Song of the Day 5/12: Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton, “Dear Mr. Fantasy”

H/t to Nancy Willing, whose Traffic video posts got me listening to Blind Faith, Steve Winwood’s collaboration with Eric Clapton. The supergroup was formed after Clapton left Cream and Winwood left Traffic, but the high expectations of British music fans quickly soured Clapton on the experience. They only had one album’s worth of material, a batch of tunes unfamiliar to fans, but Clapton didn’t want to do extended solos to pad out the length of their concerts — he had had enough of that with Cream. So they instead played old Cream and Traffic tunes, which fans loved but Winwood and Clapton hated. By the end of their American tour, Clapton was spending more time with their opening act, Delaney and Bonnie and friends, and he soon joined that band as a sideman.

But Clapton and Winwood remained friends through it all, and played together in concert sporadically over the years. This video, from their appearance together at Clapton’s 2010 Crossroads Guitar Festival, shows what music fans lost when Blind Faith broke up. It also shows off the fact that, while the organ is Winwood’s main instrument, he’s a good enough guitar player to trade solos with Clapton.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugTaPTv0eQY

Winwood also appeared with Clapton at the 2007 Crossroads Festival, at which they played the first side of the Blind Faith album, including “In the Presence of the Lord.”