Eric Clapton - 461 Ocean Boulevard (1974) 2/3

Описание: Track List: 4-6

4. Get Ready (0:00)
5. I Shot The Sheriff (3:46)
6. I Can't Hold Out (8:09)

Part 1.    • Eric Clapton - 461 Ocean Boulevard (1974) 1/3  
Part 2.    • Eric Clapton - 461 Ocean Boulevard (1974) 2/3  
Part 3.    • Eric Clapton - 461 Ocean Boulevard (1974) 3/3  
Playlist:    • Eric Clapton  

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
461 Ocean Boulevard is the second solo studio album by English musician Eric Clapton. It was released in late July 1974 by RSO Records, after the record company released the hit single "I Shot the Sheriff" earlier in the month. The album topped various international charts and sold more than two million copies.

The album was Clapton's return to the recording studio after a three-year hiatus due to his heroin addiction. The title refers to the address on Ocean Boulevard in Golden Beach, Florida, where Clapton lived while recording the album. Upon completing the album, Clapton and RSO head Robert Stigwood recommended the house and Criteria Studios in Miami to fellow RSO artists the Bee Gees, who then moved there to write and record Main Course. The street address of the house was changed after the album's release.

Reviewing for Creem in September 1974, Robert Christgau said: "As unlikely as it seems, Clapton has taken being laid-back into a new dimension. Perhaps the most brilliant exploration of the metaphorical capacities of country blues ever attempted, way better than Taj Mahal for all of side one. On side two, unfortunately, he goes a little soft. But I'll settle for two questionable live albums if he'll give us a solo record as good as this every three years." He later expanded on this praise in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981):

By opening the first side with 'Motherless Children' and closing it with 'I Shot the Sheriff', Clapton puts the rural repose of his laid-back-with-Leon music into a context of deprivation and conflict, adding bite to soft-spoken professions of need and faith that might otherwise smell faintly of the most rural of laid-back commodities, bullshit. And his honesty has its reward: better sex. The casual assurance you can hear now in his singing goes with the hip-twitching syncopation he brings to Robert Johnson's 'Steady Rolling Man' and Elmore James's 'I Can't Hold Out', and though the covers are what make this record memorable it's on 'Get Ready', written and sung with Yvonne Elliman, that his voice takes on a mellow, seductive intimacy he's never come close to before.

In 1974, journalist Ken Emerson at Rolling Stone called Clapton's guitar work unnotable and criticized Clapton for hiding behind his other musicians, whom Emerson deemed less than capable. Emerson also questioned Clapton's decision to play a dobro on the album, but called "Let It Grow" a highlight. Emerson considered Clapton's re-arrangement of "Motherless Children" to be too upbeat for a sombre song.

In a retrospective review for AllMusic, critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine calls the studio album a "tighter, more focused outing that enables Clapton to stretch out instrumentally" and adds that the "pop concessions on the album [as well as] the sleek production [and] the concise running times don't detract from the rootsy origins of the material". Finishing his review, Erlewine notes, the 461 Ocean Boulevard "set the template for Clapton's 1970s albums". The critic awarded the release four and a half out of five possible stars. For the Blender magazine review of the album's 2004 deluxe edition, Jon Pareles called the Eric Clapton of the Cream-era superior to the Clapton of the 461 Ocean Boulevard-era, because of what Pareles describes as strained singing on 461 Ocean Boulevard. Pareles also described Clapton's remake of "I Shot the Sheriff" as a copy with no original arrangement; he also praised the song "Let It Grow", but criticized it for sounding too much like "Stairway to Heaven".

Personnel:
Eric Clapton – lead vocals, guitars, Dobro (A2, B2, B3), slide guitar (A1, B1, B5)
George Terry – guitars (A1–A5, B2, B3, B4, B5), backing vocals (A5, B2, B3, B4, B5), slide guitar (A1)
Albhy Galuten – piano (A1, A5, B3, B4, B5), electric piano (A4), ARP synthesizer (B3), clavichord (B4)
Dick Sims – organ (A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, B1, B3, B4, B5)
Carl Radle – bass
Jamie Oldaker – drums (all tracks, except A2, B2, and B4), percussion (B2)
Yvonne Elliman – backing vocals (A3, A5, B2, B3, B5), co-lead vocals (A4)
Al Jackson Jr. – drums (A2)
Jimmy Fox – drums (B4)
Tom Bernfield – backing vocals (B3, B5)

Production:
Tom Dowd – producer
Bill Levenson – compilation producer on Deluxe Edition
Ron Fawcus – engineer
Andy Knight – engineer
Karl Richardson – engineer
Suha Gur – mastering
Darcy Proper – mastering at Sterling Sound (New York, NY).
Bob Defrin – art direction, design
David Gahr – photography
Ryan Null – photo coordination