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Released: February 1983


Rating: 3.271 (average of 12 ratings)


Genre: classic British blues rock


Quotable: --


Album Tracks:

  1. Everybody Ought to Make a Change (Estes) [3:16]
  2. The Shape You’re In [4:08]
  3. Ain’t Going Down [4:01]
  4. I’ve Got a Rock and Roll Heart (Diamond/ Seals/ Seals/ Setser) [3:13]
  5. Man Overboard [3:45]
  6. Pretty Girl [5:29]
  7. Man in Love [2:46]
  8. Crosscut Saw (Ford) [3:30]
  9. Slow Down Linda [4:14]
  10. Crazy Country Hop (Otis) [2:46]

Songs written by Eric Clapton unless noted otherwise.


Sales:

sales in U.S. only --
sales in U.K. only - estimated --
sales in all of Europe as determined by IFPI – click here to go to their site. --
sales worldwide - estimated 2 million


Peak:

peak on U.S. Billboard album chart 16
peak on U.K. album chart 13


Singles:

  • I Can’t Stand It (2/28/81) #10 US, #1 AR
  • I’ve Got a Rock and Roll Heart (1/29/83) #18 US, #24 AR, #6 AC
  • Ain’t Going Down (3/12/83) #32 AR
  • The Shape You’re In (4/23/83) #75 UK


Money and Cigarettes
Eric Clapton
Review:
Money and Cigarettes marked several important turning points in Eric Clapton's recording career. It was his debut release on his own Duck imprint within Warner Bros.' Reprise Records subsidiary. It was also the first album he made after coming to terms with his drinking problem by giving up alcohol. Newly focused and having written a batch of new songs, he became dissatisfied with his longtime band and fired them, with the exception of second guitarist Albert Lee. In their place, he hired session pros like Stax Records veteran bassist Donald "Duck" Dunn and Muscle Shoals drummer Roger Hawkins, also bringing in guest guitarist Ry Cooder. His new songs reflected on his changed condition, with Ain't Going Down, a thinly veiled musical rewrite of the Jimi Hendrix arrangement of ‘All Along the Watchtower,’ serving as a statement of purpose that declared, ‘I've still got something left to say.’ The Shape You're In was a criticism of his wife for her alcoholism that concluded, ‘I'm just telling you baby 'cause I've been there myself,’ while the lengthy acoustic ballad Pretty Girl and Man in Love reaffirmed his feelings for her. The album's single was the relatively slight pop tune I've Got a Rock n' Roll Heart, but Clapton's many blues fans must have been most pleased with the covers of Sleepy John Estes' Everybody Oughta Make a Change (significantly placed as the album's leadoff track), Albert King's Crosscut Saw, and Johnny Otis' Crazy Country Hop. For all the changes and the high-powered sidemen, though, Money and Cigarettes ended up being just an average effort from Clapton, which his audience seems to have sensed since, despite the Top 20 placement for the single, it became his first album in more than six years to miss the Top Ten and fail to go gold” (Ruhlmann).


Review Source(s):


Related DMDB Links:

Previous Album: Backless (1978) Eric Clapton’s DMDB page Next Album: Behind the Sun (1985)


Last updated March 31, 2008.