Eric Clapton pulls the plug on Player?

Well … not exactly

By Peter Lindblad

Player: Peter Beckett and Ronn Moss 2013

Others might have been intimidated by the prospect of opening up for guitar god Eric Clapton, but not Player.

After all, they had a No. 1 song to their credit in the blue-eyed soul ditty “Baby Come Back” – released in late 1977 – and in the grand tradition of giving audiences what they want to hear, Player decided to muscle up sonically for their 1978 album Danger Zone.

“We had to, because we were plucked from Boz Scaggs’s ‘Silk Degrees’ tour,” says Peter Beckett, one of the founding member of Player. “And we were still a young band. And they stuck us on Eric Clapton’s ‘Slowhand’ tour supporting Clapton for a month to [play to] like a 30,000 mainly male audience, so we couldn’t go on and be a little pop band. That’s when we started injecting more hard rock [into our sound], and it’s been that way ever since.”

In February, Player will release Too Many Reasons, its first album in 20 years. Around 35 years ago, Player was riding high, having been chosen as the support act for Clapton’s 1978 North American tour. Mixing tracks from Danger Zone into an eclectic set list that ran the gamut from pretty soft-rock ballads to melodic hard rock, Player did more than just win over Clapton’s audiences.

How were they received on that tour?

“Excellent … in fact, a little too good,” says Beckett, the lead guitarist and singer for Player.

While Beckett was being coy about what happened, Player bassist Ronn Moss – better known worldwide as the actor who’s played Ridge Forrester for 25 years on the massively successful soap opera “The Bold and The Beautiful” – expanded on Beckett’s statement.

“We had a wonderful little thing happen to us at the Aladdin Theatre in Las Vegas,” relates Moss. “Player had a No. 1 record, and in the middle of ‘Baby Come Back,’ there’s a silence before the last chorus starts. Well, right at that downbeat to that chorus, after the silence, we all came in … and, no power. The power had gone out. There was nothing but drums.”

The possibility of a citywide blackout was immediately dismissed, since the lights didn’t go out … “just the power to our amplifiers,” says Moss. “So we all looked around, and they finally got it up and rolling, running …”

Adds Beckett, “… but, we’d finished (laughs)."

So, what happened exactly? As Moss recalls, the guilty party, or parties, didn’t step forward right away.

“It took several days for somebody backstage to finally fess up,” says Moss. “And it turned out to be Eric Clapton’s crew who fessed up and said, ‘Yeah, we pulled the plug on you guys.’ We were going down too well, and initially, we were really pissed. [I said] ‘Why would you do that?’ and the guy said, ‘It’s because you were going over a little too well.’”   

Beckett cautions, “The truth of it was, Eric Clapton knew nothing about it. It was just an uppity roadie. You know how those roadies are (laughs).”

They can joke about it now, but at the time, they were apoplectic.

“We were just pissed about it, and then I thought, ‘Wait a minute. Eric Clapton pulled the plug on us?’” says Moss. “They fessed up. They fessed up. And [Clapton] came in the dressing room a couple of weeks later with a bottle of Jack Daniels, and he never really admitted anything, but he said, ‘Are you guys okay?’”

Clapton wasn’t the only massive ‘70s rock act that took Player out on the road. There was Heart, who was promoting 1978’s Dog and the Butterfly LP. And, of course, there was Boz Scaggs.

“Well, you know, the Boz Scaggs tour wasn’t chopped liver, either,” says Beckett. “So we’d already done about two months of 30,000-seat arenas, and then we went back and did the Danger Zone album. We knew we were going on the ‘Slowhand’ tour, so we made the Danger Zone album harder edged so that we were able to go out and support Eric Clapton and have the right kind of music under our belts. So, it all turned out great.”

Too Many Reasons is due out Feb. 26 on Frontiers Records, and it was written and produced by Beckett. Look for a more expanded interview with Beckett and Moss in this blog in the coming weeks. In the meantime, visit www.player-theband.com and www.ronnmoss.com for more information and check out the track listing for Too Many Reasons:

* Photo by Devin DeVasquez-Moss

Too Many Reason track listing:

1. Man on Fire

2. Precious

3. I Will

4. Tell Me

5. The Sins of Yesterday

6. My Addiction

7. Too Many Reasons

8. To the Extreme

9. The Words You Say

10. Life in Color

11. A Part of Me

12. Nothin’ Like You

13. Baby Come Back

Vintage Rock 'n Roll Posters are a Hot Ticket at Backstage Auctions

Let's be honest here; who grew up NOT having a poster pinned to their wall? Exactly - and while your parents complained, truth is they did it too. As will your children...and their children. Fact is that posters are so much more than just an over sized sheet of paper. Some might call them art, others see them as legitimate collectibles but whatever the motivation, in the end it all comes down to this one simple word.....'Magic'.

