Give Me Strength is aimed directly at Clapton fans that collect every note Slowhand has ever played.
Eric Clapton
Give Me Strength: The 1974 / 1975 Recordings
Polydor / Pgd
The ’70s were a tough—but transitional—decade for Eric Clapton. Between the somewhat failed supergroup experiment of Blind Faith to his successful dodging of the spotlight with the Layla album, Clapton started the decade off as an artist in conflict. He became a recluse for much of ’72 and ’73 because of drug abuse but in the spring of ’74 he felt good enough to head to Miami’s Criteria Studios to try and revitalize his solo career.
This "comeback" period that stretched through three albums over two years is the focus of the six-disc Give Me Strength, which includes expanded versions of 461 Ocean Boulevard, There's One In Every Crowd, a remixed and expanded version of the E.C. Was Here, the famous Freddie King Criteria sessions, and a Blu-Ray that includes a few different surround-sound mixes of 461 and There's One In Every Crowd.
The real guitar fireworks appear on the live album and the sessions with King. Most of E.C. Was Here comes from an oft-bootlegged ’74 show in Long Beach, but for the first time we get to hear Clapton's classic trio of "Crossroads," "Layla," and "Little Wing," which is taken at a considerably slower tempo than the studio version. With King providing his signature gruff vocals and thick Gibson tone, the previously unreleased 20-minute version of "Gambling Woman Blues" is a masterful demonstration between the mentor (King) and the student (Clapton).
Taken as a whole, you can hear Clapton settling back into the spotlight. This two-year period was make-or-break for Clapton and although his substance issues weren't entirely behind him, it could be argued that this was his most creative and exploratory phase, with musical detours into country, reggae, spiritual, blues, and Americana—before that was even a thing.
Give Me Strength is aimed directly at Clapton fans that collect every note Slowhand has ever played. Put it this way: If you've ever actually looked up 461 Ocean Boulevard on a map and wondered what it would be like to hear Clapton try and deal with his musical demons inside the walls of Criteria Studios, then this collection is likely for you.
Must-hear tracks: "Give Me Strength (Dobro 1)," "Sugar Sweet," "Badge"
I’d heard the song a thousand times, but suddenly it knocked me on my ass.
I don’t believe in fate. I don’t believe in destiny. I don’t believe in purpose-driven cosmic convergences or signs from beyond. But that doesn’t mean I’m not awed, humbled, and dumbfounded by a lot of the same things that other people might attach those labels to. And I do believe we should find insights and edification in these beautiful bits of randomness. We should let them strike us with their profundity, humor, and bizarreness. Let them expand our being, let them strengthen our resolve, let them cleanse us. If we don’t, then we’re just clocking time here on the third stone—and not the kind of time that our drummers would high-five us for.
This morning, just like every morning, my phone played random songs as I got ready for work. One of the first tunes to come up was an Ozzy Osbourne tune. Often that means I press the skip button—I’m not the hugest Ozzy fan. I own the Randy Rhoads albums, and that’s it.
Next thing I know, I’m sitting on the floor in tears.
A sickened mind and spirit
The mirror tells me lies
Could I mistake myself for someone
Who lives behind my eyes?
Will he escape my soul
Or will he live in me?
Is he trying to get out
Or trying to enter me?
Two years ago today my dad passed away. He was a practicing physician till nearly the end, but the last couple of years he battled Parkinson’s disease. It destroyed his body, mind, and dignity. We watched as he lost mobility and sank into the horror of dementia. For the last year or so, he often didn’t recognize us, and his days were riddled with lucid hallucinations of gruesome things happening to his loved ones on TV, in his dreams, in his bedroom at the care facility. He would call up to make sure we were okay, confused at how he could be seeing us on the screen in front of him and hearing our voices on the phone.
I expected to be melancholy and torn on the anniversary of dad’s passing, even though that day was something of a liberation, a long-awaited tragic day of peace. But I wasn’t prepared for this. By the time Ozzy and Rhoads came to that liltingly beautiful bridge with bells, acoustic guitar, strings, and a choir, I was kind of a wreck.
Voices in the darkness
Scream away my mental health
Can I ask a question
To help me save me from myself?
Enemies fill up the pages
Are they me?
Monday 'til Sunday in stages
Set me free
Like a lot of people, I’d always thought of the Ozzman as that wild-but-amiable guy who bit the heads off bats and/or doves and generally made a spectacle of himself—either purposely or accidentally—wherever he went. I’ve seen the fake blood and the camp and all the smart little marketing props he’s used to carve out a career for himself, and I’ve kind of dismissed it as brainless stuff to shout and pump your fist along to. It turns out, I haven’t given him a fair shake over the years.
