Good material, bad production

I have given this album three stars, partly because of the slick, glossy 80s production by Russ Titelman which has completely removed any hint of real grit from these songs. They might as well have been played using synthesizers (actually most of the drums aren't drums at all but a digital drum machine).



The songs themselves are generally pretty good, though. They are not as lean, nor as muscular, as they could have been, but "Pretending" is a fine, mid-tempo rocker with some really great vocals by Eric Clapton. "Bad Love" suffers from terrible, overblown production and weird synthesizers, but it's not a bad song in itself, and "Running On Faith" is a slow, bluesy ballad with relative lean instrumentation and some nice slide dobro playing.

"Hard Times" is another slow blues, augumented by a horn ensemble, and Clapton actually does a pretty good, funky rendition of "Hound Dog".

"Run So Far" is a little masterpiece, written by George Harrison, who lends a hand playing guitar and singing harmony vocals. Nice, sparse arrangement there.



Clapton wrote "Old Love" with Robert Cray, and it works pretty well, too, without too much of the wall-of-sound treatment which has partly ruined "No Alibis", "Breaking Point" and "Anything For Your Love". And the album ends on a high note with some real, three-dimentional drumming from Steve Ferrone and Jim Keltner on the fine ballad "Lead Me On" and Bo Diddley's fiery blues classic "Before You Accuse Me" (albeit in a slick, less fiery version).



All in all, "Journeyman" is a good album. It could've been great, if a few more songs had been good instead of merely adequate, and if the production had been less 80s-like, but it is not one to be avoided by any means.

Great album -- as background

I am a huge Clapton fan, so there is nothing by him that I really dislike... however, I find that this album works best as "background music" -- great if you're running, at work, etc. since it is a little bit more in the "popular music" realm than his typical stuff.

One of his best

Reviewers can spend a great deal of time talking about what is right or wrong with a CD. I just know that when I look at my Clapton collection and pick out a CD to play, more often than not this is the one. It has his blues roots, it rocks, and it is pleasing to the ear. After all why do we listen to music? Forget all the analyses in the other reviews. Listen to this CD. I think when all is said and done it is one of his best.

Some of Clapton's Best Work

"Journeyman" may be the best latter-day Clapton album. Ol' Slowhand incorporates the '80s energy and solid production values to craft one of his strongest recordings since "461 Ocean Boulevard." "Pretending" is one of the best rock songs of the era, the acoustic break in "Bad Love" is genius, and "No Alibis" is just good clean classic rock fun. One of the best albums of the decade.