By the time Eric Clapton launched his solo career with the release of his self-titled debut album in mid-1970, he was long established as one of the world's major rock stars due to his group affiliations -- the Yardbirds, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Cream, and Blind Faith -- affiliations that had demonstrated his claim to being the best rock guitarist of his generation. That it took Clapton so long to go out on his own, however, was evidence of a degree of reticence unusual for one of his stature. And his debut album, though it spawned the Top 40 hit "After Midnight," was typical of his self-effacing approach: it was, in effect, an album by the group he had lately been featured in, Delaney & Bonnie & Friends.

Not surprisingly, before his solo debut had even been released, Clapton had retreated from his solo stance, assembling from the D&B&F ranks the personnel for a group, Derek and the Dominos, with which he played for most of 1970. Clapton was largely inactive in 1971 and 1972, due to heroin addiction, but he performed a comeback concert at the Rainbow Theatre in London on January 13, 1973, resulting in the album Eric Clapton's Rainbow Concert (September 1973).

But Clapton did not launch a sustained solo career until July 1974, when he released 461 Ocean Boulevard, which topped the charts and spawned the number one single "I Shot the Sheriff."

The persona Clapton established over the next decade was less that of guitar hero than arena rock star with a weakness for ballads. The follow-ups to 461 Ocean Boulevard, There's One in Every Crowd (March 1975), the live E.C. Was Here (August 1975), and No Reason to Cry (August 1976), were less successful. But Slowhand (November 1977), which featured both the powerful "Cocaine" (written by JJ Cale, who had also written "After Midnight") and the hit singles "Lay Down Sally" and "Wonderful Tonight," was a million-seller. Its follow-ups, Backless (November 1978), featuring the Top Ten hit "Promises," the live Just One Night (April 1980), and Another Ticket (February 1981), featuring the Top Ten hit "I Can't Stand It," were all big sellers.

Clapton's popularity waned somewhat in the first half of the '80s, as the albums Money and Cigarettes (February 1983), Behind the Sun (March 1985), and August (November 1986) indicated a certain career stasis. But he was buoyed up by the release of the box set retrospective Crossroads (April 1988), which seemed to remind his fans of how great he was. Journeyman (November 1989) was a return to form.

It would be his last new studio album for nearly five years, though in the interim he would suffer greatly and enjoy surprising triumph. On March 20, 1991, Clapton's four-year-old son was killed in a fall. While he mourned, he released a live album, 24 Nights (October 1991), culled from his annual concert series at the Royal Albert Hall in London, and prepared a movie soundtrack, Rush (January 1992). The soundtrack featured a song written for his son, "Tears in Heaven," that became a massive hit single.

In March 1992, Clapton recorded a concert for MTV Unplugged that, when released on an album in August, became his biggest-selling record ever. Two years later, Clapton returned with a blues album, From the Cradle, which became one of his most successful albums, both commercially and critically. Crossroads 2: Live in the '70s, a box set chronicling his live work from the '70s, was released to mixed reviews. In early 1997, Clapton, billing himself by the pseudonym "x-sample," collaborated with keyboardist/producer Simon Climie as the ambient new age and trip-hop duo T.D.F. The duo released Retail Therapy to mixed reviews in early 1997.

Clapton retained Climie as his collaborator for Pilgrim, his first album of new material since 1989's Journeyman. Pilgrim was greeted with decidedly mixed reviews upon its spring 1998 release, but the album debuted at number four and stayed in the Top 10 for several weeks on the success of the single "My Father's Eyes." In 2000, Clapton teamed up with old friend BB King on Riding With the King, a set of blues standards and material from contemporary singer/songwriters. Another solo outing entitled Reptile followed in early 2001. Three years later, Clapton issued Me and Mr. Johnson, a collection of tunes honoring the Mississippi-born bluesman Robert Johnson. 2005's Back Home, Clapton's 14th album of original material, reflected his ease with fatherhood.

Soft Cell have absorbed their lessons well. ‘Tainted Love’ – once a Northern disco hit for Marc Bolan’s wife Gloria Jones – is one of the most assured and stunning syn-ful dance singles released this year. In its combination of streamline software simplicity and sensual throb it reinforces NY heroes Suicide’s experiments in emotion-tugging electronics without repeating them directly,as they had done previously with the earlier ‘Memorabilia’.

They’ve taken the whole thing a step further on the 12-inch version, which effortlessly merges with the B-side version of The Supremes’ ‘Where Did Our Love Go’ via an extremely inventive,
melodic burn down. Little touches like that contribute to ‘Tainted Love’’s transcendence of genre prejudices. They elevate it, and by implication the whole electro-bop, above the fickle clutches of the fad fiends and place it in the public arena where it belongs.

Nobody should be surprised, hurt or disappointed that Soft Cell are sitting pretty at the top of the BBC charts.

A lone, Latin-tinged trumpet sounds through the corridors and seeps all off-key into Soft Cell’s dressing room. The duo makes an odd couple. “It wasn’t planned that way,” they assure me.
Singer Marc Almond, from Southport, is small, effervescent and giggly; musician David Ball, from Blackpool, is tall, laconic,almost morose and more conscientiously artisan than artist.
Unsurprisingly Marc dominates the conversation.

“There,” he sighs. “I’ve gone and hogged the interview again.”
Marc plays frontman with relish – all Liberace gestures and varying voice pitches while David is the natural straightman who is still wondering what all the fuss is about. What with the former’s
flutterings and the latter’s refusal to participate in the creation of the Soft Cell myth, the duo were at fi rst dismissed as flightly futurists prepared to ride whatever bandwagon was available.

The first one to happen along was the ‘Some Bizzare Album’ compilation put together by East End futurist DJ and lovable pest Stevo. When it came out, the Some Bizzare boys were seen
as poor relations to the more stylish publicists of the Spandau Ballet/Rusty Egan set. Stood up against Spandau svengali Steve Dagger, or even Blue Rondo’s Chris Sullivan, Stevo appeared as
little more than a court jester.

However, as Spandau and Blue Rondo’s attempts to stay ahead have resulted in increasingly absurd fads, the unforced emergence of one-time Bizzare groups Depeche Mode and Soft Cell sets the whole operation in a far better light. Compare, for instance,Spandau Ballet’ degeneration from kitschy visionaries into hack funk plagiarists with Soft Cell’s rise from trashy aesthetes to
dancehall favourites and decide for yourselves who’s created the New Soul Version. Suddenly it becomes apparent that Stevo was closer to the pulse than the rest.

“Stevo has been knocked an awful lot,” states Marc. “He’s been called all sorts of things. Paul Morley said, which was really untrue, that ‘Some Bizzare…’ was a nice sort of home for all these
little groups that nobody wanted. Well, I admire Stevo for going out to be untrendy, for turning down groups who were already well known and who were prepared to be on the album,accepting
the ‘futurist’ tag and all.”Read last page...