1- Eric Clapton was born on 30 March 1945 The Green, Ripley, Surrey, England. He was the illegitimate son of Patricia Molly Clapton and a Canadian soldier stationed in England named Edward Walter Fryer. When Eric Clapton was Born His Father returned to Canada
When Walter Fryer returned to his wife in Canada, Clapton’s mother left him to be raised by his grandparents, Jack and Rose Clapp. (He received his surname from his mother’s first husband, Reginald Clapton.) Clapton was told his grandparents were his parents and his mother was his sister. He did not find out the truth until he was nine years old.
Eric was raised in a musical household. His grandmother played piano and his uncle and mother both enjoyed listening to the sounds of the big bands. Pat later told Eric’s official biographer, Ray Coleman, that his father was a gifted musician, playing piano in several dance bands in the Surrey area.
2- Quiet and polite, he was characterized as an above-average student with an aptitude for art. But, from his earliest years in school, he realized something was not quite right when he wrote his name as “Eric Clapton” and his parents’ names as “Mr. and Mrs. Clapp”. At the age of nine, he learned the truth about his parentage when Pat returned to England with his six-year-old half brother for a visit. This singular event affected him deeply and was a defining moment in his life. He became moody and distant and stopped applying himself at school. Emotionally scarred by this event, Eric failed the all-important 11 Plus Exams. He was sent to St. Bede’s Secondary Modern School and two years later, entered the art branch of Holyfield Road School.
(Eric Clapton interview and guitar demo 1968)
He received his first guitar as a present from his grandmother on his 13th birthday. (German-made Hoyer difficult to play – it had steel strings)
Sometime in 1962, he asked for his grandparents’ help in purchasing a £100 electric double cutaway Kay (a Gibson ES-335 clone) after hearing the electric blues of Freddie King, B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy, and others.
As Clapton moved through adolescence, his love for the guitar and American blues music grew. Influenced and inspired by many of the great American blues artists, Clapton began playing almost full time.
In the process, at age 17, he failed out of Kingston College of Art, where he was studying stained glass design. He moved to London, took a manual labor job, convinced his grandparents to buy him an electric guitar, and began playing in clubs and pubs.
3- Early Bands: Roosters, The Yardbirds, and Bluesbreakers
Soon Clapton joined his first band, the Roosters, which quickly disbanded.
He played with several other British blues bands until 1963 when he joined The Yardbirds, with whom he would achieve international fame. Clapton came into the band on the recommendation of lead vocal for the band, Keith
Relf, Clapton’s former classmate from art college. Clapton recorded two albums with The Yardbirds, Five Live Yardbirds, a live album released in 1964, and For Your Love, the title track reaching number two in England in 1965. During his stint with the band, Clapton came to be known by his nickname “Slowhand” for his string-bending blues riffs. For Your Love found eager audiences in both England and the United States, and it marked The Yardbirds intentional move away from the blues in an attempt to break into the pop charts. Clapton, who wanted to remain a blues artist, barely played on the album, and in 1965 quit the band.
Almost immediately, Clapton joined John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Mayall gave Clapton the freedom to explore his blues style, and soon Clapton’s searing blues guitar was the driving force behind the band’s popularity. In 1966 the band released Bluesbreakers: John Mayall with Eric Clapton. This album, which reached number six on the British pop charts, propelled Clapton into the spotlight and, at the age of 21, marked him as a guitar virtuoso. It was during his stint with the Bluesbreakers that fanatical fans started the chant “Clapton is God.”
4- When Clapton was only 20 years old, many people already thought of him as a guitar virtuoso. Somebody wrote on the wall of the Islington subway station: “Clapton is God.” And then many others began scrawling this graffiti all over London.
In the mid 1960s when Clapton was playing with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, a fan sprayed graffiti in Islington which read ‘Clapton is god’. A photographer snapped the image and thus the Clapton legend began growing.
