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No Reason to Cry
Eric Clapton

RSO RS-1-3004
Released: October 1976
Chart Peak: #15
Weeks Charted: 21

Eric ClaptonWith No Reason to Cry, Eric Clapton has left the Miami studio where he recently fashioned, from blues, gospel and reggae, one of the most personal and convincingly haunting sounds around. The new album was made in Los Angeles with predictable results: the carefully sculpted, spiritual style of Clapton and his band has been replaced by a series of musical formulas.

Southern California cannot be indicted for Clapton's failure, and there's no reason to write off all the music that emerges from Los Angeles and environs, as some would. But like many others -- Bob Dylan for a while, and the Band perhaps permanently -- Clapton has sacrificed much credibility in his move west. In place of a band and true collaboration, he has found only what everyone else has found in the Scene: cronyism. Because of the nature of the Scene's buddy system it is difficult for a musician to take control of and dominate his own album. The music men make when they come together like this springs from no long-term commitment, and it shows.

Eric Clapton - No Reason To Cry
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On both 461 Ocean Boulevard and There's One in Every Crowd, the two studio albums recorded in Miami, Clapton's principal achievement was his emergence as a leader. Though he wasn't writing much, he dominated in other ways: as an arranger, as a singer (the most underestimated of his talents), as the organizer of a first-rate and often exciting band. With Layla, he had made the blues his own music, rather than a translated and transmuted idiom; the other records defined the nature of those blues, from "Willie and the Hand Jive" to "Knockin' on Heaven's Door."

No Reason to Cry erodes those gains. Once again, Clapton is playing in someone else's idiom, and though he's too skillful to turn in a really bad performance, the result is much more mélange than masterpiece. This would not necessarily be so disastrous if what replaced those gains was more than a dead end. It is not.

Clapton's old friends have let him down, and his new ones don't serve him much better. Ron Wood, Robbie Robertson and Georgie Fame are here but in roles so anonymous, or interchangeable, that it's hard to be certain where. Bob Dylan, Rick Danko and Richard Manuel leave their mark, but it's gloomy. Dylan's contribution, "Sign Language," is goofy -- it invokes the name of Link Wray and not much else. If anything, the song, with Dylan's voice overwhelming Clapton's and a sound that's mostly polished and professionalized rolling thunder, is further evidence of Clapton's backsliding.

Danko ought to be embarrassed: he is either inept or saving his decent songs for his solo album. "Beautiful Thing," co-authored by Manuel, is the most banal song on an album full of them. The Clapton-Danko collaboration, "All Our Past Times," is salvaged by their vocal trade-offs and what might be a guitar interchange between Robertson and Clapton. Otherwise, it is maudlinly sexist and pedestrian Eagles fare. Finally, we have found an Englishman even more incapable of singing country rock than the Rolling Stones.

A fine Otis Rush blues, "Double Trouble," is the only place on the album where the sound is wholly convincing. But it is sandwiched between "Hello Old Friend," a whimsical and silly slice of attempted innocence, and "Innocent Times," in which the occasionally brilliant backing singer Marcy Levy tries and fails to beat Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris at al, at their own game. Levy proves her worth a dozen times here, saving Dick Sims' otherwise mediocre "Hungry" (little more than a parody of George Terry's masterpiece 461 rocker, "Mainline Florida"), and sparking many of what graceful moments there are. But she does not have a knack for soloing, as her spot in the Clapton live shows affirms: for all the beauty in her voice, she can't control it beyond the typical white soul shriek, and she owns no style, no sense of interpretation.

The biggest loss is Clapton's eroticism. Since Layla, he's made the sexiest white rock this side of Rod Stewart. But here, even the best attempt, "Black Summer Rain," seems feeble and hollow, without the passion of Layla or the sure-handedness of 461. Although Rob Fraboni equals Tom Dowd as a producer, almost everything else in the equation that made Clapton's last few records great has gone awry.

The ready-made cheap emotionalism of songs like "Hello Old Friend," "Beautiful Thing" and "All Our Past Times"; the phony egalitarianism of including Sims' song and giving Levy a solo spot she's not prepared to handle well; the music, which vulgarizes everything except the purest of the blues tracks; the lyrical banality and fake looseness -- this is the sludge from which the Eagles and the rest of the Southern California rock factory acts make their lucrative, empty hits.

