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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