Eric Clapton’s Rainbow Concert is a live album by Eric Clapton, recorded at the Rainbow Theatre in London on 13 January 1973 and released in September that year. The concerts, two on the same evening, were organised by Pete Townshend of the Who and marked a comeback by Clapton after two years of inactivity, broken only by his performance at the Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971. Along with Townshend, the musicians supporting Clapton include Steve Winwood, Ronnie Wood and Jim Capaldi. In the year following the two shows at the Rainbow, Clapton recovered from his heroin addiction and recorded 461 Ocean Boulevard (1974). A remastered expanded edition of the album was released on 13 January 1995, the 22nd anniversary of the concert. (More from Wikipedia)
The short life of Derek and the Dominos was beset with tragedy – Jimi Hendrix died just eight days after the band laid down one of his songs for the album, “Little Wing”, and one year later, their near-bandmate Duane Allman was also gone. Eric Clapton was settling into heroin addiction while the band was on tour, and he sank into despair when this band too broke up.
After appearing only at the Concert for Bangladesh that George Harrison organized in 1972, Pete Townshend of the Who brought together an allstar line-up for a 1973 concert intended to bring Eric Clapton out of hiding and to help him kick his habit. Known as the Rainbow Concert, musicians on hand include Rick Grech and Stevie Winwood from Blind Faith, Jim Capaldi (who had co-founded Traffic with Winwood), Anthony “Rebop” Kwaku Baah (a percussionist from Ghana who played with Traffic and also the German band Can), Ron Wood (then in Faces), and drummer Jimmy Karstein (who was on hand for the final album by Buffalo Springfield).
As documented on the album Eric Clapton’s Rainbow Concert, the performance does not rank among Eric Clapton’s best. However, the album can certainly be appreciated as the re-emergence of one of the great guitar gods from a demon that had already claimed many of the best rock musicians. From this point on, Eric Clapton’s colorful career has been primarily as a solo artist, beginning with the 1974 album 461 Ocean Boulevard; his debut solo album was Eric Clapton (1970).
(May 2014)
