(Author’s Note: This will probably be the longest piece I’ll
ever post on Eat Our Brains. If you aren’t a true believer in
the Blues, you may find it an ordeal. Fair warning.)

The rest of the band was already onstage, in the light.

The two keyboard players, Chris Stainton and Tim Carmon,
were on opposite sides of the stage. They both sat still, their
hands in their laps.

At center left, Doyle Bramhall II stood with his right hand on
the neck of a lefty Fender Strat. Beside him, Derek Trucks had a
glass slide on the ring finger of his left hand. The slide
hovered over the fretboard of a Gibson SG, but it didn’t dare
touch down.

At the rear of the stage, on their own riser, Michelle John and
Sharon White stood stock-still before their microphones. They
wouldn’t even breathe on them. Not yet.

In the center, where the light was brightest, two of the greatest
rhythm players in modern music were settling in. Steve Jordan
sat down at the drum kit as if he were sitting down in the most
comfortable chair in his living room. Willie Weeks, facing Mr.
Jordan, shrugged his shoulders until his Precision bass was hanging
just where he liked it. They were both ready. But Mr. Jordan
didn’t pick up his sticks, and Mr. Weeks didn’t test-thump a
single note.

The audience had applauded when the band had come out to their
stations, and the band had smiled and nodded. But now, in this
one eerie moment, the thousands of us who had gathered in the
Nippon Budokan — audience and band alike — were silent.

All of us were waiting. Listening. Waiting.

The martial arts arena had seen a lot of action and heard a lot
of noise in its forty-two years. But I’m not sure it had ever
been home to quite this much . . . anticipation. The air
itself was tense. I saw the haze quiver.

I looked at Mr. Jordan and Mr. Weeks and thought they must be the
two Coolest Dudes on earth. They were so much more relaxed than
the rest of us. But then, they’d both been doing this for a long
time, and they’d done it with Everybody. Also, unlike Mr.
Bramhall and Mr. Trucks, they weren’t waiting to share the stage
with the standard against which their skills would be measured.

When the first clear, piercing notes rang out, I didn’t know where
they were coming from. So as the notes began swirling around
each other, I looked at everyone onstage — and I still couldn’t
find the source of the sound. None of the musicians I could see
had made a move yet.

Then, just as I was about to look the other way, I caught a
glimpse of a silhouette in the shadows at the far right, walking
slowly toward the glow at the center.

There was no spotlight. No fireworks. No posing, no strutting,
no leaping about. Just a man with a Stratocaster, walking in
from the dark while his fingertips danced over the strings.

He stepped into the light with his back to the audience . . . not
because he was ignoring us, but because he had work to do. He
stood with Mr. Weeks looking up at Mr. Jordan, who picked up his
sticks. Then the swirling notes became an insistent riff, and
the sticks came down WHAM. The riff answered back, and again
the sticks came down WHAM. Then one more time, and –

Eric Clapton turned to face us as his entire band shouted with
one voice — the grinding, reverberant voice of the Blues,
demanding that we “Tell the Truth”:

Tell the truth — Tell me who’s been fooling you?
Tell the truth — Who’s been fooling who?

There you sit, looking so cool
While the whole show is passing you by
Better come to terms with your fellow man soon, ’cause —

The whole world is shaking now — Can’t you feel it?
A new dawn is breaking now — Can’t you see it?

Yeah, I think I saw it. And you bet I felt it. So did everyone
else inside Budokan on December 5th.

It was the 76th show on Mr. Clapton’s current tour, and I had
refrained from looking up the set lists of any of the previous
shows. I wanted to be surprised, and I was. “Tell the Truth” is
an album track from 1970′s LAYLA AND OTHER ASSORTED LOVE
SONGS, recorded during the painful and brilliant period when
Mr. Clapton was fronting a band called “Derek and the Dominos.”
I would never have expected that song to be the first one of the
concert . . . and yet it was the perfect opening paragraph to a
story that would be sung all night.

