Eric Clapton And Old Friend Make New Album

For four decades some of the most distinctive riffs in rock music have come straight from the guitar of the man known as "Slowhand," Eric Clapton. His many hits — both solo and with groups like the Yardbirds, Blind Faith and Cream — have earned Clapton 16 Grammy awards and an unprecedented three places in the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.

But his long experience with fame hasn't always been happy.

"It's dust to me," Clapton said. "I don't think fame has any substance. So it doesn't have any interest to me. In fact, I think it's quite a dangerous commodity and very destructive."

That may help explain why on his new CD, "The Road to Escondido," which comes out this week, Clapton teamed up with a man who has spent 40 years trying not to be famous: songwriter and guitarist J.J. Cale.

"When they say, 'Well, you gotta do some interviews on TV,' I went, 'Oh, I like to watch TV, but I don't wanna be on it,'" Cale told Sunday Morning correspondent John Blackstone. "I guess I'm gonna be on it."

By his own choice, Cale has avoided the spotlight. Clapton had to push him into it.

"He was great initially, but then ... you could feel him kind of shuffling backwards out of the room all the time," Clapton said.

Cale was just a struggling songwriter out of Tulsa, Ok., and Clapton was already a superstar when he recorded one of Cale's songs, "After Midnight." It became one of Clapton's biggest hits.

"A buddy of mine called up and says, 'Well ... Eric Clapton's cut your tune,' You got a hit on your hands. Come down to Nashville and make an album,'" Cale said. "And I said, 'An album. What is that?' I come from the old, you know, you make one song. Right? He said, 'Oh, no. You gotta put 10 or 12.' I said, 'I ain't got 10 or 12 songs. That was it.' You know?"

Clapton didn't know Cale was offered a record deal after "After Midnight" came out, and said: "Isn't that funny."

Cale was just being modest. He did have more songs and in 1977 Clapton recorded another one: "Cocaine."

"I didn't really wanna know what he meant, except that at the time I was very pro-cocaine," Clapton said. "When I listened to it a little more, when I got into recovery and stopped doing all this stuff, I chose to believe it was anti-cocaine. Maybe it's ambivalent."

After that hit, Cale's life changed a bit.

"They sent money to me," he said.

Though most of Clapton's millions of fans didn't have a clue, throughout his career Cale was a constant muse, inspiring songs like "Lay Down Sally."

"It's a very difficult thing to describe," Clapton said. "It's an R&B thing. What it is I think is, he's taken elements of R&B and blues and mixed 'em up with country."

Cale's unique blend of blues, jazz and country is a product of his Oklahoma roots, and for Clapton roots are what really matter.

"I'm not really influenced by fashion and trend and popularity," Clapton said. "You know, those things have no meaning for me. I still prefer to listen to music from the past, and J.J. somehow is very connected to that."

So there is a distinct element of nostalgia in the songs on "The Road to Escondido" — a nostalgia reflected in the location chosen for the album cover photo shoot: The Paramount Ranch, an Old West movie set, now a National Park, near Los Angeles.

"We're old guys. I mean J.J.'s ... just a little bit older than me," Clapton said. "So these are very ... you know, accurate songs about where we are at in our own lives."

Most of the songs on the new CD are written by Cale but there's one blues standard, "Sporting Life," about getting older and wiser.

"I mean, I still pretend that I can go around the world, you know, doing what I did 40 years ago, but it's gettin' hard," Clapton said.

In fact, at age 61, old Slowhand admits he's slowing down. He says he doesn't play as well as he used to.

"I got a piece of footage from the mid-'90s of me when I was just playing blues and I thought there were some things that I was doing then I've sort of unconsciously let go of," Clapton said. "I don't do 'em anymore. Probably because they're too hard to do. [But] I believe I can still play with the same amount of emotion and feeling and expression that I've always set out to do."

Clapton's songs have always carried emotional weight, but perhaps none moreso than "Tears in Heaven". Voted "Song of the Year" in 1993, it was written in memory of Clapton's son Connor who died tragically at the age of 4.

Clapton soldiered on and in 2002 he married an American named Melia McEnery. Together they have three little girls, which is the title of a song he wrote for the new album. Clapton said he is lucky to be able to write "3 Little Girls" after his son's death.

"I'm a very fortunate man, very fortunate man," he said. "I've had a kind of second chance. I had to wait quite a long time, but that's all right, you know? It's proof that it can happen any time really."

For Clapton, after 40 years in a notoriously risky business, time, it seems, is on his side

"My life has been a roller coaster," he said. "You know it's been up-and-down. And I think what I've enjoyed over the last five years at least is a certain amount of continuity and a tranquil kind of life where I kind of know where I am. I wake up and I know where I am. I know who I'm with. I know where I'm going. And I like the pace of it all. It's very comfortable and it feels right. You know?"