ERIC CLAPTON
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"SlowHand"
ERIC CLAPTON
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"SlowHand"
Eric Patrick Clapton was born in the small English village of Ripley, Surrey on March 30, 1945. He was the illegitimate son of Patricia Molly Clapton and Edward Fryer, a Canadian soldier, who was stationed in England during World War II. After the war Fryer returned to his wife in Canada, and 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 then moved to Germany where she eventually married another Canadian soldier, Frank McDonald. Young Ricky, as he was known early on, was raised believing that his grandparents were his parents and his mother was his sister. This deception was meant to shield him the stigma that illegitimacy carried at that time. However, the truth was eventually revealed to Eric by his grandmother. As an adolescent, Clapton became enamored with rock 'n' roll when he tuned in to watch Jerry Lee Lewis perform on British television. Lewis's fiery appearance, together 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. Shortly after his seventeenth birthday Clapton joined his first band, the Roosters . However, he was not with them for very long before he left to join Casey Jones & the Engineers . This too did not last long, for he only played with the band for seven gigs. After leaving the Engineers Eric joined his third band, the now-legendary Yardbirds. Although Clapton began to gain some media exposure while playing with the Yardbirds he left the band after a couple of years because he felt that they had become too much of a pop group and he wanted to remain loyal to the blues. So, in 1965 he joined John Mayall's Bluesbreakers , but he didn't stay with them for very long either before he left to form Cream with bass player Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker. Cream , another short-lived but extremely influential band, known for classics such as "White Room" and "Sunshine of Your Love," achieved great success in the very short time they were together. Following the very disappointing breakup of Cream in 1968, Eric went on to form Blind Faith with Steve Winwood and ex-Cream-associate Ginger Baker. Blind Faith , best known for the song, "Presence of the Lord," wasn't around very long before it too disbanded. Eric's first appearance in public after the breakup of Blind Faith was as a member of John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band at the Rock 'n' Roll Revival Show in Toronto. Eric also played with the Plastic Ono Band on that group's single "Cold Turkey," which was released on October 24, 1969. After his stint with Lennon's band Eric decided to form his own band, Derek and the Dominos . About that same time Eric began to fall in love with Pattie Harrison, the wife of his close friend, George Harrison. And it was Pattie who inspired Eric to write the classic song, "Layla". "It was actually about an emotional experience, a woman that I felt deeply about and who turned me down, and I had to kind of pour it out in some way. It was the heaviest thing going at the time. I didn't consciously do it, though it just happened that way. That was what I wanted to write about most of all," Eric commented at the time of the song's release. Throughout most of the seventies, Eric remained very productive, writing some of his most well known songs. Among these, are a few from his 1974 album "461 Ocean Boulevard." For the album Eric recorded his own version of Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff". "I didn't think we had it as good as Bob's version. I thought we'd prettied it up a lot, and just not done it justice. And that disturbed me to the point where I wasn't keen on having it on the album. I was overruled, and thank God I was because Bob, in fact, was one of the first people to say, 'Thank You,'" Eric has said since then. In 1977, Eric released his "Slowhand" album. Contained on that album were compositions such as, "Cocaine," "Wonderful Tonight," and "Lay Down Sally". It was also in 1977 that George and Pattie Harrison divorced, which subsequently lead to the 1979 marriage of Eric and his "Layla". The marriage lasted until the couple's divorce in 1989. For his 1981 album, "Another Ticket", Eric recorded the bluesy number "I Can't Stand It". As the liner notes to the 1995 compilation "The Cream of Clapton" point out, it was with "Another Ticket," that "Clapton marked out his own territory that nobody could possibly emulate." Throughout the remainder of the 80's Eric completed a few more albums, and in 1985 he played at the concert for Live Aid. In 1992, Eric recorded his enormously successful "Unplugged," an album which later earned him 6 Grammy Awards. On the "Unplugged" album was the song "Tears in Heaven," which dealt with the horrifying loss of Eric's son Conor, who was tragically killed in 1991. "He was four-and-a-half. Yeah. I was getting ready to go pick him up for lunch. His mother called me and she was hysterical. First of all I couldn't believe it: I thought it was some kind of sick joke. Then -- in fact, when these things happen, my body almost started moving without my mind registering it. I kind of went on hold, I think, psychologically. I just kind of started to shut down bit by bit. I could feel reality slipping away," Eric told Larry King in early 1998. Another song which Eric wrote for "Unplugged" but did not include on the album was "Circus Left Town," a track which focused on the last night that he spent with his son, which happened to be at a circus. In an interview published in the June, 1993 issue of Guitar World magazine, MTV Unplugged producer Alex Coletti said the following about Eric's appearance on the MTV program: "Eric Clapton was 'unplugged' in more ways than one at that performance. There, in front of a large studio audience, an artist who is known to be very shy dealt with the most painful experience anyone could ever imagine-the tragic loss of his son, Connor." Having dealt with his loss head on by writing and singing about, Eric was able to move ahead a little and in 1994 he released his powerful blues album, "From the Cradle". On "From the Cradle," Eric returned to the years in which he first discovered the blues. Eric pays tribute to a few of the blues greats that influenced him, legends such as Willie Dixon, Elmore James, and Freddie King. At the time of the album's release, Eric told Guitar World magazine, "It's almost like I'm just leaving John Mayall now and I'm producing my own blues band. And it's taken me thirty years of meandering the back streets to get there." In 1998 Eric continued his back-street meandering and returned with yet another album. "Pilgrim," as the album was called, is one of Eric's most introspective works. "Well, it's kind of - I suppose - there's a track on the album called "Pilgrim," which came first. And when I came to title the album I used that track as a key point to go from, because I thought it was a good way of actually following the thread from "Journeyman" which was the same kind of meaning, really. Just looking at my life as a musician and a lot of other respects... It is autobiographical. And I see myself as kind of being like a lone guy on a quest," Eric told Larry King in February, 1998. Clapton returned to his roots for the 2000 release, "Riding With The King," a collaboration with the great blues guitarist B.B. King. The album won in the Best Traditional Blues Album category at the 43rd Annual Grammy Awards the following year. "Reptile," Clapton's latest, was released shortly thereafter. In 2001, Clapton surprised his fans by announcing that he would retire from touring upon the completion of the world tour supporting "Reptile."
Selected Works: Dec 1964 - Five Live Yardbirds
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