Eric Clapton: “An album made with Phil Collins has disappeared”
Speaking to the YouTube channel of Harmless Dave, Eric Clapton he stated that somewhere there should be an album he recorded together with Phil Collins. The revelation came when a ‘Slowhand’ was asked if there are any unreleased songs that have disappeared.
Clapton replied, “There’s a lot of demos that have mysteriously disappeared. There’s a guy I know who probably has them, when I signed to Warner Brothers, me and Phil Collins made an album. I sent it to Warner Brothers, they sent it back to me and said, ‘We can’t. There’s nothing here we can work on.'”
The British guitarist then explained why the record label rejected that project. “We were just having fun, we were making music that we liked, but they needed something more impressive for the market. They needed a single or at least a couple of singles to make it marketable.”
Intrigued Harmless Dave he then asked Clapton where these songs were, he replied, pointing to a person: “You have to ask Lenny Waronker. He has to go through his desk and find these demos because they are amazing.”
To reconstruct history we must go back to the mid-eighties, when Eric Clapton released his ninth solo album “Behind the Sun”exactly on March 11, 1985. A record that had a rather troubled development. At the start Phil Collins he was the producer of the recording sessions in Montserrat. The songs Clapton wrote had to do with his tumultuous relationship with Pattie Boyd. Clapton, Collins and Clapton’s manager liked the album a lot. Roger Forrester. Less so for Warner who said they were worried about the lack of commercially valid material that could be promoted as a single.
In the fall of 1984, Warner Brothers rejected the version of
“Behind the Sun”
produced by
Phil Collins
and insisted that Clapton record several new songs written by the Texan singer-songwriter
Jerry Lynn Williams
with the accompaniment of session musicians from Los Angeles. Instead of simply accepting the label’s demands, E
ric Clapton
he demonstrated maturity by challenging them to provide what they considered suitable material. The label then entrusted the direction of the project to
Lenny Waronker
And
Ted Templeman
.
The recording sessions held in Los Angeles saw the participation of high-level musicians. Among these, guitarists
Lindsay Buckingham
And
Steve Lukether
the drummer
Jeff Porcaro
the keyboard player
Greg Phillinganes
and the bass player
Nathan East
. Warner gave prominence to the new songs and eventually released two of them as singles:
“Forever Man”
which reached the Top 40, and
“See
What Love Can Do”
.
