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	ERIC CLAPTON RETIREMENT?

Eric Clapton is enjoying a typical British rock star’s retirement, having issued one album, completed much of another, staged a guitar festival, and mounted a world tour so far this year. Unlike the Who’s get-togethers, however, Clapton’s first reunion with himself after calling it quits in 2001 isn’t about the money. To judge by the tone of his recent interviews and his relaxed, expressive performance on stage at the Tweeter Center in Mansfield on Saturday (he also performed Sunday), the legendary guitarist has rediscovered the sheer joy of playing.

Even a mid-set segment of Robert Johnson tunes, culled from this spring’s uninspired tribute to the Delta blues master Me and Mr. Johnson (Warner Bros.), had a genuine spark. Doyle Bramhall Jr., the respected Austin guitarist who’s playing second string to Clapton on this tour, proved an excellent foil, laying dirty slide lines through "Me and the Devil" and the rag "Hot Tamales" as Clapton sang and played the chord changes; then Clapton slipped on a slide for broiling versions of "Milk Cow Calf Blues" and "If I Had Possession over Judgement Day."

Certainly Clapton has absolute possession of his Fender Stratocaster, the sleek guitar model that’s become his main ax since he left the improv-blues power trio Cream and headed down the path of his solo career. But more so than in past tours, save for his excellent run behind the all-roots-blues From the Cradle (Reprise), where he played a chunkier Gibson-made instrument, Clapton sought to reinvent his guitar parts. His reggae rhythm to "I Shot the Sheriff" was flavored by funky, stuttering chords, his solo in "I Want a Little Girl" was a terse rip through repeated bends and chromatic climbs that slanted toward jazz, and he found new entry points for the Cream classics "Badge" and "Sunshine of Your Love" via short, exploratory intros.

"Have You Ever Loved a Woman," a number by the late bluesman Freddie King that Clapton turned into his own study in the raw, bleeding anguish of pure heartbreak, may never reclaim the stinging heights of emotion captured in the version he cut for 1970’s Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs (Polydor) with another departed guitar hero, Duane Allman. Nonetheless, he and Bramhall pulled it in fresh directions on Saturday. Clapton never alluded to his recorded solo, instead delivering a pastiche of the shivery bent notes, pinging pinched harmonics, and high-speed pentatonic runs that are components of his style and, unexpectedly, letting open strings hang loose to generate raunchy flashes of uncontrolled feedback. Bramhall surprised by tweaking the melody of the Doc Pomus tune "Lonely Avenue" into his guitar breaks.

Clapton and his eight-piece band were joined for the encores by young steel-guitar star Robert Randolph, who seems to improve every time he takes the stage. Randolph’s own opening set was a study in incendiary jamming, but his playing with Clapton was a fire-breathing conversation between two generations of virtuosos — especially in "Sunshine of Your Love," where they repeated the losing phrases of each other’s solos as they swapped fevered lines. There was some sense of passing the torch, especially when Clapton, who in the past has often seemed dour, laughed with open delight at Randolph’s steel-and-slide outbursts. But he seems intent on carrying the flame a while more.