Rolling Stones 1975 Original North American Tour Poster

Whether it was your favorite album, your first concert, an iconic image that defined 'you' or simply a reminder of good times, posters have meaning. So much so that endless books have been written about them, websites are dedicated to them and ultimately, they have become staples in our culture - and our collection. Backstage Auctions is offering nearly 100 collectible posters, lithographs and unique proof prints in their 2012 Rock & Pop Auction, which is taking place this very week.

Leading the pack is a nice collection of almost 50 San Francisco concert posters from the old & new Fillmore, containing many of the great names from those memorable years, such as Janis Joplin, Byrds, Jefferson Airplane, Santana and naturally, the Grateful Dead.

Grateful Dead 1966 Fillmore West BG-41 Original Poster

A most impressive assortment of rare proof prints featuring Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones is certain to receive much attention, if nothing else for the simple fact that these proofs are one of only a handful and often vary from the final version.

Bruce Springsteen 1984 "Born In The USA"
Album Art Proof Prints

Some of these lots even contain the original photos used for the artwork and it goes without saying that something like that gives a whole different meaning to the word 'exclusive'.

Bruce Springsteen 1984 "Born In The USA" Album "Photo" Proof

Another grouping that deserves a special mention is the collection of original punk posters, showcasing the likes of the Sex Pistols, the Clash, Blondie, to the more obscure D.O.A., Lydia Lunch, Mumps and Teenage Jesus & The Jerks.

Sex Pistols 1978 Warner Bros. Promo Poster

And while not necessarily a poster, the auction also features a small collection of silk screen banners which all came from the recently closed Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame New York Annex. With measurements exceeding 10 - 15 foot, these are impressive and prestigious pieces of serious wall decoration

Eric Clapton 1970s Silkscreen JUMBO Wall Banner
NY Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Annex

The Backstage Auctions' 2012 Rock 'n Pop Auction is open for bidding November 3 - 11th, but is available now for previewing the entire catalog. VIP All Access Registration is FREE and only takes a minute or two.

View Posters:  Posters & Handbills

View Proof Prints and Banners:  Original Artwork

DVD Review: Eric Clapton "The 1960s Review"

DVD Review: Eric Clapton "The 1960s Review" 
Sexy Intellectual
All Access Review:  B-

The deification of Eric Clapton didn’t happen overnight. Hours and hours of obsessively studying the blues – at the expense of everything else - as a merely mortal teenager gave him an encyclopedic knowledge of the subject. Just about every note the greats ever put to record, Clapton could replicate.

Building off that self-taught education, Clapton grew increasingly more fluid as a guitarist and his phrasing was so authentic and so uniquely brilliant at the same time that a discipleship was forming, even as he toiled in relative obscurity with acts like The Roosters, his first band, and then the sort of goofy Casey Jones & the Engineers, an outfit that, according to a new Clapton documentary titled “The 1960s Review,” used to jump on a trampoline on stage.

It wasn’t long before “Clapton is God” graffiti could be found on industrial ruins and railroad overpasses everywhere. And “The 1960s Review” explains, in great detail, how Clapton became divine. Long-winded and lacking any real excitement, with the exception of some rare and classic live performance footage, although much of it isn’t exactly fresh or new –that familiar clip of Cream playing “Strange Brew” that everyone has seen a thousand times is rolled out once again – “The 1960s Review” does just what the title indicates. It traces Clapton’s activities throughout the decade, following his work with bands like The Yardbirds, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Cream and Blind Faith and detailing how and why Clapton joined and then left each of them.

Deeply analytical and following a linear timeline, “The 1960s Review” looks at the ‘60s British blues boom and explains Clapton’s role in igniting it. It’s an impressive historical accounting of Clapton’s most creative era, with plenty of discussion of his growth as a player and how his deep understanding of the blues carried over into his own work. A good deal of attention is paid to how Clapton embraced psychedelia and his time with Cream, while probing interviews with people like Mayall, the Yardbirds’ Chris Dreja and Top Topham, Cream producer Bill Halvorson, Neil Innes and other British ‘60s rock luminaries paint a complex picture of an artist grappling with his duty to blues and his desire for innovation.

Dry and academic, what “The 1960s Review” lacks in cinematic ingenuity and thrilling new footage, it more than makes up for it by telling the Clapton story with vintage interview material from the man himself and newer talks with those who either played with him or closely watched his ascent. There’s a lot to digest in the more than two hours it takes to tell this tale, but to those wanting to drink in everything they can about Clapton and his messianic drive to stay true to his belief in the blues and become the kind of guitarist Robert Johnson would admire, this film is treasure trove of information and insight.

- Peter Lindblad

Eric Clapton Fan Club Magazine: Click Here (great site)

Search the Backstage Auctions Store for Eric Clapton memorabilia.

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