Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * *

There can be no doubt that the music world owes Eric Clapton a huge and honest debt of thanks for what he has brought to the world in the many decades he has been plying the standard of Blues and Rock; without his influence many musicians would not have the rich and varied form of expression that makes the sound that surrounds us so rich and enticing.

The debt is there but also there is the feeling that some things in life can go beyond their natural finish, that some musicians, if not all artists peak and then decline and the momentum of that decline is as fast and as worrying as when they first picked up the instrument of their choice. It is in the pastiche, the almost lampooning of their own soul which begins the process and it is one that unfortunately for many Eric Clapton has been living under for many years.

I Still Do…might as well be the three little words on many people’s lips, they still love Eric Clapton and why not, legends after all deserve preserving. However I Still Do, whilst technically proficient, whilst playing to the gallery of the adoring and the affectionate, is under whelming and dare it be said, safe. Safe is perhaps too nice a word in a world that stings in the thought of such things but even the die-hard Blues fan would be hard pressed to describe the songs on the album, played with dedication certainly, as anything other than bordering on the dull and tedious.

The problem lays in finding once more an artist who just wants to take on the songs of other musicians and with that great sin of not even placing their own stamp upon the songs. Many songs are covered with brilliance because the emotion and the heart dictate to the listener that the demeanour of the covering artist is true and sincere, for that they deserve great swaggering praise; however when an artist doesn’t even feel as though he is enjoying the experience, it should be a sign, bright, large in life and shimmering with the truth, to retire and enjoy life once more.

I Still Do but you wouldn’t want to reach the point in life where you don’t, where the music becomes insipid and a complete turn off.

Ian D. Hall