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By Jim Harrington
Doubling up on the star power doesn’t always translate to twice as good of a show.
Case in point: Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood’s co-headlining concert on Monday night at the Oracle Arena in Oakland, a much-anticipated event that failed to live up to the advance hype. Indeed, this one-two punch was far from being as strong as the solo shots each man has delivered in the Bay Area over recent years.
What a shame. This gig held so much promise – it was a chance to see two rock legends combine forces, and catalogs, for what should’ve been two hours’ worth of memorable songs. It was also the opportunity to hear Clapton and Winwood relive their time in Blind Faith, the late ‘60s rock super group that produced one eponymous album and a handful of great tunes.
Yet, it didn’t turn out to be a “greatest hits”-style show – for either artist. And it never felt like a celebration of Blind Faith, which makes sense since two members of the quartet (bassist Ric Grech, who died in 1990, and drummer Ginger Baker) weren’t onstage. Most troubling, however, was that the expected synergy between the two old friends never really materialized.
By the midpoint of the two-hour-plus concert, it seemed pretty clear that Clapton and Winwood didn’t really have a game plan for the evening. Sure, they had a set list – one bearing nearly as many problems as songs – but they apparently never reached a consensus on what they were trying to accomplish with this show. In lieu of that, they just meandered through both the years and their performances.
Taking the stage together, the 61-year-old Winwood and the 64-year-old Clapton opened the gig with the “Blind Faith” cut “Had to Cry Today” and then immediately followed with the J.J. Cale cover “Low Down,” which are also the first two tracks on “Live from Madison Square Garden,” the recently released two-CD set that documents the pair’s initial batch of concerts from early last year.
Thousands of eyes immediately turned to the overhead video screens – a regular occurrence at Clapton gigs – to watch the extreme close-ups of EC’s fingers working the frets. Clapton was, of course, a technical marvel to behold – so precise and concise in the way he fashioned the notes – but his playing felt particularly dry and rote for much of the evening. Second-rate “Slow Hand,” however, still beats whatever his partner can offer at the microphone or on rhythm guitar/keyboards, thus Winwood’s worthy contributions lived in Clapton’s shadow in Oakland.
The capacity crowd rejoiced with the third number, a fast-paced run through the Clapton hit “After Midnight,” which, thankfully, resembled the original recorded version instead of the slower rendition featured in those late ‘80s Michelob beer commercials.
The concert hit a lull during a somber double shot of “Presence of the Lord” and “Sleeping in the Ground,” but rebounded nicely once Winwood revved up “Glad,” the jazzy instrumental made famous by his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame band, Traffic. Another Traffic jam, “Pearly Queen,” produced the night’s grooviest psychedelic moment, one truly worthy of 1969, but the high wouldn’t last long as the group soon ventured into an overly long unplugged segment that included Clapton’s easy-listening version of the once-great “Layla.”
The main set came to a remarkably anticlimactic close as Winwood reached into his mid-‘80s solo bag, and skipping over anything the crowd would actually want to hear, selected the dreadful “Split Decision,” which still sounds like a song written for the “Miami Vice” TV series. The seven-member band followed with an over-the-top cover of the Jimi Hendrix Experience classic “Voodoo Chile,” a seemingly appropriate choice (Winwood played keys on the original recording) that was manhandled through pointless jamming.
The players made up for some of the lost ground during the encore, bringing the crowd to its feet for the first time all evening with “Cocaine” and then making “Dear Mr. Fantasy” a reality. It was then, and unfortunately only then, that this show managed to live up to its potential.
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