In his compelling autobiography, rock icon Eric Clapton writes candidly about his troubled childhood, his rise to fame as a guitarist and his overcoming of addiction
Many people envy the lives of rock musicians. But, as Eric Clapton testifies in his riveting autobiography, Clapton, it is difficult to be a rock star without being offered numerous dangerous substances and temptations, some of which are capable of destroying a person’s life. “Bad choices were my specialty,” he says.
Clapton endured a confusing childhood plagued by secrecy, in which he often felt unloved. It wasn’t until the age of nine that he learned that the woman he thought was his sister was actually his mother. (When he asked if he could call her Mummy, she told him he should continue to call his grandparents Mum and Dad.) He learned to comfort himself by playing the guitar. “Music became a healer for me, and I learned to listen with all my being.”
The Sixties
Clapton captures the excitement and crazy energy of the Sixties, when he played with nearly every major musician and group, including Jimi Hendrix, the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Aretha Franklin and many others. He describes dropping acid for the first time at the Speakeasy club in London, and listening to the Beatles play an acetate of their new album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. He writes: “Even though I was not overawed in the least by the Beatles, I was aware that this was a very special moment in time for anyone that was there.”
One of hs most publicized “bad choices” was his infatuation with George Harrison’s wife, Pattie Boyd. (He wrote many songs to her, including Layla and “Wonderful Tonight.”) Pattie finally left Harrison to travel and live with him. But Clapton’s lifestyle, his womanizing and drinking (which had replaced his heroin addiction) made it impossible for them to find happiness together.
Tears In Heaven
After two visits to Hazelden in Minnesota, in 1982 and 1987, Clapton finally overcame his alcohol addiction. Just as he was getting his life together, however, in 1991 his four-year-old son Conor died in a freak accident in a Manhattan apartment, falling forty-nine floors to his death. Clapton, who had just taken Conor to the circus the day before, handled his grief in the only way he knew, by writing a song, “Tears in Heaven.” (Later, to his surprise, the song went to the top of the charts and won Song of the Year.) Clapton vowed to remain sober in Conor’s memory, and decided to start a treatment facility in Antigua, called the Crossroads Centre, to help other addicts.
Settling Down
In 1998, shortly after his mother died, Clapton met Melia McEnery from Columbus, Ohio, a woman who made him want to be a family man and settle down for the first time. He writes: “The mold was finally broken. Maybe it broke when my mother died, I don’t know. The important thing was, at the age of fifty four, I had probably made the first healthy choice in a partner in my entire life.”
Clapton: The Autobiography is a book about the music business of the late twentieth century and an extraordinarily talented musician’s place in that world. But much more than that, it is the story of a man who has always striven to tell and understand the truth about his life, through music and words.
Random House/Broadway Books 2007, ISBN 978-0-385-51851-2
