Eric Clapton – Cocaine

Eric Clapton, playing live at the Hartford CT Civic Center, on May 1st, 1985. It’s from Behind The Sun tour.

Lineup:
“Duck” Dunn – bass
Jamie Oldaker – drums
Tim Renwick – guitar
Eric Clapton – guitar
Chris Stainton – keyboards
Marcy Levy & Shaun Murphy – backing vocals

“Cocaine” – Single (B-side) by Eric Clapton from the album Slowhand
A-side: “Lay Down Sally”
Released: November 1977
Label: Polydor
Songwriter: J. J. Cale
Producer: Glyn Johns
Charted No.30 in US

This was written and originally recorded by the Oklahoma blues guitarist J.J. Cale. Clapton gave Cale a huge boost he recorded Cale’s song “After Midnight” in 1970 and released it as his first solo single. This helped earn Cale a record deal and enough money to make music on his terms, which he did.

Cale recorded “Cocaine” on his fourth album, Troubadour, released in 1976, and issued the song as the B-side of his single “Hey Baby,” which was his last charting song as an artist, making #96 in the US.

When Clapton was looking for songs for his Slowhand album, he once again looked to Cale, and chose “Cocaine,” which became the first song on the set.

At one point, Clapton removed this song from his set list because he thought it gave the wrong message about cocaine use. He started playing it again after he rearranged the song to include the line, “That dirty cocaine” into the choruses.

Clapton described the song as an anti-drug song intended to warn listeners about cocaine’s addictiveness and deadliness. He called the song “quite cleverly anti-cocaine”

Because of its ambiguous message, Clapton did not perform the song in many of his concerts; over the years, he has added the lyrics ‘that dirty cocaine’ in live shows to underline the anti-drug message of the song.

Lyrics:
If you wanna hang out you’ve got to take her out.
Cocaine.
If you wanna get down, down on the ground.
Cocaine.

[Chorus:]
She don’t lie, she don’t lie, she don’t lie;
Cocaine.

If you got bad news, you wanna kick them blues.
Cocaine.
When your day is done and you wanna run.
Cocaine.

[Chorus]

If your thing is gone and you wanna ride on.
Cocaine.
Don’t forget this fact, you can’t get it back.
Cocaine.