Verona Arena, Italy
10th July 2006

Review by : Stefano

The location is fantastic, in fact the Arena of Verona is very beautiful place to see a concert (also the acoustic is not too bad).

The setlist of the concert doesn't introduce novelty for this tour:

Pretending
So Tired
Got To Get Better In A Little While
Old Love (with Robert Cray)
Everybody Oughta Make A Change
Motherless Children

sit down set
Back Home
I Am Yours
Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out
Running On Faith

After Midnight
Little Queen of Spades
Let It Rain
Wonderful Tonight
Layla
Cocaine

Encore
Crossroads (with Robert Cray)

Clapton plays good parts of guitar and sing very well, but he doesn't play as the "god" we remember... The best concerts that it made, he did them without other lead guitars in the band. When Eric finds other lead guitarists in the band he leaves a lot of space to the others and it plays with small intensity.

The peaks of the concert have been: Got To Get Better In A Little While, Back Home, Little Queen of Spades and Cocaine.

I'm happy that Clapton rediscovers of an important part of his history: Derek And The Dominos! I love this band and then I am very happy to listen live songs that originate from that period (Got To Get Better In A Little While, I Am Yours, Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out, After Midnight, Let It Rain, Layla and Crossroads).

About the band: Chris Stainton plays always a great music (excellent work at the end of Layla and on Let It Rain). Derek Trucks is a fantastic guitarist and with Clapton plays in a very good way. Doyle Bramhall II has been a little bit put aside with the arrival of Derek Trucks. He has in fact had less space than he would have deserved. In my opinion the band for this tour would have been better assorted with Derek or Doyle and Andy
Fairweather-Low. Willie Weeks has played very funky sound, indeed I don't like too much Steve Jordan because respect to the Steve Gadd sound he plays in noisy way a little bit too much. The other musicians have made their part without adding or to remove nothing from the value of the band.

I saw 'Slowhand' in concert 4 times (From the Cradle Tour, Pilgrim Tour, Reptile Tour and Back home Tour) and I appreciate the changes of set list, mainly due to the different musician involved. For this tour Clapton changes totally the band and he is never wrong (perhaps three lead guitars are a little bit too many. With Robert Cray as guest star on Old Love and Crossroads were four lead guitars...). In every case the best listened concerts have been in the order:

1) Reptile Tour
2) From the Cradle Tour
3) Back Home Tour
4) Pilgrim Tour

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