Eric Clapton was usually in an interpretative temper within the early and mid-Nineteen Seventies. Along with increasing his personal songbook, on albums corresponding to 461 Ocean Boulevard and There’s One In Each Crowd, he launched a sequence of canopy model singles that confirmed his eclectic style.
They included songs by Bob Marley (“I Shot The Sheriff”) and early rock’n’curler Johnny Otis (“Willie and the Hand Jive”) in addition to an early twentieth century non secular (“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”). Then on August 16, 1975, “Slowhand” made the UK charts with a Bob Dylan quantity that had, solely two years earlier than, given Dylan certainly one of his signature songs of the Nineteen Seventies. Now it was Eric’s flip, musically talking, to be “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.”
Commercially, it was removed from a milestone, however its origins had been uncommon, and Clapton’s model can also be notable in that it by no means appeared on an authentic studio album. Early in 1975, he performed on a reggae-flavored remake of the Dylan composition by blues-rock artist Arthur Louis, and it impressed him to do his personal recording. A dwell model was later added to the deluxe version of 1977’s Slowhand.
The 2 singles ended up competing with one another that summer time; Louis’ earned an admiring “works well” remark from Billboard, however Eric’s effort unsurprisingly got here out on prime. Solely within the kind, although, of a minor UK High 40 entry, and he missed the Scorching 100 altogether.
‘Eric Clapton Month’
Dylan’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” had been a High 15 pop success in each the US and UK, and made the High 10 in Australia and Canada. Clapton’s studying, launched as ordinary on the RSO label, entered the then-50-position UK singles chart at No.48, climbing to 39 after which 38, however it will go no greater. RSO, in the meantime, declared August “Eric Clapton Month,” with the discharge of his new dwell album E.C. Was Right here and the beginning of the second leg of his North American tour, during which “Heaven’s Door” featured.
Within the US, the discharge’s solely singles recognition got here with a point out at No.109 on Cashbox’s Wanting Forward itemizing; its finest exhibiting around the globe was a No.31 peak within the Netherlands. The observe went on to be included on a number of compilations, corresponding to The Cream of Clapton and Full Clapton, and returned to the set listing for a few of his subsequent excursions.
Clapton had met Dylan within the Nineteen Sixties, when the English guitar hero had what he described in his autobiography as a “healthy prejudice” in the direction of him, till he heard Blonde On Blonde, and “finally got it.” Eric performed a lower than passable session for Bob throughout the periods for what turned the Need album. However their subsequent encounter was rather more productive, when Dylan accepted the invitation to contribute a music to Clapton’s 1976 album No Cause To Cry.
Eric recounted that Bob informed him he penned the quantity, “Sign Language,” “in one setting, without any knowledge of what it was about.” Clapton informed him that didn’t matter in any respect, and after overdubbing Robbie Robertson onto the recording, it turned his favourite observe on the report. The mutual respect between two undisputed giants of music had been strengthened even additional.
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