Eric Clapton - August

Okay, this one might be a little more pissy than usual. Mainly because I think enough water has passed under the bridge now, and frankly no one reading this will think, "Oh my, thank you. I can save myself the time and skip the album, I'll just stream 'It's in the Way that You Use It.'"

Look this is going to be a meanderamble and likely veer wildly of course before it eventually ends. I can save you some time. Here's the score: 4 killers, 6 fillers. Although I only mention three songs in a positive light. Two of them are memorable, the others are good in the moment. Let's call it 4 good songs for the sake of brevity. That's not necessarily bad, if Mister Clapton was a baseball player he'd be the goat.* 

August followed a year after Behind the Sun reintroduced Mr. Clapton to the world as a commercially viable artist. The album went platinum primarily on the strength of "Forever Man" a song Phil Collins did not play drums on. That honour went to Jeff Porcaro, and coincidentally Steve Lukather played guitar on the track. However Phil was involved on the album producing and playing drums and programming stuff. I don't remember anything other than that track from the album, but man that was a banger. When August came out a year later in '86 I almost bought it. I liked "It's in the Way that You Use It" but I had picked up Behind the Sun, and felt a little burned. I did end up quite a number of later albums. Just not this one ... until now.

"It's in the Way that You Use It" was featured in the movie The Color of Money. I know this because I saw the movie, and also because the album jacket says it twice, first on the back cover and inside the gatefold. It is an excellent song and it kicks off an album that quickly turns into a head scratching bait and switch. Eric is a bit of a conundrum, in the best way really - but his career is defined by sedimentary layers. There's the classic layer, then that sort of meandering shitty mid '70s layer, that I frankly don't know much about other than the radio hits I didn't care for. Yes, even "Wonderful Tonight" which I know is sacrilege to many. Then there was his '80s resurgence that was a mixed bag of styles leaning into the '80s but not embracing them. It was Eric's hybrid R&B that stands for "Real Bad" but that's just me. I have it now and I've been playing it for a few days and it's a bit of an odd duck that was appropriately on Eric's Duck Records imprint.

Phil produced the record under the watchful eye of Tom Dowd. You have to remember, unless you weren't born, which is possible, it was a long time ago now ... that once upon a time Phil Collins was everywhere. Everything he touched turned to gold and platinum. Heck he turned "Sussudio" into a hit in '85. He was Phil at the absolute apex of his career producing Eric Clapton, one of the heads on the Mount Rushmore of guitar gods. What does he do? He takes Eric's brand of poppy R&B and poured the songs into a Jello mold shaped like "Sussudio" and voila, instant hits. Except they weren't hits ... put the s in front of hit.

Oh, don't be like that and stop rolling your eyes. I'm being especially pedantic, and the perceive vitriol is mostly tongue and cheek. However, it is fair to say that I don't really care for a lot of the songs on the album. Eric's penchant for writing weird and frankly generic slick R&B does nothing for me. Of course there are a lot of people of ate this up like a bag of pop rocks. I will say though the album is impeccably performed. In addition to Phil on drums, Greg Phillinganes played keys, and the incomparable Nathan East played bass. These guys are jaw dropping. Even if I didn't like a song, it was impeccably played.

I know I said that the lead off track is the only song that truly stands out, and while it is by far the best song on the record. I find myself returning to a couple of songs on the second side. "Hold On" really shines. It's not a radio friendly track but there's something about it and the groove sat with me. Tina Turner provided backing vocals on this one, and I liked it a lot more than the duet "Tearing Us Apart" from the first side. However, the biggest emotional payoff on the album comes from "Holy Mother" a song written by Stephen Bishop and Eric Clapton that was dedicated to Richard Manuel (keyboard player and vocalist from The Band) who had died earlier that year.

While August may not have sold as well in the US as his previous album, it still went gold moving over half a million copies. Eric was back. In '87 he'd drop a best of collection that would go double platinum, then in an awesome hold my beer moment in 1988, he released Crossroads a six record compilation box set spanning his career that would sell over 3 million copies.

So I may be a bit of a pudding licker when it comes to some of his music, but when he puts it all together he's pretty amazing. Despite all of my whinging August delivers enough to make it worth your time. Maybe you should stream the whole album just to see if I'm full of shit ... or not. Maybe I'm just trying to deliberately waste your time. I'm not running a cheese shop here.

* Josh Gibson holds the highest career batting average in Major League Baseball history at .371. He played primarily for the Homestead Grays and his career ended in 1946. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972.