The story of how “Forever Man” came to exist is, in its way, a better tale than the song. In 1984 Eric Clapton handed his record company an album, and the record company, rather pointedly, handed it back. They wanted hits. So they sent Clapton some demos by a Texas songwriter named Jerry Lynn Williams, and the result was a bright, synth-flecked, thoroughly eighties single that gave Clapton a firm place on American radio. It’s not the first song most people name when asked about him. But it’s an oddly revealing one, and the more I think about it, the more it seems to be about a man negotiating with his own legend, and doing so with rather more good humour than you might expect.
The Record Company’s Request
By the mid-eighties Clapton was in an awkward spot. He had signed with Warner Bros, whose first record with him, Money and Cigarettes, hadn’t sold as well as they’d hoped. So when the follow-up, Behind the Sun, was delivered in 1984, produced largely by his friend Phil Collins, the label’s response was distinctly cool. They wanted something with more commercial snap. Williams was brought in, and three of his songs were added to the record: “Forever Man”, “See What Love Can Do”, and “Something’s Happening”. It’s the sort of boardroom intervention that tends to make artists furious, and the sort that occasionally, by accident, produces something rather good.
It’s easy to imagine how that went down. A man with Clapton’s reputation does not generally enjoy being told what to play. But he seems to have taken it with good grace, and perhaps even a bit of relief. He later recalled that he loved the way Williams sang, which suggests the demos did half the persuading. And the collaboration turned out to be fruitful: Williams went on to supply further songs for Clapton throughout the decade, including several on Journeyman. Not many artists manage to build a lasting partnership out of a corporate ultimatum, and I think it speaks well of both men that they did.
What the Song Is About
Williams’s lyric is built around a declaration. The narrator describes himself as a forever man, one who doesn’t change, who will keep turning up, who’s in it for the long haul. On first listening it sounds like a promise of devotion, delivered with a bit of swagger. But the more you listen, the more it seems to carry a second meaning. A forever man might be a model of loyalty. He might also be somebody who simply can’t stop, who repeats the same mistakes, who keeps going back to whatever it is he can’t resist. The song never tells you which, and that, I’d say, is its real hook.
That ambiguity is what makes it interesting. Clapton, in 1985, was a man whose own habits had nearly finished him, and who was still working his way towards stability. Hearing him sing about being someone who never changes, you can’t help reflecting on how much he’d wished to. I’m not claiming he intended that. Williams wrote the song, not Clapton. But a performer brings his history to a song whether he likes it or not, and the history here is part of the flavour. It’s the difference between a lyric read out and a lyric inhabited, and Clapton, whatever else you say about him, has always inhabited his material.
A Very Eighties Sound
Nobody listening to “Forever Man” could mistake it for a record from any other decade. It has a big, bright drum sound, a synthesiser woven into the central riff, and a bass and guitar that lock everything in place. Ted Templeman and Lenny Waronker, two of Warner’s best-known producers, were responsible for the glossy finish, and the thing practically shimmers. Clapton’s guitar punctuates it in short, sharp bursts, and there’s a brisk solo in the middle that is rather good, even if it’s all over in a few moments. It’s a record that knows exactly how long it has to make its case, and gets on with it.
The video was directed by Godley and Creme, the clever pair who had once been half of 10cc and then made a second career out of imaginative promotional films. It suited the record: crisp, stylish, a little bit knowing. The song reached the American top thirty and did very well on rock radio, and it gave Clapton the kind of mid-eighties profile he’d been missing. For a man who had spent much of the early part of the decade being politely ignored by the charts, that mattered. It showed that the old guitarist could still turn up at the party in the right clothes, and that the clothes didn’t have to be a disguise.
The Trade-Off
There’s a debate to be had about whether this kind of record is a betrayal. Purists tend to say that Clapton sold out in the eighties, and “Forever Man” is exhibit A. I don’t buy it, quite. The song is well made and he plays it with conviction, and he spent most of his career as an interpreter of other people’s songs anyway. What matters is whether he sounds as if he means it, and I think he does. There’s an energy in the performance that you can’t fake, a brightness around the edges that suggests he rather enjoyed being pushed out of his comfort zone for once.
Still, it’s hard not to feel a flicker of sympathy for the version of the album that was turned down. Somewhere out there, in the vaults, is the record Clapton wanted to make. But the hit he ended up with has had a long life, and it opened a door. Within two years he was back with August, and the eighties had turned out less hostile than they first appeared. So perhaps the lesson is that compromise isn’t always a defeat. Sometimes it’s just the price of a ticket, and the destination turns out to be better than the one you’d planned.
It’s worth remembering, too, how much of the old Clapton survived inside the new package. The album’s title, Behind the Sun, was lifted from a line in a Muddy Waters song, “Louisiana Blues”, which tells you where his heart still lived even while the label was pressing for singles. And the guitar playing on “Forever Man”, for all the polish around it, is unmistakably his: that fat, singing tone, the slightly bent note that arrives a fraction late on purpose. You can dress a bluesman in a synthesiser and a gleaming drum sound, but you can’t make him play like anyone else. The disguise is only ever skin deep, and that, I think, is rather reassuring.
Where That Leaves Us
So what does “Forever Man” mean? On one level, it’s a love song with a steady heartbeat. On another, it’s about stubbornness, about being the sort of person who can’t help coming back for more. And on a third, it’s the sound of a very great guitarist doing as he was asked and finding something of himself in the exercise. That’s not a bad outcome for a record that began life as a corporate demand. I won’t pretend it’s his deepest work. It isn’t. But it’s honest, it’s energetic, and it still sounds like it’s enjoying itself, which is more than can be said for plenty of records with grander ambitions.