Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton in Toronto!

[Foxhound]

I attended the Eric Clapton/Jeff Beck concert on February 21st at the Air Canada Centre (a venue built primarily for hockey games I might add).

This review appeared in the "Toronto Star" the next day:

Originally Posted by Ben Rayner Eric Clapton no match for Jeff Beck Slowhand sleepwalks through set at Air Canada Centre show This was supposed to be a guitar battle, not a complete capitulation. Oh, well, we knew going in who the cool kid was gonna be on this Eric Clapton/Jeff Beck co-headlining tour. So I guess the major disappointment stemming from Sunday night's Air Canada Centre gig by the two aged British guitar heroes – one set by Beck, one set by Clapton, one anticlimactic six-string duel between the two – was that Clapton didn't even bother showing up to prove us wrong. It's not like Beck, who famously succeeded Clapton in the Yardbirds back in 1965, was up there throwing it in his old friend/foe's face, either. His opening set, while spiked with the kind of artful white-noise fireworks and jazzbo '70s-fusion quirks that everyone kind of anticipates from Jeff Beck, was still a pretty mild-mannered one. He brought a 12-piece orchestra along with his ace bass/drums/keys backing band and kept the all-instrumental vibe soft and cinematic, almost – dare I say it? – Knopfler-esque in its blues-derived inoffensiveness. During most of his time onstage, he leaned heavily on drowsy material such as Jeff Buckley's "Corpus Christi Carol" and Puccini's "Nessun Dorma" rather than fully uncorking the mindbending, high-volume Strat theatrics he reserved for moments like an awe-inspiring assault on the freaky latter half of The Beatles' "A Day in the Life." You'd think the prospect of being mildly shown up by Jeff Beck at half-power would have moved Clapton to rally beyond the usual, rote white-blues sleepwalk. But no, the guy might as well have strolled out in his jammies for his set, kicking it off with lackadaisical, seated acoustic versions of "Driftin' Blues" and "Layla," and then failing to inject any electricity into what should have been an electric set of can't-miss crowd pleasers, including a lifeless run at the Dominos' "Tell the Truth," the world's longest and lamest "I Shot the Sheriff," and a perfunctory, groove-deficient "Cocaine" that should have been retitled "Thorazine." Seriously, this was one of the laziest big-venue performances I've seen in years. Dude didn't bother to break a sweat. Beck came out to inject a little fire into the proceedings an hour later – consistently stepping back from his incendiary lightning bursts of blurred fretwork to let Clapton step in, only to watch Clapton dole out a few rote blues licks and return to the mike for another verse of "Shake Your Money Maker" or "Little Brown Bird." And what was one of the first tunes they turned all those years of honing their era-defining rock 'n' roll axe-craft to covering? Henry Mancini's "Moon River." Say no more.

Now I'm a huge Jeff Beck fan but since I also really like Eric Clapton I came in with an open mind willing to give both fellows a fair listen. But I have to say that for the most part I agree with the writer of the above article - and the big Eric Clapton fan with whom I attended the concert also agrees. I'll fill in the details of my concert experience later tonight.

[Lord Grendel]

That is surprising to me Fox...I would think EC would have felt obligated to at least put out seeing JB was involved...don't know what to say.

Not a big Clapton fan myself, I only have Slowhand, he was much better in Cream and Derek & the Dominoes.

[Groovy Man]

I seen Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck last Friday Night at Madison Square Garden in New York City. And it was great. I have no idea what this writer is talking about. Yes, Clapton opened his set with acoustic tunes after Jeff Beck's amazing set. It did seem mellow, because it was acoustic, but it was good. Then Clapton plugged in and rocked. Then both of them jamed together. It was a fantastic show. And it sounds like the same set list, they played at MSG.

All I know is I had a great time. I went with a small group of friends, and everyone seemed happy after the show.

And if I had a dime for every bad review of a concert I attended since I was a teen, I'd be a millionaire by now.

[eberg15101]

everyone's entitled to a bad night here and there, I think people expect too much from the legends, but I'm jealous you saw clapton, Fox... I don't care much for Jeff Beck, but I would expect a more explosive show than how it was described by that article...

