Eric Clapton‘s fourth solo album No Motive To Cry was launched on August 27, 1976. It stands as a document on which he continued to show his renewed motivation.
“I spend my time listening to people and being heavily influenced by them,” he advised Sounds journal because the album emerged. “Then it comes time to record and I go down to the studio, try something new and it comes out as me again.”
That was precisely the best way his legions of followers wished it. The brand new album, which adopted Eric’s triumphant, US chart-topping 461 Ocean Boulevard set of 1974, the next 12 months’s There’s One In Each Crowd and the reside album E.C. Was Right here, was a celebration of each his refuelled creativity and a few nice musical relationships.
No Motive To Cry was recorded in March 1976 at The Band’s Shangri-La studios, and featured the revered Canadian-American group’s shut involvement. All 5 members performed on the document: Rick Danko and Richard Manuel wrote its relaxed opener, “Beautiful Thing,“ and Danko co-wrote the stirring “All Our Past Times” with Clapton himself and added a high quality vocal half.
Then who ought to present up however Bob Dylan, not solely to sing a duet with “Slowhand” however to donate a brand new, unrecorded composition of his because the automobile, “Sign Language.” That track is a part of our separate function on Eric’s “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” single.
A few of Eric’s British buddies additionally featured strongly, with guitars by Ronnie Wooden and keyboards by Georgie Fame. Different contributors included trusted confidants akin to Yvonne Elliman, Billy Preston, Jesse Ed Davis, and Marcy Levy, later after all to seek out large chart success of her personal as one half of Shakespear’s Sister. Levy and Dick Sims wrote the album’s penultimate quantity, “Hungry.” It’s an album with an admirably reside “band” really feel to it, no pun meant, and options some distinctive enjoying by Clapton, by no means higher than on a brilliantly brooding model of Otis Rush’s “Double Trouble.”
No Motive… climbed to No.8 within the UK, additionally reaching the High 10 in Denmark and Holland and No.15 in a sturdy 21-week keep on the American chart. Clapton was little involved with hit singles on the time, however did obtain a No.24 hit from the album along with his personal composition “Hello Old Friend.”
Commenting on the album’s rootsy really feel in that Sounds interview, Clapton noticed of his viewers: “I don’t really think they want a heavy metal album. At least I hope they don’t cause they’re not gonna get it anymore. I’m past that kind of thing. I don’t think it lasts.”
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