It's only recently that I've come to appreciate Eric Clapton - in particular, his albums Slowhand and 461 Ocean Boulevard are hugely enjoyable and full of class. This song is not his usual milieu but is worthy of any list.
The background to the song is well-known (the death of his young son in an accident) and it may well be that such a harrowing genesis puts the listener in a difficult position: to dismiss the song could be thought heartless, and to enjoy it, macabre. In that way it bears some resemblance to Yoko Ono's work Season Of Glass.
Well, it isn't enjoyable and it ought not to be dismissed. It is harrowing and painful. It asks profoundly difficult questions. Isn't that what music ought to do, if it is being honest? This is not art as artifice; it is the expression of life on fetid ground, within a stained cosmos and in search of genuine hope.
The question, 'Would you know my name if I saw you in heaven?' is heavy with pathos; how could a parent bear an answer that was negative? And his observation, 'I know I don't belong here in heaven', is searing. Why not? Because your life is not yet ended? Or because it is a place of innocence and innocents and you know you're neither? It is a comment that ought to compell all gospel servants to stand alongside the broken and lost.
Too profound for a list like this.
Too important not to be on it.
