A great record, and the Mobile Fidelity treatment is extraordinary. But I also had the Mobile Fidelity LP, which sounds just as good. So I traded in the vinyl. I got top dollar, which I used to acquire more great records. Most audiophiles will tell you I made a mistake - I should have kept the record and traded in the CD - but I’m really OK with it. I got a lot of money for it. If you want the record it was still available the last time I looked at Sound Fixation in Stratford, Ontario. But that's a while ago now, and be prepared to pay around $160 for it. It’s one of those absolutely essential recordings, and it’s very hard to find.
Yeah, there’s Cocaine and Wonderful Tonight, but I really like May You Never, Next Time You See Her and Peaches and Diesel. The album showcases Slowhand - Clapton's nickname - during some really vulnerable and personal moments. It’s sparse and quiet but it’s also extraordinarily honest. And its muted simplicity is really just an illusion: there are much more complex emotions at play and you have to listen to hear them. It takes a couple of plays before it starts to sink in, and although the voice is quiet and the guitar playing anything but flashy it’s still a masterpiece. Sometimes it’s the notes you don’t play, as much as the ones you do. This isn’t what people expected he would come out with at the time, and it has matured into a legendary recording in the years since.
The Yardbirds’ manager, Giorgio Gomelsky, gave Eric Clapton the nickname Slowhand in early 1964. The band's rhythm guitarist, Chris Dreja, recalled that whenever Eric Clapton broke a guitar string during a concert he would stay on stage and replace it. The English audiences would wait out the delay by doing a slow handclap.
Clapton backed this story up when in the 1980s he told his official biographer, Ray Coleman, “My nickname of Slowhand came from Giorgio Gomelsky. He coined it as a good pun. He kept saying I was a fast player, so he put together the slow handclap phrase into Slowhand as a play on words.”
Then in June 1999 Clapton gave a slightly different version of how the name came to be. “I think it might have been a play on words from the Clap part of my name. In England, in sport, if the crowd is getting anxious, we have a slow handclap, which indicates boredom or frustration. But it wasn’t my idea, it was someone else’s comment.”
In Clapton - The Autobiography, he said, "On my guitar I used light-gauge guitar strings, with a very thin first string, which made it easier to bend the notes, and it was not uncommon during the most frenetic bits of playing for me to break at least one string. During the pause while I was changing my string, the frenzied audience would often break into a slow handclap, inspiring Giorgio to dream up the nickname of Slowhand Clapton.
At any rate, it was a great name for this record.
A great record, and the Mobile Fidelity treatment is extraordinary. But I also had the Mobile Fidelity LP, which sounds just as good. So I traded in the vinyl. I got top dollar, which I used to acquire more great records. Most audiophiles will tell you I made a mistake - I should have kept the record and traded in the CD - but I’m really OK with it. I got a lot of money for it. If you want the record it was still available the last time I looked at Sound Fixation in Stratford, Ontario. But that's a while ago now, and be prepared to pay around $160 for it. It’s one of those absolutely essential recordings, and it’s very hard to find.
Yeah, there’s Cocaine and Wonderful Tonight, but I really like May You Never, Next Time You See Her and Peaches and Diesel. The album showcases Slowhand - Clapton's nickname - during some really vulnerable and personal moments. It’s sparse and quiet but it’s also extraordinarily honest. And its muted simplicity is really just an illusion: there are much more complex emotions at play and you have to listen to hear them. It takes a couple of plays before it starts to sink in, and although the voice is quiet and the guitar playing anything but flashy it’s still a masterpiece. Sometimes it’s the notes you don’t play, as much as the ones you do. This isn’t what people expected he would come out with at the time, and it has matured into a legendary recording in the years since.
The Yardbirds’ manager, Giorgio Gomelsky, gave Eric Clapton the nickname Slowhand in early 1964. The band's rhythm guitarist, Chris Dreja, recalled that whenever Eric Clapton broke a guitar string during a concert he would stay on stage and replace it. The English audiences would wait out the delay by doing a slow handclap.