My dad would’ve hated Ozzy’s music, to say nothing of his whole shtick. But still—what were the odds of hearing that song—by someone who’s suffered an affliction similar to my dad’s—on that particular morning? I know, I know: A) A statistician would need to know how many songs are in my phone, as well as get some code from Apple, to accurately answer that, and B) a whole bunch of more confounding code from my brain is the real reason I suddenly found meaning as I heard those words for the thousandth time.
But as heavy as it can sometimes be, that mystery is the beauty of life, isn’t it? We find new facets of meaning and emotion and experience, put them through our mysterious code processors, and as musicians we filter them through our neurons and fingers into our instruments, and have no idea exactly when, why, or how we will touch someone else.
Mitch Gallagher discusses how mixing is about presentation—how the various elements of the music are combined, balanced, and conveyed by the overall sound of the mix.
You can record the best tracks anyone has ever heard, but if those tracks aren’t presented in an equally great mix, they’ll never live up to their potential. I’ve said before that there’s a reason the top professional mix engineers make the big bucks.
Opinions vary on what makes a great mix, and requirements also vary when it comes to different styles of music. For example, a mix for classical music usually strives for totally natural presentation, as if you were in the room or hall listening to the performance. Electronic music, on the other hand, may try to push things in new directions and go against the conventions of other styles. Dance music relies on a strong beat, a heavy bass drum, and throbbing bass to pull listeners out onto the floor. A track by a guitar shredder is going to necessitate focus on the lead guitar. In all cases it’s about presentation—how the various elements of the music are combined, balanced, and conveyed by the overall sound of the mix.
Getting started. Let’s say you have a song that you’ve been working on in your studio. All the tracks are recorded, and you’re happy with the performances and tones that you’ve captured. You probably have a rough mix that you have built up and have been listening to during the course of the tracking and overdubbing sessions. Should you simply use it as the base for your final mix? Maybe, maybe not. While a rough tracking mix can give you a decent starting point, the mix choices you made during tracking sessions may not be best for the final mix. I prefer to take everything back to zero and start fresh with a clean slate and an unencumbered perspective.
For similar reasons, it can sometimes be nice to take a break from a song before beginning to mix. At the same time, there is also something to be said for diving straight into the mix while the energy of tracking is still pulsing in your veins. Personally, I like to step away from the music for a couple of days before starting to mix, especially if I have played on the tracks. We need to be as objective as possible when mixing. Remember: It’s not about our guitar parts—it’s about the overall song and mix.
Prep work. You’ll save time later on and make things easier on yourself if you begin your mix with some prep work. I know it’s more fun to start cranking tracks—but trust me: Prep pays off.
Let’s start by organizing your tracks. There really aren’t any rules, but I tend to follow the same organizational template for every mix. It keeps things consistent, and I always know where I’m at, especially with larger mixes. There are two elements to organizing for me: track order and track color. All DAWs allow you to set the color for a track, and this makes it easy to see and find different types of tracks on the screen. Starting from the left of my DAW’s mix window shown in the example, my color-coded tracks are organized in the following order.
Drums: Green
- Kick drum
- Snare (multiple tracks are used if the snare has more than one mic on it)
- Tom toms (organized large to small, from left to right)
- Overheads/cymbals (usually a left/right stereo pair)
Other Percussion: Light green
- Congas
- Tambourine
Bass: Blue
Guitars: Orange
- Rhythm (first guitarist)
- Lead (first guitarist)
- Rhythm (second guitarist)
- Lead (second guitarist)
Keyboards: Yellow
- Electric piano
- Electric piano fill
- Synth
Vocals: Red
Busing. Depending on how large the mix is at this stage, I may also begin to set up some basic busing/subgrouping of tracks. For instance, I might route all of the drums to a stereo bus (also shown in the DAW example). This allows me to control their overall volume with one fader, without affecting the balance between the individual tracks. (We’ll talk more about busing in an upcoming column.) Again depending on how large the mix is and also how many bus tracks there are, I may organize the bus tracks with their respective groups, or I might instead place them all on the far left of the DAW’s mixer.
Once my tracks are laid out and organized, all the faders will be pulled down to zero. I set pan to the center for all tracks. There are no effects or plug-ins on any tracks, and no effects sends. This is ground zero, the clean slate from which to build.
See you next month for more on building a mix!