It was a story about walking in out of the darkness, confessing
your sins in the light, and stepping back to give your mates
their due. It was a story about falling down, picking yourself
up, and triumphing . . . while admitting that you might fall down
again at any moment. In other words, it was a story about
telling the truth. It was a story about the Blues.

The entire concert, in fact, was a lesson in how good
musicianship is like good fiction writing.

The beginning of the story had been a surprise, but it turned out
to be the only beginning that would work for the tale being told.

The middle of the story was both brave and scary, as precarious
as a blindfolded stroll along a cliff, and had us all wide-eyed,
wondering what would happen next.

As for the ending –

Ah, you’ll just have to wait. Like I did.

Best of all, to my sensibilities, was the concurrent lesson in
how a story (or a song, or painting, or film) should always be
about the needs of the STORY, and not about the needs of the
author (or the singer, or artist, or actor). Mr. Clapton’s name
had drawn us to Budokan, but the story was told by his entire
band. Because the story was what mattered.

Mr. Bramhall took several guitar breaks and sang parts of many
songs — and as he did, it was obvious that those songs, on that
night, wouldn’t have worked any other way.

Both Mr. Stainton and Mr. Carmon played commanding solos that
alternately slashed and soothed. Because at those moments,
that was what the story needed.

Ms. John and Ms. White belted soul-soaked harmonies that were
only “backing vocals” in the sense that the ladies were standing
behind the others — and as they sang, you knew that this was the
part of the story where the protagonist’s courage flares up like
a Roman candle. (Two of them.)

Mr. Weeks put the lie to all our jokes about bass solos by
playing the most funky, jaw-dropping, narratively perfect bass
solo I’ve ever heard or ever will hear.

Meanwhile, Mr. Trucks’s slide work was as fiendish and beautiful
as Satan on ice skates. (Because in the story being told that
night, Satan was a major character . . . even if he wasn’t named.)

And every time, when one of his bandmates took the lead, Mr.
Clapton literally stepped back into the shadows again. And
played rhythm.

Then, as each musician finished a solo narrative strand, Mr.
Clapton returned to his microphone and shouted that storyteller’s
name with pride.

The only instrumentalist that night who didn’t take a solo was
Mr. Jordan. But I don’t think he needed or wanted one, because
the story didn’t call for it — and because Mr. Clapton deferred
to him on starting and stopping every chapter. Slowhand was the
leader of the band, but the drummer was running the gig.

Except for shouting out his bandmates’ names and the occasional
“Domo” (“Thanks”), Mr. Clapton did not address the audience
except through song. Even during the only number that featured
him onstage alone, sitting in a chair with nothing to help him
but a microphone and a Martin acoustic, it wasn’t about him. It
was about the “Drifting Blues” . . . sung by a 61-year-old voice
of experience. And when he didn’t have to sing a verse into the
microphone, he put his head down and let his fingers speak
through the strings.

That was the brave and scary middle of the story. The part where
the protagonist is alone and at the mercy of the world. But
still doing what he has to do.

Every part of the story was wonderful. But I think the brave and
scary middle may have been my favorite.

One by one, song by song, his bandmates returned. And then they
were all standing again, holding each other up, roaring about
what they were gonna do to the world “After Midnight.”

Again, the whole night was both a story and a lesson about
storytelling.

And like the beginning, the ending was a surprise. In fact, it
was two surprises.

The ending began like this:

They played “Layla,” perhaps the most searing expression of
unrequited love ever recorded — and they played it the way Mr.
Clapton first cut it. Like they meant it. I mean, like they
really, really meant it. Like they were both begging and cursing
in agony.

Goddamn, that part of the story hurt. That part of the story
could give you an aneurysm. Layla had them on their knees. I’m
not kidding. On their KNEES, do you hear?

And when “Layla” wound down from its aching scream to its
gorgeous, diminishing, soothing piano coda . . .

They hit us with the first of the final surprises. They hit us
with a roundhouse to the jaw.

The whole band struck the final chord of the “Layla” coda, and
they struck it LOUD. Seriously LOUD.

