There are millions of guitar players in the world, all trying to find their own style. This unmistakable sound that lets the listener immediately recognize who is holding the instrument in their hands. This provides the instrument industry with a profitable business basis, as the manufacturers of guitars, effect pedals and amplifiers promise their customers that certain models will sound like their great heroes: “With a VOX AC-30 you get the sound of Brian May.” Of course, things are not quite that simple, because the truth is in the dictum “sound is in the fingers” is underlined in rows.
One of the musicians who are largely responsible for this is Eric Clapton. His personality not only shaped the world of guitar fans, but also that of all pop music for more than fifty years. His life is extraordinary – extraordinarily successful, extraordinarily tragic, extraordinarily moving. It’s time to take a closer look at Eric Clapton:
1. Eric Clapton’s mother was a teenager when he was born
Eric Patrick Clapton was born on March 30, 1945 in Ripley, England. World War II was on its last legs and Europe was in chaos. Among the countless family histories influenced by the war is that of Eric Clapton. The Canadian soldier Edward Walter Freyer, who was stationed in England, fathered their son with the only sixteen-year-old Patricia Molly Clapton before he traveled back to Canada before the birth. An illegitimate child, Eric Clapton grew up with his grandmother and her second husband from the age of two, always believing them to be his biological parents. He thought his own mother was his older sister. Years later, Patricia Clapton married another Canadian soldier with whom she emigrated to Germany.
2. Eric Clapton was close friends with George Harrison
While Eric Clapton was guitarist for the Yardbirds between 1963 and 1965, the band played a concert at the London Palladium. The Beatles were also on the program that evening, so Clapton and George Harrison crossed paths for the first time. A few years later, Harrison participated as a composer on the Cream song “Badge”, which appeared both as a single and on the album “Goodbye” after Cream had already disbanded in 1968. Conversely, Clapton contributed guitar on the Beatles’ classic “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” off the white album.
Independent of the Beatles, the musical partnership between Clapton and Harrison endured. While contractual regulations often did not allow Eric Clapton to be credited under his own name, he can be heard on numerous George Harrison songs, beginning with the Beatles’ lead guitarist’s first solo album, Wonderwall Music. The two musicians remained close friends until Harrison’s death in 2001. At the memorial concert for George Harrison, Concert for George, Clapton was involved as musical director.
3. The story of “Layla”
However, the friendship between Clapton and Harrison had its own explosive nature. Eric Clapton quickly fell in love with George Harrison’s then-wife, Pattie Boyd, and made advances. The band Derek And The Dominoes, formed by Eric Clapton to escape the celebrity cult surrounding himself, released the album Layla And Other Assorted Love Songs shortly thereafter. As the title suggests, the album contained one of the biggest hits of Eric Clapton’s career, “Layla”.
He was inspired by the Persian-Arabic love story about Laila and Majnun, in which the protagonist Qais dies from his unhappy and unrequited love for Laila. The story’s poet, Nezami, is even credited as the author in the song’s lyrics. Still one-sided love at this point, Clapton felt in a similar situation to Qais in his devotion to Pattie Boyd. Eventually he won his love and married Boyd in 1979. Harrison, meanwhile, held no grudge and called Clapton his “husband-in-law”, i.e. his “husband-in-law”. In 1987, the couple separated after a marriage fraught with affairs and alcoholism.
4. Eric Clapton became addicted to drugs
Around the same time that his love for Pattie Boyd was ignited, Eric Clapton became addicted to drugs. At the beginning of the 1970s he developed a heroin addiction combined with heavy alcohol consumption. He interrupted his musical career and only performed at Harrison’s 1971 Concert for Bangladesh. There he collapsed on stage during his show, shaken by his destructive lifestyle. He later told ROLLING STONE that in those years he was in a “Cloud of Pink Cotton” lived. Only a new type of electrotherapy and the help of his friend Pete Townshend broke his addiction. Townsend organized the Rainbow Concert in 1973, a sort of comeback event for Eric Clapton, which was also recorded and released as an album.
5. Eric Clapton mourned the loss of Stevie Ray Vaughan
In the early 1990s, Clapton suffered two major blows of fate. The first involved his friend Stevie Ray Vaughan. In 1990, Clapton invited Vaughan and his band Double Trouble to accompany him on a tour of the United States. After a concert in Wisconsin on August 26, 1990, Stevie Ray boarded a helicopter that would fly him to Chicago. Tau settled on the windshields of the four machines waiting for the performers. Stevie Ray, his older brother Jimmie Vaughan and Jimmie’s wife Connie made their way to their reserved helicopter, a Bell 206B Jet Ranger, registration N16933. It was booked by Omniflight Helicopters and piloted by Jeff Brown, a 42-year-old veteran pilot.
