eric clapton
In the late 1960s, one of the most prominent pieces of graffiti
seen in London and New York was "Clapton is God." Thirty
years later, the stalwart guitarist and singer continues to hold
the initiated enthralled, and a fair share of his present-day
fans weren't even born when those words of worship were emblazoned
on public edifices. Clapton's meandering and groundbreaking musical
career has been punctuated by extreme personal hardship and tragedy.
Through the emotional truth of his music, he has sought refuge
and release from the suffering of drug and alcohol addiction,
personal relationships gone awry, and the deaths of several loved
ones.
Eric Patrick Clapton was born on March 30, 1945, in his grandparent's
house at 1, The Green, Ripley, Surrey, England. He was the illegitimate
son of Patricia Molly Clapton and Edward Fryer, a Canadian soldier
stationed in England. After W.W.II Fryer returned to his wife
in Canada, Patricia left Eric in the custody of his grandparents,
Rose and Jack Clapp. (The surname Clapton is from Rose's first
husband, Reginald Cecil Clapton.) Patricia moved to Germany where
she eventually married another Canadian soldier, Frank McDonald.
Young Ricky (that's what his grandparent's called him) was a
quiet and polite child, an above average student with an aptitude
for art. He was raised believing that his grandparents were his
parents and his mother was his sister, to shield him the stigma
that illegitimacy carried with it. The truth was eventually revealed
to him, at the age of nine by his grandmother. Later, when Eric
would visit his mother, they would still pretend to be brother
and sister.
As an adolescent, Clapton glimpsed the future when he tuned in
to a Jerry Lee Lewis appearance on British television. Lewis's
explosive performance, coupled with young Eric's emerging love
of the blues and American R&B, was powerful enough to ignite
a desire to learn to play guitar. He commenced studies at the
Kingston College of Art, but his intended career path in stained-glass
design ended permanently when the blues-obsessed Clapton was expelled
at seventeen for playing guitar in class. He took a job as a manual
laborer and spent most of his free time playing the electric guitar
he persuaded his grandparents to purchase for him. In time, Clapton
joined a number of British blues bands, including the Roosters
and Casey Jones, and eventually rose to prominence as a member
of the Yardbirds, whose lineup would eventually include all three
British guitar heroes of the sixties: Clapton, Jimmy Page, and
Jeff Beck. The group became a sensation for their blues-tinged
rock, as did the budding guitar virtuoso Clapton, who earned the
nickname "Slowhand" because his forceful string-bending
often resulted in broken guitar strings, which he would replace
onstage while the crowd engaged in a slow hand-clapping.
Despite the popularity of the band's first two albums, Five Live
Yardbirds and For Your Love, Clapton left in 1965, because he
felt the band was veering away from its bluesy bent in favor of
a more commercially viable pop focus. He joined John Mayell's
Bluesbreakers almost immediately, and in the ferment of that band's
purist blues sensibilities, his talent blossomed at an accelerated
rate--he quickly became the defining musical force of the group.
"Clapton is God" was the hue and cry of a fanatic following
that propelled the band's Bluesbreakers album to No. 6 on the
English pop charts. Clapton parted company with the Bluesbreakers
in mid-1966 to form his own band, Cream, with bassist Jack Bruce
and drummer Ginger Baker. With this lineup, Clapton sought "to
start a revolution in musical thought . . . to change the world,
to upset people, and to shock them." His vision was more
than met as Cream quickly became the preeminent rock trio of the
late sixties. On the strength of their first three albums (Fresh
Cream, Disraeli Gears, and Wheels of Fire) and extensive touring,
the band achieved a level of international fame approaching that
of the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, and Clapton became even
more almighty in the minds of his fans. In fact, the "Clapton
is God" gospel contributed largely to Cream's disintegration--the
band had always been a three-headed beast of warring egos, and
their intense chemistry, exacerbated by the drug abuse of all
three, inevitably led to a farewell tour in 1968 and the release
of the Goodbye album in 1969. Early in 1969, Clapton united with
Baker, bassist Rick Grech, and Traffic's Steve Winwood to record
one album as Blind Faith, rock's first "supergroup."
In support of their self-titled album, Blind Faith commenced a
sold-out, twenty-four-city American tour, the stress of which
resulted in the demise of the band less than a year after its
inception.