This is not an Eric Clapton album, because he's buried under a dozen other egos. Nor is it anyone else's album -- they're buried too. It's a formula in the truest sense: it always works -- which is to say, it's always professional in its standard of execution -- and it always works the same way. There's no room for risk, because there's no chance for error -- except the biggest one of all, which is to take things so safely. This riskless music is invariably boring -- which pretty much sums up this album. No reason to cry? But only because we're all so damned grown-up.

- Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone, 11/18/76.

Bonus Reviews!

Everybody -- Bob Dylan, Georgie Fame, most of the Band, Ron Wood, Jesse Ed Davis -- everybody and Mick Jagger's brother (Chris) apparently contributed to this, and in spite of that it's a good one. I'm not sure why Clapton brought in such notorious help, but it could be a way to spread out the attention, keep so much of it from clotting around Clapton's guitar and hanging there to dry. I admit I bring such a bias to his albums. When Dylan is singing the song he wrote, "Sign Language," when it figures that a whole generation is paying attention to the singer this time for sure, Clapton does some of his most spectacular runs as a back-up guitarist. Little things like that are in here, along with some fine singing by Clapton himself -- his style is maturing attractively -- and it might shake us into reflecting that Clapton is not a freak with a guitar growing out of his side but a musician who's now made a little string of pretty good albums. "Sign Language," incidentally, is a winner; it could be addressed to writers ("can't you even make a sound?"), or to urban life (and, by extension, civilization) with all its actual physical signs saying don't do this and that, or to the way we sometimes expect those close to us to read our minds, or.... A good Dylan song, it is loose enough to fit your situation. Not all the fare here is that meaty, but the performances are rich yet fad-free; Clapton's affinity is for something that's lasted, the blues, and his goal seems to be music that never goes too far in or out of style. You can get a feeling for his self-respect here, and you can also get, as Gene Nobles used to say, some jollies.

- Noel Coppage, Stereo Review, 2/77.

As in Clapton's other recent albums, the focus here is on catchy rhythm tracks and his smoky vocals rather than the guitar pyrotechnics which first shot him to the top of rockdom. The music is crisp and energetic, high-gloss rock with no sterility. The parade of big-name guest stars is kept under control towards a tight production, rather than being allowed to wander all over the place. Several numbers feature a female vocal chorus and others show a heavy influence of the Band, with three of that group's members playing. Clapton does let loose on guitar for some killer solos this time. One gets the feeling that a bunch of good friends and heavy talents came into the studio to have some fun and try out different styles of music. Best cuts: "Hello Old Friend," "Carnival," "Beautiful Thing," "Sign Language" (a distinctive duet with Bob Dylan), "All Our Past Times."

- Billboard, 1976.

A well-made, rather likeable rock and roll LP that shows more pride and joy than the standard El Lay studio product, probably because the characters assembled here don't do this kind of thing all that much. The words are trite but the singing is eloquent and the instrumental signature an almost irresistible pleasure. But what does it all mean? B-

- Robert Christgau, Christgau's Record Guide, 1981.

When he gave a speech inducting the Band into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, Eric Clapton said that after he heard their debut album, Music From Big Pink, he wanted to join the group, the fact that they already had a guitarist in Robbie Robertson notwithstanding. In the winter of 1975-1976, when he cut No Reason to Cry at The Band's Shangri-la Studio in Malibu, California, he came as close as he ever would to realizing that desire. Clapton is a musical chameleon; though some of No Reason to Cry is identifiable as the kind of pop/rock Clapton had been making since the start of his solo career (the best of it being "Hello Old Friend," which became his first Top 40 single in two years), the most memorable music on the album occurs when Clapton is collaborating with members of the Band and other guests. He duets with Band bassist Rick Danko on Danko's "All Our Past Times," and with Bob Dylan on Dylan's "Sign Language," as Robertson's distinctive lead guitar is heard rather than Clapton's. As a result, the album is a good purchase for fans of Bob Dylan and the Band, but not necessarily for those of Eric Clapton. (The CD reissue adds a bonus track, "Last Night," which is a traditional 12-bar blues song credited to Clapton.) * * *

- William Ruhlmann, The All-Music Guide to Rock, 1995.

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