“I’ve never been a great lover of making records,” Eric Clapton told the LA Times in the middle of his 2001 world tour. “It’s quite a journey for me to go in each time, and I find it harder and harder to just do it because it’s required of me, because I’m still under contract”.
To his credit, Clapton wasn’t completely phoning in his records in the late 1990s and early 2000s, even though he certainly could have. On the 1998 album Pilgrim and its 2001 follow-up Reptile, Slowhand tried to challenge himself to explore more personal, biographical subject matter in songwriting, returning to a vulnerability that had resonated with so many listeners in the early ‘90s on the mournful single ‘Tears in Heaven.’ In the year 2000, Clapton also recorded a hit record with one of his idols, BB King, called Riding with the King, which further re-energised his battery.
“Going back to the organic process with BB was so comfortable,” he said, “it was like getting into a warm bath. I had no idea how much I’d missed the atmosphere of having 10 or 12 musicians on the floor, all creating at the same time, moving toward the same point.”
Clapton carried that energy into the recording of Reptile, which he decided to support with a massive world tour; one the 56-year-old claimed would be the last of his career. As it turned out, there would be another globe-trotting journey ten years later, but the 2001 tour was still unique and memorable, particularly as it marked Clapton’s first-ever performances across the old Iron Curtain into Russia, with one show in St Petersburg and two in Moscow at the State Kremlin Palace.
This was a decade out from the supposed end of the Cold War, so while the event was a big deal to Clapton and his fans in Russia, it didn’t necessarily make a lot of waves back in the UK the way it might have years earlier, or today, for that matter. Instead, attendees were treated to the once-unthinkable sight of a British guitar god standing on stage in a room that was formerly the seat of power for the Communist Party inside the Soviet Union.
That juxtaposition, combined with some different cultural norms and some very tight security protocols, created a bit of an unusual vibe during the Kremlin gigs. As described shortly thereafter by three British fans who attended one of the shows and reviewed it for the Clapton fan blog Where’s Eric, the main dance floor area in front of the stage was sparsely populated by about 100 younger fans, while the majority of the roughly 6,000-person crowd sat in seating that began about 20 feet back.
“As the music continued,” one blogger wrote, “No one moved other than the people on the dance floor. Not a head nodded to the beat. It was as if cardboard cutouts of people had been propped up in the seats. . . . Even electric ‘Layla’ failed to rouse them. Only during ‘Sunshine Of Your Love’ did a handful of people stand up and dance. Even though the band had given their all and performed a monster show, it ended without the loud cheering and stomping that occurs in the rest of the world.”
There was a telling moment during the show when a girl raised a cigarette lighter, as per rock concert tradition, but swiftly had it confiscated by security. Moscow was in a new democratic age, but it was still a distinctly different place from anywhere else Clapton played on that tour.
If the enthusiasm was a bit muted, though, it didn’t seem to bother Clapton that much. More than 20 years later, he has remained a vocal fan of Russia and its culture, saying in a 2024 video interview with The Real Music Observer that, “I love Russia. I went to Russia and fell in love. I mean, I’ve loved Russian music all my life.” In that same chat, it should be noted, Clapton also expressed subtle admiration for Vladimir Putin at several points, but it’s not like this is Eric’s first rodeo when it comes to severely misguided or controversial statements.
“The thing to do is go there,” Clapton said. “If you hate Russia or China, go there. Experience it firsthand. Don’t believe the fucking propaganda.”
