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Chase Center isn’t even a week old yet, but it’s already hosted two of the Bay Area’s biggest rock concerts of the year.
The first came on Sept. 6 when the building opened to the public with a performance by Metallica with the San Francisco Symphony.
And the second came on Wednesday (Sept. 11) when first-tier guitar hero Eric Clapton — the only three-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — made his long-awaited return to the Bay Area with a 14-song performance at the new home of the Golden State Warriors in San Francisco.
Local fans were likely feeling lucky — even privileged — to get to witness ol’ Slowhand, whose last Bay Area performance came way back in March 2011 at the SAP Center in San Jose. And one must also factor into the equation that Clapton is only doing three dates leading up to his big Crossroads Guitar Festival. Following San Francisco, Clapton moves on to Las Vegas on Sept. 13 and Phoenix on Sept. 14, before hitting Dallas for the two-day guitar extravaganza Sept. 20-21.
Unfortunately, Clapton could do no better than to turn in another uneven — and, ultimately, unfulfilling — performance in this first warm-up date for the festival.
The concert suffered from pretty much all the same things that hurt his uninspired 2011 San Jose show — a questionable set list, low energy and a failure to engage the crowd for any sustained periods of time.
Sure, there was some great guitar work — it was, after all, Clapton onstage. But even the fret board fireworks didn’t quite light up the night as brightly as one would’ve hoped.
Clapton — who was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist as well as for being a member of both Cream and the Yardbirds — opened the show on a semi-high note with “Pretending,” the lead track from his last great studio album, 1989’s “Journeyman.”
The fans were thrilled to see him take the stage, but they grew noticeably less enthusiastic as the night progressed and Clapton continued to skip the rock hits and meander through the blues. The one early highlight was Clapton’s popular take on Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff,” which was delivered with a bit more intensity than usual, especially when it came time for the slowly escalating guitar solo.
The vibe got more sleepy from there as Clapton entered into a four-song acoustic segment, which nearly lost the crowd until he picked out the opening notes of his most popular acoustic number — “Tears in Heaven.”
Things improved once the Clapton and his band plugged back in for the Cream classic “Badge,” which caused the crowd to wake up a bit. But just as things began to get on something of a roll, Slowhand took it back down several notches with “Holy Mother” from 1986’s “August.”
He followed up with a solid double-shot of Robert Johnson tunes — “Crossroads” and “Little Queen of Spades” — before finally managing to bring the crowd to its feet, some 80 minutes into the show, with the amazing “Layla.”
Instead of building upon that momentum, however, Clapton decided to bring the main set to a close and walk offstage.
He would return for the encore with a special guest — Carlos Santana. Yet, even that collaboration, between two of the greatest guitarists in rock history, failed to live up to its promise, as the pair closed the show with a forgettable cover of “High Time We Went.”
Set list:
1. “Pretending”
2. “Key to the Highway”
3,.”Hoochie Coochie Man”
4. “I Shot the Sheriff”
5. “Driftin’ Blues”
6. “Circus”
7. “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out”
8. “Tears in Heaven”
9. “Badge”
10. “Holy Mother”
11. “Crossroads”
12,.”Little Queen of Spades”
13., “Layla”
Encore:
14. “High Time We Went”
