‘Eric Clapton Unplugged…Over 30 Years Later’ Revisits the Show That Redefined Slowhand’s Career

Lori Acken February 12, 7:00 am

UNPLUGGED, Eric Clapton, 1992. ©MTV / courtesy Everett Collection — ©MTV / courtesy Everett Collection

Slowhand fans, take note! Paramount+ will begin streaming Eric Clapton Unplugged…Over 30 Years Later on Feb. 12. A 33rd anniversary edition of Eric Clapton’s iconic MTV Unplugged episode, the 90-minute special features Clapton’s now-legendary set, plus added insightful, and often emotional, interview clips that shed light on how one show redefined the guitar god’s late career.

If you need the reminder, MTV in the late ’80s was a noisy, neon-lit powerhouse that would shape the sound and style of an entire generation. But somewhere in the midst of all of those big hairdos, big egos and music videos that looked like little feature films, a quieter idea took shape. One that involved the biggest rock and indie acts of the time unplugging their amps and guitars and sitting on a spare stage, in front of a few dozen fans, singing songs with only the mic plugged in. Unplugged was born.

The Day Clapton Made Music History

Paramount+

On January 16, 1992, it was Eric Clapton’s turn. Nattily dressed in a tasteful gray suit with a plaid button-up and proper brown Oxford laces, he stepped onstage at Bray Studios in Windsor, Berkshire, and unwittingly made music history. As a few dozen fans looked on and MTV cameras rolled, Clapton tapped into his lifelong blues obsession, tried a new spin on classic and newer hits, and bared his soul a little. The result would redefine Clapton as a musician — and its accompanying album would go on to sell 26 millions copies, remaining the best-selling live album of all time to date.

As he reveals early on, Clapton considered himself a blues artist from the get-go. He cajoled his grandparents into buying him a guitar when he was just 13, but was flummoxed by the gut-string, Spanish model they purchased. When he heard blues legend Muddy Waters, he decided to give it another go, again without much success. Hoping that the third time would be the charm, he asked his grandparents for an electric guitar. Bingo.

By age 17, Clapton had joined the Yardbirds and would become central to other British blues rock bands including John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, Blind Faith, and Derek and the Dominoes, before making his mark as a solo artist.

UNPLUGGED, Eric Clapton, 1992. (c) MTV/ Courtesy: Everett Collection.

MTV/ Everett Collection

And as goosebumps-inducing as it is to hear the now-familiar new renditions of classic Clapton hits like “Layla” and “Tears in Heaven,” for my money, the tasty meat and potatoes of the episode is watching Clapton sing the blues. That includes others’ songs, such as Bo Diddley’s “Before You Accuse Me” and Bessie Smith’s “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out,” and his own, including the rainy-day “Lonely Stranger,” and a positively silky version of “Old Love,” which he cowrote with Robert Cray after his marriage to “Layla” muse Pattie Boyd ended.

“This is the first and last time you’ll see this,” Clapton quips as he straps on a kazoo, before charming the audience as he and his game band launch into a jug-band version of Jesse Fuller’s “San Francisco Bay Blues.”

Sharing His Aching Ballad “Tears From Heaven”

Clapton spends plenty of time addressing other losses, too. He officially wrote the rending “Tears in Heaven” for the soundtrack of his friend Lili Fini Zanuck’s crime drama Rush. But the spare, aching ballad also proved a perfect vehicle for Clapton to share his raw grief for his 4-year-old son Conor, who had died months before in a horrifying accident. (“I really wanted to say something about what had happened to me,” Clapton explains). Later in the special, the songs “Circus,” about Clapton’s joyful final day with his son, and “My Father’s Eyes” also honor Conor and illuminate Clapton’s complicated grieving process for both his boy and his own father, whom Clapton never met.

“Layla” and His Secret Love

Then there is “Layla.” Clapton tells his audience that he played the roaring homage to his secret love for Boyd — his best friend George Harrison’s then-wife — the same way for so many years that it never occurred to him that the song would work another way. He worried that “denying all the riffs might render [the song] weak.” But he gave it a go for Unplugged. He and guitarist Andy Fairweather Low (who also appears in the episode) came up with a version set against a shuffle groove with Clapton singing a full octave below the original. It’s widely considered more commercially and musically successful than the original.

Because of Unplugged’s simple format, if you are tempted to turn on the special and just listen while you catch up on work or tidy up the house — don’t do that. A huge amount of its appeal is watching Clapton’s impossibly long fingers coax music from his variety of guitars. Guessing if he’ll keep the beat next with one foot or two. Eyes opened or closed. And seeing Clapton relax into the set-up, smiling at his band or from sheer pleasure, and letting the music flow through him. The peerless Ray Cooper on percussion is worth the price of admission alone, as he makes a rhapsodic art form of playing the tambourine.

As a takeaway, Clapton seems delighted to share his discovery that he enjoys singing “in a more acoustic situation” because neither his voice nor the music are beholden to volume levels required by rock and roll’s screaming guitars and massive speakers.

“On stage,” he muses, “I always seem to be singing flat out.”