A remastered two-disc deluxe edition of the album was released in 2004, which included selections from two live shows at the Hammersmith Odeon, and additional studio jam sessions.

When Clapton sought help working on a farm, he began to listen to a lot of new music and old blues records he had brought with him and started to play again, even writing whole songs out of simple ideas.

While the band was recording, George Terry brought the album Burnin' from Bob Marley and the Wailers to Clapton's attention, stating he really liked the song "I Shot the Sheriff".

[2] The album finishes with George Terry's "Mainline Florida", which "breaks away from the established tone of the record" and features Clapton using a talk box.

[5] 461 Ocean Boulevard was released in July 1974 on vinyl and compact music cassette in the Americas, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

RSO Records decided to release the album in territories, where it might chart and sell a lot of copies; it was released in Argentina,[7] Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, in the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, in the United Kingdom, in the United States, Uruguay, Yugoslavia and Venezuela.

Over the years, the album was reissued several times including in 1988, 1996 and 2004 for reunited Europe, also in compact disc format and via digital music download.

[8] 461 Ocean Boulevard is one of Clapton's most successful commercial releases, reaching the Top 10 in eight countries, and peaking at number one in three territories including Canada[9] and the United States.

[25] Author Marc Roberty claimed that on this song, "Clapton's vocals had clearly matured, with fluctuations and intonations that were convincing rather than tentative as in the past".

"[31] He later expanded on this praise in Christgau's Record Guide: Rock Albums of the Seventies (1981): By opening the first side with 'Motherless Children' and closing it with 'I Shot the Sheriff', Clapton puts the rural repose of his laid-back-with-Leon music into a context of deprivation and conflict, adding bite to soft-spoken professions of need and faith that might otherwise smell faintly of the most rural of laid-back commodities, bullshit.

The casual assurance you can hear now in his singing goes with the hip-twitching syncopation he brings to Robert Johnson's 'Steady Rolling Man' and Elmore James's 'I Can't Hold Out', and though the covers are what make this record memorable it's on 'Get Ready', written and sung with Yvonne Elliman, that his voice takes on a mellow, seductive intimacy he's never come close to before.

Pareles also described Clapton's remake of "I Shot the Sheriff" as a copy with no original arrangement; he also praised the song "Let It Grow", but criticized it for sounding too much like "Stairway to Heaven".

"[5] Eduardo Rivadavia at Ultimate Classic Rock calls the release a "watershed solo LP" and notes the popularity of the album, stating it is a "wanted man".

The journalist finished his review by calling 461 Ocean Boulevard the album in which Clapton's "incomparable talents and this inspired song set were finally captured".

411 on its 2012 list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, commenting that Clapton had "returned from heroin addiction with a disc of mellow, springy grooves minus guitar histrionics", which "paid tribute to Robert Johnson and Elmore James".