Clapton kept busy for a time as an occasional guest player with
Delaney & Bonnie, the husband-and-wife team that had been
Blind Faith's opening act during their tour. A disappointing live
album from that collaboration was released in 1970, as was Clapton's
self-titled solo debut. That album featured three other musicians--bassist
Carl Radle, keyboardist Bobby Whitlock, and drummer Jim Gordon--from
Delaney's band, and yielded a modest pop hit with Clapton's version
of J.J. Cale's "After Midnight." The collective proceeded
to baptize themselves Derek and the Dominos, and commenced recording
Clapton's landmark double album Layla and Other Assorted Love
Songs, with the added contribution of slide guitarist Duane Allman.
An anguished lament of unrequited love, "Layla" was
inspired by a difficult love triangle between Clapton, his close
friend George Harrison, and Harrison's wife Pattie (she and Clapton
eventually married in 1979 and divorced in 1988). Unfortunately,
personal struggles and career pressure on the guitarist led to
a major heroin addiction. Derek and the Dominos crumbled during
the course of an American tour and an aborted attempt to record
a second album.
Clapton withdrew from the spotlight in the early seventies, wallowing
in his addiction and then struggling to conquer it. Following
the advice of the Who's Pete Townsend, he underwent a controversial
but effective electro-acupuncture treatment and was fully rehabilitated.
He rebounded creatively with a role in the film version of Townsend's
rock opera, Tommy, and with a string of albums, including the
reggae-influenced 461 Ocean Boulevard, which yielded a chart-topping
single cover of Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff." Some
critics and fans were disappointed by Clapton's post-rehab efforts,
feeling that he had abandoned his former guitar-heavy approach
in favor of a more laid-back and vocal-conscious one.
Just One Night, Clapton's galvanizing 1980 live album, reminded
devotees just exactly who their guitar hero was, but unfortunately,
this period marked Clapton's critical slide into a serious drinking
problem that eventually hospitalized him for a time in 1981. He
experienced a creative resurgence after reining in his alcoholism,
releasing a string of consistently successful albums--Another
Ticket (1981), Money and Cigarettes (1983), Behind the Sun (1985),
August (1986), Journeyman (1989)--and turning his personal life
around. Though some say Clapton never regained the musical heights
of his heroin days, his legend nevertheless continued to grow.
That he was a paragon of rock became more than apparent when Polygram
released a rich four-CD retrospective of his career, Crossroads,
in 1988; the set scored Grammy awards for Best Historical Album
and Best Liner Notes.
In late 1990, the fates delivered Clapton a terrible blow when
guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan and Clapton road crew members Colin
Smythe and Nigel Browne--all close friends of Clapton's--were
killed in a helicopter crash. A few months later, he was dealt
another cruel blow when Conor, his son by Italian model Lori Del
Santo, fell forty-nine stories from Del Santo's Manhattan high-rise
apartment to his death. Clapton channeled his shattering grief
into writing the heart-wrenching 1992 Grammy-winning tribute to
his son, "Tears in Heaven." (Clapton received a total
of six Grammys that year for the single and for the album Unplugged.)
In 1994, he began once again to play traditional blues; the album,
From the Cradle, marked a return to raw blues standards, and it
hit with critics and fans.
Throughout the '80s and '90s, Clapton made his presence felt
in the realm of film soundtracks as well, with contributions to
such movies as Rush, Back to the Future, The Color of Money and
Lethal Weapon 3. Yet his greatest soundtrack success came with
"Change The World," the endearing smash hit from the
John Travolta film Phenomenon.
In 1997 Clapton springs his next album on a waiting world, his
latest side project, TDF. The band's techno-pedigreed 1997 release,
Retail Therapy, represents a marked musical departure from Clapton's
blues-rock roots, and he appears on the album with the correspondingly
off-the-wall pseudonym "X-Sample."
Next came the acclaimed Pilgrim, which captured the Grammy nomination
for Best Pop Album in '98. In 1999 he won a Grammy for his performance
on The Calling from Santana's Supernatural. Clapton revisited
the blues with friend and musical legend BB King in 2000's Riding
With The King, garnering the artist more platinum and a Grammy
nomination in a career full of chartbusters and precious metal.
The only triple inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
(as a member of both The Yardbirds and Cream and as a solo artist),
Eric Clapton continues to astonish and delight a vast spectrum
of music lovers. It's a legacy that continues with the release
of Reptile, the latest journey in the lifelong musical odyssey
of an authentic musical genius.
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