Clapton backed this story up when in the 1980s he told his official biographer, Ray Coleman, “My nickname of Slowhand came from Giorgio Gomelsky. He coined it as a good pun. He kept saying I was a fast player, so he put together the slow handclap phrase into Slowhand as a play on words.”
Then in June 1999 Clapton gave a slightly different version of how the name came to be. “I think it might have been a play on words from the Clap part of my name. In England, in sport, if the crowd is getting anxious, we have a slow handclap, which indicates boredom or frustration. But it wasn’t my idea, it was someone else’s comment.”
In Clapton - The Autobiography, he said, "On my guitar I used light-gauge guitar strings, with a very thin first string, which made it easier to bend the notes, and it was not uncommon during the most frenetic bits of playing for me to break at least one string. During the pause while I was changing my string, the frenzied audience would often break into a slow handclap, inspiring Giorgio to dream up the nickname of Slowhand Clapton.
At any rate, it was a great name for this record. And it's …
BONUS TRACK
Slowhand was the fifth solo studio album by Eric Clapton, released in November, 1977. It produced two hit singles in Lay Down Sally and Wonderful Tonight.
Glyn Johns, who produced the record, didn't like Clapton's bad boy reputation but managed to coax the best out of all involved despite the party atmosphere and resulting lack of focus.
The photos that make up the album's artwork were chosen by Clapton, Pattie Boyd and Dave Stewart, who were credited as El & Nell Ink. Two photos on the inside have deeper meaning to Clapton. One shows him kissing Boyd and the other shows a demolished Ferrari 365 GT4 BB, which Clapton bought after seeing George Harrison's. The car had been involved in an accident that nearly killed Clapton.
Clapton's link to Boyd and Harrison runs deep. Boyd was George Harrison's wife, whom Clapton fell in love with in the late-1960s. He eventually laid his feelings bare on 1970s Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, but when Boyd rebuffed his advances Clapton descended into heroin addiction. When he emerged from the fog in 1974 he again pursued Boyd who this time agreed to leave Harrison. She and Clapton were married in 1979. They remained friendly with Harrison, who took to calling Clapton his "husband-in-law".
But it didn't last. Boyd left Clapton in 1987.
The song Cocaine was censored and removed from the Argentinian edition of the album, as the government there considered it harmful to young people and and said it invited them to get high. But the song was actually anti-drug, so the ban disappointed Clapton.
Slowhand was the fifth solo studio album by Eric Clapton, released in November, 1977. It produced two hit singles in Lay Down Sally and Wonderful Tonight.
Glyn Johns, who produced the record, didn't like Clapton's bad boy reputation but managed to coax the best out of all involved despite the party atmosphere and resulting lack of focus.
The photos that make up the album's artwork were chosen by Clapton, Pattie Boyd and Dave Stewart, who were credited as El & Nell Ink. Two photos on the inside have deeper meaning to Clapton. One shows him kissing Boyd and the other shows a demolished Ferrari 365 GT4 BB, which Clapton bought after seeing George Harrison's. The car had been involved in an accident that nearly killed Clapton.
Clapton's link to Boyd and Harrison runs deep. Boyd was George Harrison's wife, whom Clapton fell in love with in the late-1960s. He eventually laid his feelings bare on 1970s Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, but when Boyd rebuffed his advances Clapton descended into heroin addiction. When he emerged from the fog in 1974 he again pursued Boyd who this time agreed to leave Harrison. She and Clapton were married in 1979. They remained friendly with Harrison, who took to calling Clapton his "husband-in-law".
But it didn't last. Boyd left Clapton in 1987.
The song Cocaine was censored and removed from the Argentinian edition of the album, as the government there considered it harmful to young people and and said it invited them to get high. But the song was actually anti-drug, so the ban disappointed Clapton.
