece of an album that never got the credit it deserved, or it's a desperate cry for help that its artist needs to find a sound. Clapton's solo debut isn't either; it's the happy medium between these two scenarios. Give this album a chance, and I'm sure you'll grow to love it.

• Slunky
• Bad Boy
• Lonesome and a Long Way from Home
• After Midnight
• Easy Now
• Blues Power
• Bottle of Red Wine
• Lovin' You Lovin' Me
• Told You for the Last Time
• Don't Know Why
• Let It Rain