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Customer Reviews of The Cream of Eric Clapton

Adequate summary of his career up to the "Unplugged" years
Not being a huge fan of Eric Clapton during his late '80s phase, I usually rewind this about midpoint, YMMV. The tape kicks off with a Yardbirds lip-sync from early '60s TV. There is no Bluesbreakers material, oddly, seeing as how that's where Clapton got his "God" reputation. Maybe it's because John Mayall, with his purist insistence on making everything as "authentic" (i.e. primitive) as possible, forbade any decent filming.

The Cream clips are the heart of the show, easily torching the surrounding material. Some songs are rather silly lip-synchs taken from TV shows--Jack Bruce even sticks his tongue out at the camera on "I Feel Free". The others are live cuts, and even in their edited-down form, they are not silly at all. "Sunshine of Your Love" is so hot that Clapton's fretboard nearly ignites. These clips seem to be taken from Cream's Farewell Concert, and the camera work is the same hippy-dip mess as on that production. "Badge", performed by Clapton's mid-80s band from the deleted _Eric Clapton Live Now_ video, wraps up the Cream material, and it is very fine (though second guitarist Tim Renwick runs out of ideas halfway through his solo).

Then there's the rest of Clapton's career. Though he never got hotter than he was in Cream, he did get bigger and more soulful. He plays a duet with Buddy Guy, miking himself up so loud that exactly one note from Guy is audible. (This bad habit is repeated on the _24 Nights_ video, where Robert Cray and Buddy Guy are so faintly mixed that even the cameraman can't tell which one is playing.) He indulges his "less-is-more" philosophy to the hilt on a barely-there cover of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door". And then there's "Franken-Layla"--bits of at least three versions of this great song edited together. One bit is from his triumphant comeback at Live Aid.

The rest of the film is not very interesting. Skip to _Unplugged_ instead.

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Quite good
As Clapton videos go this one is pretty good -- not as great as Unplugged but better than some of the others from the 70s/80s. Overall a good video for fans, with a nice mix of old and new(er) footage.

Good Points:
- E.C.: Layla, Cocaine, Wonderful Tonight, etc.
- Cream: Strange Brew, Sunshine of My Love, I feel Freee
- Rare Yardbirds footage
- for guitarists, the footage shows his playing (e.g fretting hand) better than many videos.

Interesting:
- Duet with Tina Turner

Not so good points:
- No Blues Breakers footage :(
- Too early for of the 90s blues, Change the World & Nor Tears in heaven
- a few non-descript songs from the 70s/80s(?)

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Vintage Clapton....
This would have been worth it just for the fact it had the original Layla (spliced from several performances, including one with Phil Collins backing up on drums. Now, I do like Clapton's accoustic version, but the original is so different that it is almost like two different songs. Bonus is frankly, everything else-- including 'Cocaine.' I also own 'Chronicles,' which I would also recommend. But to get the old stuff, electronic versions intact, better snatch this up. It is getting harder to find....