Because it turned out that wasn’t just the final chord of
“Layla.”

It was also the first chord of “Cocaine.”

My immediate reaction was shock. This wasn’t right, I thought.
“Layla” is a love song. “Cocaine” is a drug song. They don’t
belong together. They just don’t.

But then, as Mr. Clapton sang the first verse of “Cocaine” with
the same bone-crunching grief as he had sung “Layla” . . .

Then I got it.

“Layla” may be a love song, and “Cocaine” may be a drug song.
But both are about obsession and addiction. Both are
about the thing you wish you could shake, but you know you can’t.

At least, not without a way to tell the tale. And the mates
who’ll help you tell it.

So, like the first chapter, the final chapter turned out to be
both a surprise . . . and precisely what the story required.

Then, as the band left the stage and the lights went out, I knew
that only one more thing was needed.

An Epilogue. And I knew what it had to be.

I leaned over to Barb, and through the roaring and stomping and
clapping of the crowd, I told her, “The encore will be
‘Crossroads.’”

I was sure of it. Mr. Clapton first recorded “Crossroads” back
in the Sixties, during his days with Cream. It was his version
of his primary musical hero’s classic “Cross Road Blues.” It was
a song not only of addiction or obsession, but of standing
between Heaven and Hell, God and the Devil, life and death –
and knowing that you had to make a choice.

The brilliance of “Crossroads” is that it doesn’t tell you what
choice to make. No, it just tells you that you must make it, and
that you don’t have a choice about THAT. It tells you that the
world won’t help you. It tells you that you gotta do it
yourself.

It puts you between a rock and that hard, hard place called the
Blues.

We clapped and shouted until our hands and throats burned, until
we thought that maybe there wasn’t going to be an encore at all –
and then, at last, the lights came up a little, and the band
walked out smiling and nodding again, just as they had at the
beginning. They all took their places . . . and then remained still
again, just as they had at the beginning.

And again, just as we had at the beginning, we all waited. And
listened. And waited.

Then the clear notes keened in from the darkness once more, and I
knew where to look to see the man walk in with his Stratocaster.
But this time, he didn’t walk all the way into the light. He
paused before reaching the glow at center stage. And he stood
there and played.

He wasn’t noodling. He wasn’t riffing. He was playing a high,
pure, lyrical song with the melody ringing out between delicate
notes and trills. It sounded like a song I ought to know, but I
couldn’t place it. It was an amazing tune, though, and an
amazing performance.

It was also ironic, because Mr. Clapton was playing the lightest
music he had played all night . . . while standing in darkness.

I didn’t know the song, but I knew that whatever it was, it would
be right. Tonight’s story hadn’t let me down yet.

But it sure wasn’t “Crossroads.” I had been wrong about the
Epilogue. My own sense of storytelling hadn’t kept up with
Slowhand.

As I had that thought, Mr. Clapton emerged into the light
beside Mr. Weeks, and they both looked up at Mr. Jordan just as
they had in the story’s very first paragraph.

And in that instant, the high, hopeful notes from the Stratocaster
began tumbling down, down, down . . . twisting around each other
like barbed wire as their clear tones cracked and snarled into a pit
of rage and despair with a sound like a pack of wild dogs.

The drums went WHAM. The stage lights blazed. The entire band
roared with one voice.

Mr. Clapton turned to face us as he played the darkest music he
had played all night. While standing in the brightest light.

It was a thundering pulse in every bone. It was quaking walls
and a trembling roof. It was air that smoked and sizzled. It
was ten thousand sets of scorched lungs shouting together. It
was trying to flag a ride that would never come. It was the
tortured, dying soul of Robert Johnson in 1938 Mississippi,
electrified and given new life in 2006 Tokyo.

It was the promise of the story’s beginning, fulfilled at the
end. It was the final surprise of the night.

It was the truth. It was the Blues.

It was Eric Clapton and his band playing “Crossroads.”

Thus ended the lesson.