Eric Clapton - From The Cradle

There are artists of enormous talents that can do incredibly silly things and then there are those that can do inexcusably devastating things, the kind that turn you from a fan into an enemy.
I was an enemy of Eric Clapton for the majority of the 80’s, starting with that ridiculous song about him getting off on ’57 Chevys and screaming guitars. It got worse when he thought that working with Phil Collins was a good idea.
But starting with the live 24 Nights and progressing slightly Unplugged, Clapton began to fall into my good graces again. It wasn’t until the roots-oriented From The Cradle, a record that I had been screaming for throughout his shitty 80’s period, that I began to accept Clapton again and could freely appreciate his talents.
Who knows why Clapton suddenly decided to revisit these blues classics; perhaps personal tragedies found him seeking solace in the blues.
Whatever the reason, he sounds rejuvenated in his guitar playing to the point where he hasn’t played with that amount of ferocity in decades.
Clapton, who’s lived a life of relative luxury throughout his career, doesn’t posses the road-weary vocal chops to carry the album completely; it would have been nice to hear a few guest vocalists or other material that could have better served his distinctive vocal range. At the same time, the choices that he did end up making when selecting the tracks on From The Cradle were of a caliber that got him to kick up his playing.
And that’s something that, for reasons that still frustrate and bewilder me, was completely forgotten throughout his 80’s material.
Even more frustrating, Clapton must have viewed From The Cradle as a commercial failure as he was back to his old M.O.R. tricks for the achingly tepid follow up, Pilgrim.
For his sake, From The Cradle was good enough for me not consider another late 90’s misstep as a reason to make him an enemy once again.