Unplugged

On the 16th of January 1992, when 300 invited guests and Radio One competition winners assembled at Bray Studios near Maidenhead, England, no one could have guessed that they were to be the audience for the biggest selling live album of all time, with sales of approximately 26 million copies worldwide so far. Ten months after the death of his son Conor, Eric Clapton had agreed to record a show for the MTV Unplugged series. Eric had chosen a selection of old blues favourites and some brand new songs, including the poignantly personal "Tears In Heaven", "Circus Left Town", and "My Father's Eyes". "Tears In Heaven" was a hit single earlier in the year and had appeared first on the soundtrack to the film "Rush" the previous year, but this was the first time Eric had played it live in front of an audience. The song was about a father struggling to come to terms with the death of his son and the pain and loss that he felt. "Circus Left Town" came about because Eric and Conor has attended a circus the day before Conor died and was another deeply heartfelt song. "My Father's Eyes" was about Conor, and also about Eric's own father...who he never met. As he said himself, "In it I tried to describe the parallel between looking into the eyes of my son, and the eyes of the father that I never met, through the chain of our blood". Both "Circus Left Town" and "My Father's Eyes" were left off of the finished album."Circus Left Town" finally surfaced on the 1998 album "Pilgrim", re-titled as "Circus". "My Father's Eyes" also featured on "Pilgrim" in a much changed form of this original performance.

Eric gives major credit to Andy Fairweather Low, who spent one week playing and restructuring the songs, at Eric's house, for playing with an acoustic band, including working out the parts Eric would play and it is his voice we hear at the start of the album asking Eric, "Well? You ready?" In 2012 Eric told radio & TV presenter Paul Gambacinni that guitarist Andy "was the backbone of this project and I think it's time everyone knew that". Eric chose to feature songs that had some meaning to him and also by the bluesmen that were among his favourites: Bo Diddley, Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson. Big Bill Broonzy's song "Hey Hey" was included because it was the first blues song Eric had seen on British TV and immediately felt, "as though something had been turned on in me". The choice of "Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out" was an easy one for Eric. It had long been one of his favourite songs and he first recorded it with Derek & The Dominoes. It also held a special place in his heart for being "the first song I learned to play that actually had more than three chords in it".

 Side One

1. Signe

2. Before You Accuse Me

3. Hey Hey

4. Tears in Heaven

5. Lonely Stranger

6. Nobody Knows You When You're Down & Out

7. Layla

Side Two

8. Running on Faith

9. Walkin' Blues

10. Alberta

11. San Francisco Bay Blues

12. Malted Milk

13. Old Love

Right in the middle of the evening came the biggest surprise. An acoustic version of Layla"! "I just thought we should try it as a shuffle" was Eric's explanation. It's very rare that a classic song gets a complete re-birth that works completely. A whole new set of fans was gained by this song under its new guise. The other surprise on the night was the sudden inclusion of Muddy Water's "Rollin' and Tumblin'", another song left off of the finished record. There was a lull in proceedings due to the technicians changing the tapes so Eric started to play. The band managed to jump in and pick it up and luckily the technicians managed to get the tape change done in time to get a take of it for the TV recording. Following the screening of the TV version there were calls for an album and it was released in August 1992. Eric never wanted it released, he wasn't happy with some of the performances and he bet his manager $100 that it wouldn't sell...at all. That $100 was framed in his manager's office for quite a few years! Thankfully, sometimes the people behind the scenes get it right. To this day this performance remains Clapton's one and only all acoustic live performance.

As a final note on this epic album, in 2004 Eric sold the guitar he'd used for this recording at an auction at Christies, New York, for £434,400. He sold some of his most treasured guitars, along with guitars donated by Brian May, BB King and Pete Townshend, with the proceeds going to Eric's Crossroads addiction clinic. Altogether just over £4 million was raised.

Tears In Heaven

Running On Faith

Layla