The end may be nigh: Eric Clapton is releasing a Christmas album

It is exactly four months to Christmas Day. Sorry to lay that on your morning head, but if you head out early enough you should get the shopping done in time. Being the season when sentimentality hangs heavy, you might be drawn in your gift-giving to the novelty of celebrity Christmas records. You know, a Susan Boyle or, God help us, Bradley Walsh* annihilating the classics for a CD you might charitably buy Granny on the basis that hard-toffee bon-bons no longer agree with her dentures.
*See also, and in no particular order, David Hasselhoff, Anton de Beke, Roseanne Barr and Sir Christopher Lee

The last person I would expect to fall into this category of record making is, however, one of the greatest rock stars of his era, once the subject of graffiti declaring him “God”, who at 17 became the most feted blues guitarist in London, who played on The Beatles’ While My Guitar Gently Sleeps, who almost replaced Mick Taylor in the Rolling Stones, whose mesmerising guitar playing in Cream planted him permanently in the upper echelon of rock royalty, and so on and so on. Yes, Eric bloody Clapton is to release his “first full-length Christmas record”, Happy Xmas which, according to the official press release, will contain “holiday classics along with an original [i.e. new] holiday song, For Love On Christmas Day. Let me say again, this is Eric Clapton. Well at least God releasing an album themed for the Son of God’s arrival on this Earth is at least seasonally consistent.

Quite what the guitarist’s real motivation is to release such an album is not explained, beyond a statement in the press release about Clapton getting the idea that standards, such as White Christmas and Away In A Manger, “could be done with a slight blues tinge”. But still. This is one of the most exalted musicians of rock era, a point underscored by Lili Fini Zanuck’s brilliant documentary, Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars released back in February which charted the course of his complicated childhood in rural Surrey, his emergence as a teenage guitar virtuoso in my neck of the London woods, and his elevation to greatness via the Yardbirds, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Cream, Blind Faith and Derek & The Dominos in the space of a decade. What came through strongest in the film was that Clapton was a hard core blues obsessive, from his earliest trial-and-error attempts at Big Bill Broonzy numbers whilst sat on Ripley Green, to busking Robert Johnson songs in the riverside pubs of Kingston-upon-Thames. His amplified blues with Mayall set the tone - and the decibel level - that rivals could only aspire to. But now you’ll be able to hear his blues ‘tinged’ treatment of Jingle Bells, Silent Night and Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas.

I shouldn’t, of course, pre-judge the record before it comes out on 12 October, any more than one should pre-judge anything sight-unseen or sound-unheard. But, really. Does the world need a Christmas record from one of the greatest guitarists of all time (an accolade universally afforded from across the professional spectrum)? Even with all the packaging extras in the “deluxe box” (such as “Pop-up Art derived from EC's original sketches”, “One-of-a-kind metal alloy Christmas tree ornament from Eric's hand-drawn ‘Bushbranch’ horse” and - wait for it - a “custom rubbery USB drive designed from Eric's Santa sketch that doubles as an ornament”), I really do feel that this album from one of my absolute musical heroes, someone who sprinkled much-needed stardust over my part of suburban south-west London in the 1960s and blazed a global trail as one of the UK’s greatest musical exports, is somewhat letting the side down. As Smash Hits was fond of saying, “it’s like punk never happened”.