Forever Man

Early '84 joined Eric Clapton Phil Collins with the request to produce his next album a bit more modern than the previous one, which he did promptly; So it is not the actual charges for the result to make, he just does his job - and let's face it, how many plates mid-eighties sounded something like this? The question was rather whether Eric himself was doing a favor with his choice of producers.

Warner Bros. announced Clapton nevertheless its horror with him to again enter the studio and lack identifiable Hitmaterials import a few more singles; reluctantly he bent the end of this request, given the fact that his record company was not squeamish process with other greats like Van Morrison.

In the studio band played with Jamie Oldaker (dr) and Marcy Levy (b-voc) two companions from his seventies band, and Chris Stainton, who already in "Just One Night" and "Another Ticket" was there, was back at the buttons. On the other hand emerged with Nathan East (bass) and Greg Phillinganes (keyb) on two musicians who accompany him to this day almost continuously in the studio and on tour.

Four songs stand out from the rest: the two wars Synthis She's not waiting broken, and the end is very original; the ingenious riff I can well imagine finding the Stones played by me (without the synths!). When one hears of time on production, it turns out to be horny rocker, as well as my other favorite, Forever Man (with Lindsey Buckingham on rhythm guitar), the Clapton 2008 for his concert at Madison Square Garden with Steve Winwood out rummaged again. Same old Blues also suffers from the somewhat synthetic accompaniment, but shows like Just like a Prisoner, an angry and aggressive singing and playing Clapton. In Just like a Prisoner Phil Collins on drums joined thereto and the recording has "Live in Studio" -Fire.

The rest is almost entirely Pop-meter, which Clapton's guitar constantly has to keep in front of crash; hardly a song that is not clogged up by two synthesizers and dominated by the percussion sound of the eighties (in Dylan's "Empire Burlesque" from the same year not dissimilar); Knock on Wood you already know, but better; The title song is a touching, quiet ending.

The remaster of 2000 is a significant sound improvement compared to the first edition; a couple of bonus tracks from these sessions but would have liked: The single edit of She's waiting contained the beautiful B-side Jailbait (with a tongue in cheek quote from the Layla Riff). On the B-side of Forever Man, the Acoustic Blues Too bad, showed Collins that he could stop himself reasonable. You do not know like I know appeared in Australia as a single, Lovin 'Your Lovin' landed on the "Wayne's World" soundtrack and Heaven Is One Step Away on the "Back to the Future" soundtrack (a few of which can be found on "Crossroads").

"Behind the Sun" is the strongest by far not Clapton's album; I like it because of the four mentioned songs and nostalgic reasons. But on "August" ('86) he left Collins then too much control and so reached the nadir of its publications. With "Journeyman" ('89), he recovered well again!