5-Supergroups: Cream and Blind Faith
Clapton left the Bluesbreakers in July 1966, to form Cream with bass player Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker. Clapton desired to break out of the standard forms of rock and blues to create a new sound that allowed more experimentation and improvisation. He wanted to start a revolution in music, and the super trio of Cream did just that. After three albums (Fresh Cream, Disraeli Gears, and Wheels of Fire,) and an extensive tour of the United States, the members of Cream became superstars in the order of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. From these albums came legendary rock hits such as “White Room,” “Sunshine of Your Love,” and “Crossroads.”
Much to the dismay of their fans, the members of Cream announced in 1968 that they would part ways. Tension and strife created by three strong, creative personalities, intensified by the drug use of all three, proved to be too much for Cream. Before disbanding, Cream went on a farewell tour and, in 1969, released one last album, Goodbye, which went to number two on the charts in the United States.
Clapton’s next band, Blind Faith, became yet one more short-lived supergroup. Made up of Clapton, ex-Cream member Ginger Baker, ex-Traffic member Steve Winwood, and bassist Rick Grech, Blind Faith released just one selftitled album in July 1969. They quickly made their presence known in the music world by staging a free concert for 100,000 people in London’s Hyde Park.
But, after a six-week tour in the United States, the band called it quits. Clapton’s most lasting work with Blind Faith is the song “Presence of the Lord.” After the demise of Blind Faith, he briefly played with John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Plastic Ono Band, and then he moved on to record his first solo album, self-titled Eric Clapton. Although generally disappointing as a debut solo album, Clapton did find an audience for the song “After Midnight,” which made it into the Top 40.
6-After the demise of Cream, Clapton formed Blind Faith, his first collaboration with Steve Winwood. But this group only lasted a period of months and produced only one album. Clapton thought the group was short-lived because he refused to be the front man, and also because he was falling under the spell of their backup band, Delaney & Bonnie, his next musical liaison.
7- Slowhand Clapton
Clapton might be known for his fast guitar playing, but his nickname is actually ‘Slowhands’. The name was given to him by The Yardbirds’ manager, Giorgio Gomelsky in 1964. The story goes that the name came about because whenever a string broke on one of his guitars, Clapton would stay on stage to replace it, causing the audience to break out into a slow clap.
Sometimes the strings of his guitars break since he plays it too hard. The audiences will clap their hand, while Eric replaces the broken strings.
Clapton himself recalled the nickname’s origin differently, though:
My nickname of ‘Slowhand’ came from Giorgio Gomelsky. He coined it as a good pun. He kept saying I was a fast player, so he put together the slow handclap phrase into ‘Slowhand’ as a play on words.
“Slowhand” the album was released in 1977. This is the album that contained the some “Wonderful Tonight.”
8-In London late in 1966, guitarist Jimi Hendrix came to town. (Hendrix had come from the U.S. to England, hoping to be discovered.) Clapton and Hendrix became quick friends and would go from nightclub to nightclub and jam with the musicians in the bands, blowing away everybody.
9-He has an extensive guitar solo on one of The Beatles’ most famous songs: Yep, that’s Clapton playing that extended guitar solo in the 1968 Beatles song “While My Guitar gently Weeps.” Clapton’s pal George Harrison convinced him to play on the song, but his guitar wasn’t the only thing that would soon be weeping. Two years later, Clapton’s affair with Harrison’s wife Pattie Boyd spawned the Derek & the Dominos hit “Layla.” Boyd eventually left Harrison and married Clapton, and in her 2007 book “Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton and Me,” she revealed that the song “Layla” brought her love affair with Clapton out in the open.
