Saturday, June 30, 2007

306. Eric Clapton - 461 Ocean Boulevard (1974)
















Track Listing

1. Motherless Children
2. Give Me Strength
3. Willie And The Hand Jive
4. Get Ready
5. I Shot The Sheriff
6. I Can't Hold Out
7. Please Be With Me
8. Let It Grow
9. Steady Rollin' Man
10. Mainline Florida

Review

Dear Reader,

I am writing this missive to you from the dark ages of the internetless world. British Telecom has fucked up, again. Meaning, I moved house but the internet connection didn't move... better still it moved, but to a dead line. They should really check that the line was dead before transferring their services to a new location. But hey, who am I to presume to teach costumer service to the great BT. I hope to have internet by Tuesday, and you'll get a raft of albums.

Let's get back to less bitter affairs. I have mixed feelings about this album, while I don't like Eric Clapton that much, even tough I enjoyed Derek and the Dominoes and Cream I must say that there are some tracks here which I quite like. But then I am irked by this album for a completely different set of reasons, and those are the fact that Clapton, who would make his famous racist remarks just a couple of years later in Birmingham, is making a whole album based on black music. It is a good thing, because the album is good, it is a good thing because he helped bring Bob Marley to the forefront with the big success that I Shot The Sheriff had... but it smacks of exploitation.

Still we can't really judge an album based on the opinions we have on the performer outside of his art... and the truth is that there are some very good track here. The big hit is I Shot the Sheriff, although you would probably be better off with the Marley version. Still, most of the other songs are really good and my particular highlights go the the beautiful and Please Be With MeLet It Grow. So I like this album, against my wanting. Get it from Amazon UK or US.

Track Highlights

1. Please Be With Me
2. Let It Grow
3. I Shot The Sheriff
4. Steady Rollin' Man

Final Grade

8/10

Trivia

On later pressings of the album and the Polygram CD, "Give Me Strength" was pulled because a songwriter claimed she was the composer and had not been credited (Clapton was originally listed as composer). It was replaced with the track "Better Make It Through Today",(dropped from the re-release) which was recorded in September '74 and originally released on the "There's One In Every Crowd" album in April '75.

In 2004 a remastered two-disc "deluxe edition" of 461 Ocean Boulevard was released. The second disc included in the packaging features a live concert with various "jam" sessions. The first disc also has a few new added tracks, all live which were recorded at Hammersmith Concert Hall (formerly the Hammersmith Odeon).

The title of the album was the address of a house on Golden Beach in Miami, Clapton was living in at the time. The house is also the one featured on the cover. Clapton would later recommend the place for the Bee Gees. In 2003, the album was ranked number 409 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.


Let It Grow... another crappy static image video:

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