Wonderful Tonight

Just got back from the Eric Clapton concert in Raleigh.  Tim treated Dave and me to the tickets.  The show was wonderful in ways I had not anticipated.  Clapton's sound is clean and easy--even when he's rocking out.

Roger Daltry opened--and he was good enough, as far as he went--but my recollection of Daltry is as the virile stud of Tommy, full of energy and oversexed heat, and it was sad to see him, at 65, huffing away at a much slower pace and making at least three asides on the perils of growing old--memory loss and indigestion being the most prominent.  I am, of course, sympathetic, since my students have to hear one or two similar whinging asides from me per class meeting, but neither do any of them have recollections of me as a sex god.


But Clapton, just a year younger, has always shone cooler and more nonchalant--even his appearance in the film version of Tommy, 35 years ago, singing "Talk About Your Woman" before a giant icon of Marilyn Monroe and feeding communicants Nembutal and chloral hydrate with a whiskey chaser, was the most laidback segment in a film of constant frenetics, so the contrast between him as he was and him now is not so shocking.

Clapton sang the blues with an acoustic guitar--including his unplugged cover of his own hit "Layla," also a hit, making him one of the few--if not the only--artist to hit the Top 40 with two versions of the same song (I'm not enough of a pop trivia expert to be specific here).  With the steel guitar he revisited "I Shot the Sheriff" and "Cocaine"--basically killing, without even breaking a sweat.  His song "Wonderful Tonight," his loveliest, captured the 1970s/80s cool factor and reminded me of what a romantic the guy is.

It was sweet.  It, all of it, from beginning to end, was sweet.  I wasn't sure what to expect, but I am happy I got to be there.