[Groovy Man]

Originally Posted by eberg15101 everyone's entitled to a bad night here and there, I think people expect too much from the legends, but I'm jealous you saw clapton, Fox... I don't care much for Jeff Beck, but I would expect a more explosive show than how it was described by that article...

Read what I just posted. We posted at the same exact time.

[Lord Grendel]

Fox sounded like he was in agreement with the critic GM...I am not a big fan so I am ambivalent.

[eberg15101]

Originally Posted by Groovy Man Read what I just posted. We posted at the same exact time.

I hate it when that happens

different night, different venue though, and as much as I like Clapton, some of his acoustic playing will put me to sleep, so I can see where they might be coming from there, I feel he can be a very boring/predictable player at times but other times he'll do something no ones heard before....
and even the small number of shows I've been to have all had someone saying they sucked, and there always will be someone to say it sucked, no matter how good, I don't know if that's a good thing or bad thing

[Groovy Man]

Originally Posted by eberg15101 the small number of shows I've been to have all had someone saying they sucked, and there always will be someone to say it sucked, no matter how good,

Maybe it's just around the New York area where I live, but I have hardly ever been to a concert, where the next day, the newspaper said it was a GREAT show.

[Lord Grendel]

I usually am in agreement GM, sometimes when I read the review the next day I wonder what concert/movie the critic was watching. They write to be contrary for it's own sake as much as from personal conviction.

[eberg15101]

Originally Posted by Groovy Man Maybe it's just around the New York area where I live, but I have hardly ever been to a concert, where the next day, the newspaper said it was a GREAT show.

its not just New York, Groovy

Originally Posted by Lord Grendel I usually am in agreement GM, sometimes when I read the review the next day I wonder what concert/movie the critic was watching. They write to be contrary for it's own sake as much as from personal conviction.

I'm almost always in agreement

[Groovy Man]

Originally Posted by eberg15101 different night, different venue

And different crowd....

''different night, different venue'', maybe that's it.

Let's see what Foxhound has to say later, maybe he could tell us more.

[Foxhound]

Before I post my own comments, here's another review that appeared on Monday in the "Toronto Sun":

Originally Posted by Jason McNeill It was definitely worth the wait, but it might not have been what some were expecting. Legendary guitarists Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton shared the stage occasionally over their four decades in rock, but it was only recently that the former Yardbirds decided to join forces for a Together And Apart tour. And Sunday night at Toronto’s sold-out Air Canada Centre – one of only four North American dates slated – both players bobbed and weaved with each other for an hour on material which they cut their teeth on in their early years. After each guitarist completed their own roughly 50-minute set, Beck returned onstage with Clapton and his unspectacular but solid blues-by-the-numbers supporting cast for Shake Your Moneymaker, a boogie-fuelled romp which set the stage for what was to come. Thankfully void of the “super group” mentality where players either timidly sit back or figuratively fight for extended, bloated solos, the dazzling Beck and the more deliberate Clapton alternated playing lead and rhythm on the seedy You Need Love. Here Beck, 65, playfully pretended to look at his wrist wondering when the duo would rein the song back in to close. Although some of the selections definitely could have been fleshed out further, including the finale Crossroads, seeing the duo play off each other during Little Brown Bird atoned for Sly & The Family Stone’s I Wanna Take You Higher which was a tad short-shifted. While perfectly complementing each other throughout, the pair could not have had more varied individual sets if they tried. Clapton, 64, opened his slot – basically Act Two of this three-act performance – seated for acoustic versions of Driftin’ and Layla, the latter getting a loud ovation despite being the lounge-y Unplugged rendition. Early on Clapton’s nickname Slowhand could have been changed to Slowerhand as Running On Faith and I’ve Got A Rock ‘N Roll Heart did little to energize the audience. Yet when he stood up and strapped on his electric guitar, the muddy, bluesy nugget Key To The Highway, Cocaine and Bob Marley’s jewel I Shot The Sheriff easily upped the oomph factor. As for oomph, it was hard not to view Jeff Beck’s slot as teeming with that intangible. Beck isn’t exactly in the same mainstream realm as Clapton is, but his body of work and frenetic style holds up with anyone. This was showcased often during his performance, one which featured a large orchestral ensemble just behind Beck and his three-piece band. Beck, who is releasing a new album Emotion & Commotion in April, appears to thrive by pushing the boundaries. Whether it was on the fine signatures he doled out in Led Boots and the beefy Big Block, the performer also decided that the ill-advised operatic Nessun Dorma was worth doing. Perhaps the set highlight was Beck and orchestra covering The Beatles’ A Day In The Life, with the rising walls of sound in the song majestically coming to life.

