'Journeyman' was Eric Clapton's eleventh solo studio album, and when it was released in 1989 it was heralded as a return to form, following his struggles with alcohol addiction. The album has a 1980's electronic sound, but it also includes blues songs like 'Running On Faith', and covers of Bo Diddley's 'Before You Accuse Me' and Ray Charles' 'Hard Times'. 'Bad Love' was released as a single, reaching the No. 1 position on the Album Rock Chart in the United States, and being awarded a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance in 1990. 'Pretending' had also reached the No. 1 position on the Album Rock Chart the previous year, remaining at the top for five weeks. Although 'Journeyman' suffers from an overly slick production, Clapton sounds more convincing than he has since the early '70s, and not only is his guitar playing muscular and forceful, but his singing is soulful and gritty. Furthermore, the song-writing is consistently strong, alternating between fine mainstream rock originals like 'Pretending' and covers such as 'Hound Dog'. The album was re-issued in a deluxe format in 2025 with bonus tracks, but that still left a number of outtakes stuck in the vaults, and so this post gathers together all the previously unreleased songs to make up a companion album to 'Journeyman', which includes an alternate take of 'Hard Times', which many fans prefer to the one that made it to the record. In 1990 Clapton filmed an advertisement for Honda cars in Japan, where he is seen overdubbing extra guitar onto the song 'Bad Love', and so that alternate version is also featured, along with an instrumental which could have been intended for one of his soundtrack outings of the period.
Track listing
01 Forever
02 Don't Turn Your Back
03 Breaking Point (Instrumental)
04 Hard Times
05 Something About You
06 Border Song
07 Bad Love
08 Higher Power
09 Murdoch's Men (Instrumental)
10 That Kind Of Woman
ery nice! Thanks!
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