BETWEEN LAID-BACK AND listless, between the tastefully restrained and the downright niggardly, the line can be perilously thin. Eric Clapton‘s new album teeters precariously on the very edge, flirting with, but in the nick of time always just skirting, dullness. It’s a tribute to Clapton’s charisma and talents that 461 Ocean Boulevard doesn’t succumb to the danger Clapton courts by playing unobtrusively with an unimpressive band. Still, it’s a close call, too close for comfort.
What’s disturbing is not that Clapton plays differently, but that he plays so little. When he steps out a bit, he shines.
461 shies away from the rich sonorities and lyrical, flowing lines that made Clapton an unhappy superstar. So determined is he to break from his past that frequently he plays dobro instead of guitar. 461 debuts a new, thin, circumscribed and circumspect style which will disappoint many — it has neither the beauty nor the power of the old sound. But rhythmically it constitutes an advance, lending itself more readily to syncopation. With its reggae and touches of Bo Diddley, 461 can swing as Clapton’s earlier work did not. (Rolling Stone)
By 1974, Clapton and Boyd were together and he had kicked the drug habit. Carl Radle, former bassist for Derek and the Dominos, presented Clapton with a demo tape of songs. With an assembled group, Clapton returned to Criteria Studios and temporarily lived at the house at 461 Ocean Boulevard in Golden Beach, Florida.
461 Ocean Boulevard was bookended by an urgently paced re-working of the traditional "Motherless Children" and the renewed vigor of "Mainline Florida." In between, however, the ensuing laid-back fare ranged from the hymn-like "Give Me Strength" to the easy-grooving "Willie and the Hand Jive" to a slippery slide across Elmore James' "I Can't Hold Out" and an acoustic "Please Be with Me."