[Foxhound]

Finally, here's a review that should hit the streets tomorrow in one of Toronto's "alternative" newspapers, the "EyeWeekly":

Originally Posted by Dave Morris In some ways, Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton are so alike as to be the same person. Given the query “British rock guitar god,” only a seriously busted search engine would fail to return their names on the first page of results. On stage, though, in both their separate sets and together, you’d hardly know they had come from the same country, never mind been in the same band. Their musical interests sharply diverged following their respective (and mutually exclusive) mid-’60s stints in The Yardbirds, and while they found a small patch of common ground, Beck and Clapton’s joint Sunday night outing at the Air Canada Centre was like late-night channel surfing between two very different rock stations. Picturing classic rock radio lovers’ horrified looks about half way through Jeff Beck’s set-opening “Eternity’s Breath” is a gift to non-purists that keeps on giving. “Wait, you mean there’s no singer? What is this, jazz?” Beck’s doggedly persistent journey into the far reaches of instrumental art-rock has hurt his profile on this admittedly anti-intellectual side of the Atlantic, but in the UK — and among middle-aged UK expats —fretboard workouts like “Led Boots” from 1976’s Wired are considered masterpieces. It’s not hard to see why. If you derive no warmth from his choice of material, wardrobe (the man dresses like a cross between Austin Powers and an aging personal trainer) or rhythm section (bassist Rhonda Smith’s slap-bass spunkathon), you can at least tell that Beck is a phenomenal technical player, mixing flurries of sharply articulated notes with wrenching dive-bombs that’d have Eddie Van Halen reaching for the acetaminophen. And if you’re a fan, you were in heaven — even Beck’s bewildering action-movie soundtrack–style takes on ageless melodies like “Corpus Christi Carol” and “Nessun Dorma” were received with reverence, while we colonials politely choked back hints of bile. There’s no accounting for taste, at least when it comes to British baby boomers. Four words: Paul McCartney solo albums. It’s not surprising that Eric Clapton is the ex-Yardbird that, as a fledgling rock fan, this writer had heard of first. I’m guessing more people in the arena owned his 1994 disc From The Cradle than anything Jeff Beck ever played on, so the whoop that went up when Clapton launched into that album’s “Driftin’ Blues” was predictable — though, as the song went on, not at all earned. Clapton is wise enough to appreciate that acoustic blues can be just as ballsy as electric, if not more, but as a more genteel player, he’s rarely able to make it that way. By contrast, the Unplugged arrangement of “Layla” fared far better, having aged better than anyone could have predicted; His rhythm section won the evening’s top prize, with drummer Steve Gadd laying right in the pocket and the organ/keys combo of Chris Stainton and Walt Richmond filling out the Stax and/or Hi sounds of “Running On Faith.” In acoustic mode, Clapton did best when he did less. And yet, when his electric came out, it was clear that Clapton hasn’t lost a step, rumbling through ”Key To The Highway,” leaving a smouldering hole in “Little Queen Of Spades” and ending on a satisfyingly brash “Cocaine.” In the ensuing battle of the titans, Clapton evidently won home-field advantage, playing with his own band and filling the playlist with big-suit shuffle numbers like “Outside Woman Blues.” As a contest, it wasn’t so fair; Beck more than held his own during the blues repertoire, contrasting Clapton’s conservative licks with some acid-damaged note-bending, but his instrumental turn on “Moon River” sent chuckles through the grey-haired crowd, who were evidently horrified by the prospect of hearing a tune they associated with their own parents. It was obvious how the pair see themselves differently: though his church is broad enough to encompass everything from latter-day B.B. King to Babyface, Clapton is basically a blues- and soul- purist trying to get ever closer to the most authentic expression of true grit; whereas Beck is a born innovator who knows enough licks to trade Blueshammer impressions with the best of them, but who would rather explore his own funky, acid-damaged innerspace. The place where their interests converged wasn’t “Crossroads,” which the Clapton band neutered by taking the psych out of the Cream version’s equation (probably at Clapton’s request), but their set-ending cover of Sly And The Family Stone’s un-castratable “I Wanna Take You Higher.” Clapton took the high road with countrified blues licks that sounded like Hendrix on good behaviour, while Beck rode his whammy bar off the stratosphere. Just think — if they made an album of psych/funk/rock that capitalized on their real-life common ground, it could save them both from their own late-career bugbears. Never mind giving it to my parents and ripping it to my iPod; I might actually buy a copy for myself.

