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Delaney Bramlett, who has died in Los Angeles aged 69, was an unsung but pivotal figure in the story of American rock. Mississippi-born, he played with everyone from Eric Clapton to George Harrison, forging a potent blend of rock, soul, blues and gospel with his first wife Bonnie. In this Rolling Stone piece from March 1970, the great Lenny Kaye succinctly captures the vibes of the all-star Delaney & Bonnie and Friends ensemble.--Barney Hoskyns, Editorial Director, Rock's Backpages

New York--They weren't welcomed at the airport by hordes of screaming, pushing teenagers. They didn't receive a standing ovation at the Fillmore East when they first came out to tune their instruments. But make no mistake about it: Delaney, Bonnie and their gaggle of Friends are going to be Very Big.

The arrival here was graced with all the pomp and circumstance that is usually reserved for a major set of stars--radio interviews, photo sessions with larger-than-life magazines, a schedule worked out in minutes rather than hours by zealous press agents, a press party at Atlantic president Ahmet Ertegun's East Side town house.

"It was scary," said Delaney, sitting backstage between shows at the Fillmore, their first scheduled date back in the U.S.A. "I hadn't expected any of that. We'd been buried for about a month in the recording studio, doing all sorts of things, and when we finally got out in the sunlight, it was just incredible." Bonnie puts it in a slightly different light: "I've been working for this for ten years," she said, "and I'm lovin' it."

Two months in England, plus joining forces with Eric Clapton, brought Delaney and Bonnie back to America as star headliners. Clapton, who first began playing with the group as a tambourine adjunct on the Blind Faith tour, fully joined the group when he brought them overseas for their first set of European performances. "We didn't have a regular guitar player at the time," Bonnie explained, "and I thought why not ask Eric to play? I mean, the worst he could have said was no."

Strangely enough, the hardest task of all seems to have been bringing Clapton out of his protective shell. "Why, he's got a voice like an angel," said Bonnie, "but all along he kept telling us he didn't want to sing all that much. We kept at it and one day he and Delaney were talking real serious. Delaney said, 'Eric, the Lord has given you that singing talent, and if you don't make use of it, why, he just might come down and take it all away.' And Eric thought about that for a while, and then he began singing."

Clapton himself, sitting quietly, speaking in a voice that was soft almost to the point of a whisper, backed up everything Delaney and Bonnie had said. "I just wanted to play with a band. I don't have to play more than one part now--I'm just laying in and laying out whenever I want, and it makes me feel a lot more at ease."

On top of Clapton's addition, there is the very real fact that a much-needed push was given to the group's morale on their many-countried European tour, especially in England. "It made us see that we were worthy," said Delaney. "It was like the final test. We had always heard that English audiences were very cold and reserved, but when we got there, we found they were just the opposite. They'll never jump to any conclusions; they're after the overall sound, not looking at what happens to any little piece of it. I think American audiences are a little spoiled. Maybe it's because they've heard too many people, but they seem to be a lot quicker to judge, to look maybe at who's playing rather than what's being played. They had blues over in England for years while Robert Johnson was sitting here in his little two-bit shack."

So far, though, Delaney has little complaint with the sort of audience reception they've received since returning home. "I think the English-style audience is starting to come this way," he said. "Maybe it was just a matter of us growing up and people growing up too, but I really think I'm going to enjoy playing now.

In England, Delaney and Bonnie seemed to pick up people as they went along, expanding the Friends into a kind of spontaneous jamming unit that, like Topsy, jes' grew and grew. "Why, I'll bet one night we must've had twenty people on the stage," Bonnie remembers. "We had four guitarists, lots of keyboards, all sorts of singers and road managers...everybody was up there."

With people like George Harrison, Dave Mason and Billy Preston coming up and joining at various points in the tour, it was perhaps inevitable that people would start amending the adjective "super" to anything connected with Delaney and Bonnie. But Delaney, who watched Clapton and the rest of the Blind Faith stagger and ultimately crumble under the weight of that word, was just as adamant about quickly taking it off.

"I hope I'm never called a superstar," he said. "I don't want to get tagged with that. I think it's a terrible label for anyone to have to live up to and I think it's one of the things that kill off a lot of groups and musicians. When you're a superstar, you're trying to do things out of your limit, and after a while, it begins to hurt you and your music."

The group did some recording in England. The first was a live Delaney and Bonnie album, taped at various stops on their European tour and featuring Clapton on lead. Atlantic will release it at the end of the month. The second, due about a month after that, is a solo Clapton album, with original songs by both him and Delaney, backed by the Friends and notable Others who happened to drop by the sessions.

All of this communal recording did lead to a case of mistaken identity which Bonnie was very eager to straighten out. "I just wish you'd put in that there really is a Merry Clayton who did the singing on the Stones' 'Gimme Shelter'. I was supposed to do the session, and there were some press people down there when we were practicing, but when the time came to put the song on tape, I just didn't have any more voice left. So they called in Merry and it's her voice which is on the record, not mine. I'm really worried about this since the same thing happened to me once and I lost about a year's worth of work. If people would know that it's her on 'Gimme Shelter' instead of thinking that it's me, then it might do some nice things for her." Merry Clayton, incidentally, is a longtime session singer whose voice can sometimes be found wailing in the midst of one of Phil Spector's walls of sound.

After the free-form addition and subtraction that took place in Europe, the personnel of the Friends seems to have calmed down and stabilized. At present, along with Clapton, they are: Jim Gordon, drums; Carl Radle, bass; Jim Price and Bobby Keys, horns; and Bobby Whitlock, keyboard and vocals. The group's current tour is scheduled to take them through Boston, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Detroit, and then a swing through the circuit of California.

If their reception here is any indication of what's in store for them all the way across, Delaney and Bonnie will be golden by the time they reach home in Los Angeles. From the very first song, the Fillmore crowd picked up on them, clapping along, whistling and cheering little instrumental and vocal breaks. The group seemed relaxed on stage, genuinely happy at the good response. Clapton, predictably, was the crowd's favorite.

They played a few numbers at the start, nothing special, a little warm-up for them and the audience. It wasn't until they moved into "Where There's A Will, There's A Way," that things began to quicken. Bonnie took off her tinted glasses--applause from the crowd--and began sliding into a series of tight little steps, letting the mike fall, then catching it in mid-air. By the time they had blazed from a magnificent "They Call It Rock And Roll (And There Ain't Nothin' We Can Do About It)" into a long version of their single, "On The Road," they had fully won over everyone there. A massive standing ovation, much freer than the usual Fillmore ritual, a few Victory signs, and they were gone for a moment.

The group encored with a medley of Little Richard hits--"Tutti Frutti," "Girl Can't Help It"--and it was all that was needed to send the crowd over the edge into New York's peculiar brand of frenzy. For a while, the audience contented itself with politely jiggling in their seats. But pretty soon after that, they were standing up, bouncing in place. And pretty soon after that, they were crowding in the narrow Fillmore aisles, pushing to the stage, dancing with anyone near them. And pretty soon after that...

It was Bonnie who said it. "This must be the greatest reception we've ever received in the United States." They may have had to go all the way to England to do it, but she, Delaney and their Friends were home-free. At last.

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