I honestly didn’t have any idea that Eric Clapton had stopped playing his, arguably, most famous song…..
Eric Clapton is playing “Cocaine” in concert again. The recovering drug addict and alcoholic, who founded the Crossroads Centre addiction recovery center on the Caribbean island of Antigua, stopped performing the song written by J.J. Cale when he first got sober. “I thought that it might be giving the wrong message to people who were in the same boat as me,” Clapton recently told The Associated Press.
I have to admit I’m of two minds on the subject. On one hand, the time to think about whether or not to do a song is before it becomes world famous, not after. On the other hand, at least he’s trying to help out folks who might have misunderstood his playing of it. I just wish thought of this twenty years ago.
I would also be more persuaded if he took some of the money he made from the song and donated it to the Betty Ford Clinic or some other substance abuse agency. Maybe he does, but I haven’t heard about it.
It seems to me that would be a better way to fight cocaine addiction, rather than not playing a song that’s heard everyday on the radio anyway.
Darren Copeland 