[TheFeldster]

I still maintain that these reviewers expect way too much. I've seen Clapton live, and am a big fan of him, and I also enjoy Jeff Beck, and I'm confident I would have gone and had a good time at the show, regardless of the "lack of psych in Crossroads" or their "late career bugbears". Nothing beats a live show, in my experience.

Keep on rockin', guys

[Foxhound]

Originally Posted by Groovy Man And different crowd.... ''different night, different venue'', maybe that's it.

I think it's mostly a case of "different reviewers". Here are my own observations:

1. The joint "tour", immortalized already of course in t-shirts, was the second most curiously abbreviated tour of which I'm aware. (The Cream's reunion tour was the shortest.) This Clapton/Beck tour is confined to London, New York, Toronto and Montreal. Eric will now be performing a few concert dates with Roger Daltrey while Jeff is heading off to tour Australia with his band.

2. An old buddy of mine, Dave, and his older brother had come in from out of town for the show. Their college age kids had chipped in together to buy the two of them nosebleed tickets for the concert. The kids though had no interest in attending the show....

3. The stage was set up at one side of the rink. Floor tickets and lower level seats up to the end boards were all $225. I passed on the $225 tickets since the only ones that were still available ten days before the concert were in the corner seats at the opposite end of the rink. I had mixed feelings about attending the concert in a hockey barn but I finally broke down and bought a pair. Mine were $150 tickets fifteen rows up at the other end of the rink.

4. I'm not entirely convinced that the show was completely sold out. There might have been some empty $225 seats at the sides of the arena.

5. The view from that distance was helped along by a pair of TV screens although these weren't that big compared with the huge monitors at say Stones' concerts.

6. The tickets gave a start time for the concert of 7:30 PM and start at 7:30 it did with Jeff Beck taking the stage. He cleverly ensured a standing ovation when he came out by playing the first few notes of "Oh Canada", which of course had the crowd rising to their feet. He then broke into "Eternity's Breath".

7. He was accompanied by Montreal native Rhonda Smith on bass, a drummer and a twelve piece orchestra complete with conductor. No singer though. This is the fourth time I've seen Jeff in the last fifteen years and he's never had a singer so I wasn't surprised. I would of course have sneered at any less sophisticated fan who was expecting vocals. Jeff's style is to have his guitar take the place of vocals, substituting his notes for the words of a singer.

8. It was therefore Jeff's guitar playing that carried the melody on such classical pieces as “Corpus Christi Carol” and “Nessun Dorma”. He often used a whammy bar, a.k.a. a tremolo arm, and I found the notes that flowed so freely from his guitar to be both plaintiff and spellbinding.

9. He introduced his bandmates at one point and Rhonda Smith launched into an extended bass solo version of "Voodoo Child".

10. Jeff ended his set with his crowd pleasing cover of the Beatles' "A Day in the Life". He ended up playing for exactly 45 minutes.

11. But because there were no vocals, the focus of his set was entirely on his guitar playing. I therefore knew that Eric Clapton would be very hard pressed to top Jeff's set when it came to straight forward guitar playing.

But I think I'll go to bed now. I'll finish this off tomorrow.