Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Eric Clapton: Peaches and Diesel

For our Wordless Wednesday selection, I’ve chosen a 1977 instrumental by Eric Clapton from his triple platinum album “Slowhand.” “Peaches and Diesel,” which has often been compared to its A side “Wonderful Tonight,” was composed by Clapton and Albhy Galuten. Galuten, whose only contribution to “Slowhand” was the coauthoring of “Peaches and Diesel,” is best known as a producer of a number of artists including Clapton’s label mates, The Bee Gees.


While I’ve read some speculation on the source of the unusual title of the song, it has nothing to do with Duane Allman. It has been theorized that the title represents Allman’s infamous “eat a peach” phrase that inspired a postmortem album title and the cause of his death – a collision with a truck – presumably diesel fueled.

The term, although rather obscure, is used to describe the bouquet of certain wines. Unfortunately, I could not find a description of what a peaches and diesel fragrance represents. I can only imagine, while I may be wrong, that it is possibly a fruity bouquet that lingers heavily – much like diesel fuel hangs in the air long after it is spilled. What do I know about wine anyway?

Whatever it represents, “Peaches and Diesel” was the final cut on the “Slowhand” album. Enjoy.










1 comment:

  1. Re: Peaches and Diesel. The title comes from the two nicknames of guitarist 'Diesel' (now Dzal) and vocalist 'Peaches' of the band No Dice who were recording their debut album in the smaller studio at Olympic at the same time. We met Eric over the table football game in the recreation room. He confirmed he liked the combination of the names at a later meeting. I believe this is confirmed in Mark Roberty's book 'Eric Clapton.The complete recording sessions 1963-1992' It is also referred to on my own website www.dzalmartin.com Hope this helps :)

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