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 labourer
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 favour 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
pre-eminent 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 favour of a more laid-back
and vocal-conscious one.
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 channelled his
shattering grief into writing the heart-wrenching 1992 Grammy-winning
tribute to his son, "Tears in Heaven." (Clapton received a total
of six Grammy’s 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. The fifty-one-year-old
Clapton shows no signs of slowing down: in February of 1997 he picked up
Record of the Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance Grammy’s for
"Change the World," from the soundtrack of the John Travolta
movie Phenomenon.
Already a double inductee into
the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Yardbirds and Cream, a
third nod as a solo artist is an inevitable honour for the legendary
guitarist. Until Clapton springs his next album on a waiting world, fans
can content themselves with 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.
