Eric Clapton
The United Kingdom's premier guitar here, born March 30, 1945, Ripley, Surrey,
raised by foster parents. Studied stained glass design at the Kingston Art School
before picking up guitar at 17, having listened extensively to records by
Muddy Waters, Chuck Berry, Big Bill Broonzy, and Buddy Holly. Eric's first two
groups in 1963 were "The Roosters" and "Casey Jones and the Engineers", both
early British R&B outfits. Was with the "Yardbirds" up to the group's March '65
"For Your Love" U.K. hit single but left soon after, disagreeing with the
band's freshly-acquired commercial approach. In the spring of 1965 Clapton joined
John Mayall's Bluesbreakers where he first accrued a following as a guitar hero;
his reputation spurred by shouts of "Give God A Solo" at gigs and the phrase
"Clapton is God" which became a favoured graffiti slogan on London walls.
In July, 1966 formed the "Cream" with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker. With Cream,
Eric enjoyed his first real commercial success and international recognition as
rock's foremost guitar virtuoso. Clapton also made a guest appearance on the
November, 1968 Beatles' "White Album" with an uncredited solo on George Harrison's
"While My Guitar Gently Weeps". On the demise of Cream that same month, Eric formed
the first "supergroup" Blind Faith with Steve Winwood, Rick Grech, and Ginger Baker,
taking time out from the group's 1969 tour to play with the Plastic Ono Band and appears
on "Live Peace In Toronto" with John Lennon. When Blind Faith split at the end of
1969, Clapton set up residence in New York where he started hanging out with
Delaney Bramlett and partially financed the Delaney & Bonnie & Friends Tour early 1970.
Much of that same personnel, plus the addition of Leon Russell and Steve Stills
appear on Eric's first solo album "Eric Clapton" which featured "Let It Rain"
and "After Midnight". Then came what many consider to be Clapton's finest hour,
the December 1970 "Layla" album credited to "Derek and the Dominoes" (with Bobby Whitlock,
Carl Radle, and Jim Gordon) and using services extensively of Duane Allman on slide guitar.
A masterwork, the "Layla" track itself was dedicated to "the wife of my best friend"--
Patti (Boyd) Harrison, who was later to seperate from her ex-Beatle husband and
set up with Clapton. At the conclusion of the Dominoes' tour, the band split and Eric's only
public appearance in 1971 was in August for the Concert for Bangladesh, having sunk into
deep depression and heroin addiction, and hiding in his Surrey mansion.
There followed
two wasted years until the intervention of friend Pete Townshend who organized Clapton's
comeback concert at London's Rainbow January, 1973. The gig also featured Steve Winwood,
Ron Wood, Jim Capaldi, and Pete. However, the comeback was rather premature, and it wasn't
until the winter of '73-'74, in new awareness that his addiction was destroying him, that
Clapton sought eventually-successful aid of a London electro-acupuncture therapist, following
treatment by the same with period working as labourer on a friend's farm in Wales. As
Clapton himself later described it, one day he decided he was fit again and got on a train
to London where he walked into manager Robert Stigwood's office and announced he was ready
to record an album. Stigwood booked Clapton on a plane to Florida where, with the assistance
of Carl Radle, George Terry, Dick Sims, Jamie Oldaker, and Yvonne Elliman, for his new band and
recorded the widely acclaimed "461 Ocean Boulevard", August, 1974. From the album came the
hit single version of Bob Marley's "I Shot The Sheriff". The remainder of the '70's saw Eric
operating on "auto pilot" from excessive drink, though the November, 1977 release of "Slowhand"
featured a string of hits including "Cocaine", "The Core",
and "Wonderful Tonight".
In 1980,
after nearly dying from a bleeding ulcer, a sober Eric would approach the '80's with a fresh
energy, soaring vocals, and his best guitar output in years, even better into the '90's with
the release of "Journeyman", "24 Nights" (live from the Royal Albert Hall), "Unplugged"
(the acoustic set featuring many songs dedicated to his son Conor) and "From the Cradle"
(the much anticipated tribute to the Blues pioneers). In many ways Clapton is a
chameleon-like figure, quality depending on the company he's keeping at the time. But in
every other sense he is one of the great guitarists in rock, as well as one of the most imitated,
and, at press time, the only three-time inductee in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with
the Yardbirds, The Cream, and as a solo artist.
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