Peter Jackson, one of Eric Clapton’s tour managers, let Vaughan know that three seats were reserved for him, Jimmie and Connie. Upon arrival, however, they discovered that their seats were being occupied by members of Clapton’s crew, agent Bobby Brooks, bodyguard Nigel Browne and assistant tour manager Colin Smythe. Stevie Ray Vaughan traded places, leaving his brother and his wife behind. It was pure coincidence that they did not board the helicopter together.
The helicopter took off from the ground at 12:50 a.m. Just minutes later, about a kilometer after takeoff, the helicopter carrying Vaughan and the rest of the occupants crashed into a mountain near Alpine Valley Ski Resort. Neither fire nor an explosion accompanied the crash. The bodies and debris were scattered over an area of 200 square meters. It was only when the helicopter failed to arrive at its destination the next day that it became apparent that something was wrong. For hours no one knew Stevie Ray Vaughan was dead.
6. “Tears in Heaven” was written for Eric Clapton’s son
The second stroke of fate even took place in one’s own family and at the same time ensured an immortal song. Perhaps Eric Clapton’s most famous song is probably his saddest. Tears in Heaven is dedicated to his late son Conor, who fell out of a skyscraper window in New York on March 20, 1991 at the age of four. Clapton co-wrote the song “Tears in Heaven” with Will Jennings as the soundtrack for the film “Rush”.
His thoughts about seeing his son again in heaven are bluntly reflected. Regardless of his status as a world star, he asks himself the same questions as many other parents who have lost a child. “Would you know my name / if I saw you in heaven?”.
This question seems to be particularly important to him, since he neglected his duties as a father before the death of his son. Alcohol problems and various relationship dramas overshadowed his bond with Conor. In 2004, Eric Clapton stopped performing “Tears in Heaven” live because he said he had overcome the grief.
7. Eric Clapton’s nickname is Slowhand
Eric Clapton has been nicknamed Slowhand for many decades. In his autobiography he explained how this came about. Clapton often played at the Crawdaddy Club in Surrey, England while with the Yardbirds. The club was led by influential booker, producer and manager Giorgio Gomelsky. In order to be able to pull the strings of his guitar better, Eric Clapton usually plays very thin specimens at those shows, which break very quickly. As he struck a new chord, often in the middle of a song, the audience slowly began to applaud. Gomelsky gave Clapton the nickname Slowhand.
8. Eric Clapton Net Worth
Eric Clapton’s net worth is estimated at £120million. These include his real estate, a £9million luxury yacht (previously owned by Bernie Ecclestone), company investments and of course his touring and royalties income. Clapton also has a great love for cars, especially Ferraris. Through his publicly expressed affection for the Italian noble manufacturer, Ferrari built him a unique special model worth 3 million pounds in 2012.
9. Eric Clapton’s relationships and children
The relationship with Pattie Boyd may be Clapton’s most famous, but it was far from the only one. In his early years he entered into a liaison with the American funk and soul singer Betty Davies. From 1974 he lived with Pattie Boyd. In an interview with The Sunday Times, Clapton later admitted to becoming violent towards Boyd as he was a “born alcoholic” has been.
During the recording of the album Behind The Sun in 1984, he had an affair with AIR Studios Monsterrat manager Yvonne Kelly. Although both were married, they had a daughter, Ruth Kelly Clapton, who was only exposed by the media in 1991 as Eric Clapton’s daughter. Also during his relationship with Pattie Boyd, he met the Italian model Lory Del Santo, the mother of Conor, who later died in an accident. He has been married to Melia McEnery, more than thirty years his junior, since 2002, after they met in 1998 at a party in Columbus, Ohio. The couple have three daughters.
10. Polarizing Statements
Eric Clapton drew attention to himself several times with abusive political remarks. At a concert in Birmingham in 1976, he spoke out in support of right-wing British politician Enoch Powell and also stated that Britain was in danger of having a “black colony” to become. In addition, he used the slogan “Keep Britain white!”which was being used by the racist National Front party at the time.
This incident, along with similar remarks by David Bowie, ultimately led to the formation of the Rock Against Racism movement with a concert on April 30, 1978. Clapton later apologized for his statements, citing that he had been heavily intoxicated that night be. In 2004 he named Enoch Powell again “incredibly brave”. Clapton complained to Uncut magazine that Britain recruited cheap labor and then dumped it in ghettos. That same year, he emphasized that he was not a racist, although he believed Powell’s views were relevant.
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