Eric Clapton Rarities

The final album in the collection, Rarities (1983-1922) brings together 16 recordings from this era, including rare recordings, live and unreleased tracks.

Rarities (2001-2010), the collection’s final LP, brings together eight hard-to-find recordings from this prolific era in Clapton’s recording career. Highlights include the B-side “Johnny Guitar” and the Japanese-only bonus track, “Losing Hand.” “Midnight Hour Blues,” another rarity, was released in 2010 as a bonus track for Clapton.

Delta's 1998 release Rarities contains nine tracks that are the product of a 1965 jam session with Jimmy Page, Mick Jagger, Bill Wyman, Chris Winters, and Ian Stewart.

The History of Eric Clapton is a compilation double LP, released in 1972 by Polydor Records in the United Kingdom, and Atco Records in the United States. It features Eric Clapton performing in various bands between 1964 and 1970, including The Yardbirds, Cream, Blind Faith and Derek and the Dominos. The compilation is notable for helping Clapton's career when he was battling heroin addiction and making the song "Layla" famous. It is also notable for being perhaps the first compilation in rock music to collect music of a single rock musician that spans time, bands, music styles and record labels. The album cover picture was taken at George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh while Clapton was playing "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" on a Gibson Byrdland hollow-body guitar.

Clapton Chronicles ignores Eric Clapton's 1983 Reprise debut, Money and Cigarettes (which sounded more like an RSO album, anyway), starting with the pair of Phil Collins-produced mid-'80s albums, Behind the Sun and August. Though these had a pop sheen, they were album rock holdovers. Clapton didn't get the balance between hard rock and commercial gloss right until 1989's Journeyman, whose featured songs – "Before You Accuse Me," "Bad Love," and "Pretending" – form the heart of this compilation. Journeyman was overshadowed by the phenomenal success of "Tears in Heaven" and 1992's Unplugged. Not only did Unplugged go platinum ten times, it established a new public image – classy, stylish, and substantial. That's the image that prevails on Clapton Chronicles. His triple-platinum blues album From the Cradle is written out of the picture, with songs from movie soundtracks taking its place.