Eric Clapton - Walkin' Down the Road - Non-Album Tracks (1974)

I've found two albums of Eric Clapton stray tracks material from 1974 alone. Here's the first one.

These days, it's popular to make fun of Clapton as safe and bland "dad rock." I'll agree that some parts of his solo career has been disappointing. Sometimes, he's lacked inspiration, and veered in an "adult contemporary" direction. But it's interesting that when it comes to his stray tracks, while are extremely extensive (I have about 20 albums' worth!), that's usually not the case. Maybe when he puts out official albums, he feels obliged to do what he thinks is popular, and what the record company wants. Whereas with his stray tracks, which are mostly officially unreleased (though less so on this album), he more does just want he wants and want he feels inspired about. Generally speaking, most of it is blues, more so than his typical solo albums.

To understand this album, we have to look at where Clapton was at in his life in 1974. He'd had a very successful career in the 1960s, culminating in the 1970 Derek and the Dominos album "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs." But after that came out, he developed a heroin addiction so bad that he effectively stopped making music for three years. (Pete Townshend tried to lure him out of retirement by helping him stage a concert at the Rainbow Theatre in London in 1973, but I'm not sure how much that helped, since he didn't do much for another year after that.)

So 1974 was a fairly dramatic "reboot" of Clapton's personal life and his music career. The album he put out that year, "461 Ocean Boulevard," set the pattern of the kind of music he'd play for the rest of his solo career, with more emphasis on his singing and less on flashy guitar playing, plus more of a mellow sound overall. Personally, I think that album is his best of his solo career, and a lot of people agree. For instance, "Rolling Stone" magazine has put it on their list of the 500 best albums of all time.

The 1974 stray tracks here are very much in keeping with the sound of "461 Ocean Boulevard." And there are a lot of stray tracks from that year, because he was still working on finding his new sound, and he was doing a lot of experimenting. He's never been a prolific songwriter to begin with, and he only half two and a half songwriting credits on "461." So it's not surprising that most of the songs here are covers. Plus, many are instrumentals. In fact, five of the ten songs are instrumentals, including one instrumental version of a song on "461." (The few originals are basically instrumental jams.)

All but one of the songs here have been officially released. That one, an instrumental version of the Rolling Stones hit "Paint It, Black," sounds just as good as the others. I've edited one song, a version of the blues classic "Meet Me (Down in the Bottom)." The officially released version is seven minutes long, and I've cut it down to three minutes. It's been a long time since I did that, but I guess I just thought it went on way too long without much happening.

In short, if you like the sound of "461 Ocean Boulevard," you'll like this. But it's more bluesy and has a lot more of Clapton's guitar solos, due to all those instrumentals.

By the way, as I mentioned above, one song here is an instrumental version of a song on "461," "Give Me Strength," where Clapton shows off his dobro playing. Another song here, "Please Be with Me," is also a version of a song on "461." But on that album he plays the song with his band, whereas this version is just him and an acoustic guitar. I've put those two at the end of the album. If you eliminate them, you still have a nice album that's 42 minutes long.

01 Boogie Funk [Instrumental] (Eric Clapton & Freddie King)
02 Lonesome Road Blues [Walkin' Down the Road] (Eric Clapton)
03 Ain't That Lovin' You, Baby (Eric Clapton)
04 B Minor Jam [Instrumental] (Eric Clapton)
05 Meet Me [Down at the Bottom] [Edit] (Eric Clapton)
06 Paint It, Black [Instrumental] (Eric Clapton & Leon Russell)
07 Fools like Me (Eric Clapton)
08 Getting Acquainted 2 [Too Late] [Instrumental] (Eric Clapton)
09 Please Be with Me [Acoustic Version] (Eric Clapton)
10 Give Me Strength [Instrumental Version] (Eric Clapton)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15101189/EricC_1974_Walkin__Down_the_Road_-_Various_Songs_atse.zip.html

For the official cover of the "461 Ocean Boulevard" album, Clapton took part in a photo shoot of him posing all over the house at the address near Miami that is the title of that album. The photo I've used as the cover art here is an outtake from that photo session.