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David Cordell
The Wall Street Journal
‘The Definitive 24 Nights’ Review: Eric Clapton Essentials, Expanded
The new boxed set features nearly six hours of music from the guitar legend’s concerts at Royal Albert Hall in 1990 and 1991, including 35 previously unreleased tracks.
By Marc Myers, Updated June 24, 2023 9:42 am ET
Eric Clapton in January 1990 PHOTO: DAVID REDFERN/REDFERNS
For many rock ’n’ roll fans in the 1960s, Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” was groundbreaking. Nothing else sounded like the song, which reached No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1968. There had been other guitar-driven hits such as The Kinks’ “You Really Got Me,” the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and the Who’s “My Generation,” but they were frantic and overheated.
By contrast, Eric Clapton’s descending guitar line that opened “Sunshine of Your Love” was coolly patient and seductive, a gateway of sorts to a more mature and more deeply rendered rock articulation to follow. Though many of the lyrics were hard to make out, it was clearly a love song, and Mr. Clapton’s distorted Gibson SG was more of a snake charm than a shred. Over the course of his 60-year career, Mr. Clapton would become known as one of rock’s pre-eminent and most low-key artists, whose songs and renditions are both catchy and complex.
Among his strongest live performances as a leader were his 18 concerts at London’s Royal Albert Hall in January and February of 1990 and 24 shows in February and March of 1991. Culled from these two residencies, “24 Nights” was released in 1991 as a 15-song, two-CD album and DVD. Now, Warner Records is releasing “Eric Clapton: The Definitive 24 Nights,” an almost six-hour remastered boxed set that vastly expands the original, including 35 previously unreleased tracks from his Royal Albert Hall runs and three Blu-ray discs.
At the time of these recordings, Mr. Clapton described the 5,272-seat hall as a “living room.” The circular, historic space, completed in 1871, is sizable but intimate and allowed him to see and connect with audiences. He first played the venue in 1964 as a member of the Yardbirds, again with Cream in 1968 and then at a charity concert in 1983. His multi-night residencies there began in 1987, climbing to 12 nights in 1989.
By then, Mr. Clapton’s reputation as a virtuoso guitarist had become so impressive that graffiti emerged on U.K. walls exclaiming “Clapton Is God.” In addition to being a member of several major rock groups, including John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers and Blind Faith, he also had appeared as a sideman on songs by the Beatles and George Harrison and toured with Leon Russell, Aretha Franklin and Delaney & Bonnie and Friends, among others.
In the rock world, Mr. Clapton has always been considered an outlier and a contrarian who defied the genre’s trappings. Rather than dress in costumes, preen or exhibit menacing behavior, he has looked more business-like on stage. Clad most often in an understated suit jacket and white shirt unbuttoned at the collar, his sartorial sense and manner are more gentry than circus.
Mr. Clapton also has shunned publicity and has found his guitar-hero status “embarrassing,” going so far as to form Derek and the Dominos in 1970 to place the focus on the music, not his presence. He also has been candid about his off-stage struggles with rock-star issues, including depression, an abundance of romantic relationships, drug and alcohol addiction and personal tragedy.
Overall, the new set represents an artistic demarcation and reveals a great deal about Mr. Clapton’s commanding guitar and high performance standards. The different band configurations he used for the 1990 and 1991 Royal Albert Hall residencies were tight and inventive. Songs have been smartly shuffled and organized into three broad categories—rock, blues and orchestral.
The 18-track rock section is cohesive and powerful, and includes “Pretending,” “Running on Faith” and “Bad Love,” all from his 1989 album “Journeyman.” The classics are all here, too: “I Shot the Sheriff”; “Can’t Find My Way Home,” originally recorded with Blind Faith; and Cream hits “Sunshine of Your Love” and “White Room.” Songs that missed the cut in the 1991 release are included—“Lay Down Sally,” “No Alibis,” J.J. Cale’s “Cocaine” and “Layla.” His wailing guitar tattoos each selection.
Joining Clapton’s core group for the 14-track blues set were guitarists Robert Cray, Buddy Guy and Albert Collins, along with pianist Johnnie Johnson. While Mr. Clapton has long been revered as a bluesman, the addition of these legendary artists gave the performances bona fides and soul, especially on “Everything’s Gonna Be Alright,” “Johnnie’s Boogie” and “My Time After a While.”
The 15 tracks that showcase Mr. Clapton backed by Michael Kamen conducting Britain’s National Philharmonic Orchestra deliver the album’s most fascinating and daring moments. Rather than merely provide Mr. Clapton’s hits with a soothing backdrop, the symphonic strings were arranged to work in tandem with Mr. Clapton’s guitar and attack, leaving the audience screaming. The most exhilarating example of this symbiosis is the 30-minute “Concerto for Electric Guitar,” which feels in places like Stravinsky’s “Rite of Spring.”
On March 20, 1991, soon after that year’s residency ended, Mr. Clapton’s 4½-year-old son, Conor, died in New York after falling from the 53rd-floor window of his mother’s apartment. Looking back at the previous year, Mr. Clapton told Britain’s Sue Lawley in a 1992 TV interview: “I went cold . . . and withdrew emotionally. I started writing and playing almost immediately. It sort of calmed me down. It was a tranquilizer.”
After the tragedy and grief, Mr. Clapton and his music grew more introspective. “Eric Clapton: The Definitive 24 Nights” tells us everything we need to know about the first half of his career.
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