Eric Clapton & Paul McCartney – While My Guitar Gently Weeps – Live 2002-
10-Derek and the Dominos
In the spring of 1970, Clapton brought together a new band, Derek and the Dominos. They toured throughout England during the summer of 1970. By fall, they had released a double album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. Much of the album was inspired by Clapton’s love for Patti Harrison, the wife of his good friend, ex-Beatle
George Harrison. For example, the song “Have You Ever Loved a Woman” contains the lyrics: “Have you ever loved a woman / And you know you can’t leave her alone? / Something deep inside you / Won’t let you wreck your best friend’s home.” Clapton also sings about his love for Patti in the title track, “Layla,” a song that became a Clapton classic.
By the early 1970s, Clapton’s heroin addiction was becoming unmanageable. His drug use was fueled by the trauma of losing two of his closest friends. Slide guitar player, Duane Allman, who collaborated with Derek and the Dominos, was killed in a motorcycle accident, and Jimi Hendrix died of a drug overdose. Finally, after hitting the depths of his addiction, Clapton kicked his heroin habit using a controversial electro-acupuncture treatment.
With drugs behind him, Clapton staged a comeback concert in London in January 1973. In 1974 he released his second solo album, 461 Ocean Boulevard. The album went to number one on the charts as did his remake of the Bob Marley song “I Shot the Sheriff.” Through the rest of the 1970s, Clapton released a succession of albums. The most successful of these projects was Slowhand (1977), which included hits “Cocaine,” “Lay Down Sally,” and “Wonderful Tonight.”
In 1979 Clapton married Patti Harrison (who in 1974 had divorced George Harrison and moved in with Clapton). Unfortunately, Clapton had traded one addiction for another, and this period marked his fall into a serious drinking problem. During the first half of the 1980s Clapton managed to release five solo albums, Just One Night (1980), Another Ticket (1981), Money and Cigarettes (1983), Behind the Sun, (1985), and August (1986). Each album was only marginally successful.
Clapton’s life changed forever in 1986 when Italian actress Lori Del Santo gave birth to Clapton’s son, Conor. Although this event brought great happiness to Clapton, it also marked the end of his marriage to Patti who moved out and subsequently filed for divorce. Clapton renewed his effort to give up alcohol, entered a rehab center, and became a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. At the same time, his popularity rose again dramatically after the release of the box set Crossroads (1988) and a new album Journeyman (1989).
11-Tragedy and “Tears in Heaven”
Although 1990 brought Clapton his first Grammy Award for “Bad Love” off the Journeyman album, 1990 and 1991 were marred by tragedy for Clapton. First, in 1990, Clapton once again lost close friends when guitar virtuoso Stevie Ray Vaughan and two members of Clapton’s road crew died in a helicopter crash. Then, in 1991, Clapton was getting ready to pick up his then four-year-old son Conor for lunch when he received the news that the boy was dead after falling from a fifty-third-story window of a Manhattan high-rise apartment.
Clapton responded to this tragedy by writing the super hit, “Tears in Heaven,” as a tribute to his son. The song was featured in the sound track of the movie Rush. It also appeared on the acoustical album Unplugged (1992), which turned out to be Clapton’s biggest selling album and swept the 1993 Grammy Awards. With the success of Unplugged, Clapton found the courage to return to his beloved blues, and in 1994, released the blues album From the Cradle. The album was both commercially successful and critically acclaimed.
After releasing a four-CD box set, Crossroads 2: Live in the ’70s, in 1996, Clapton became involved in a new age, techno-jazz duo with Simon Climie called T.D.F. Clapton, who used only the pseudonym “x-sample,” and Climie released Retail Therapy in 1997. Although this experimental recording received mixed reviews, Clapton was still doing well on the pop charts. He claimed two Grammy Awards in 1997 (record of the year and best male pop vocal performance) for his collaboration with Babyface on “Change the World,” which appeared on the soundtrack for the movie Phenomenon.
In March 1998, Clapton released his latest project to date, Pilgrim. The album is filled with almost all original Clapton songs; most noticeable are two songs that pay tribute to Clapton’s son Conor, “Circus” and “My Father’s Eyes,” both written in 1992. Although those looking for the Clapton of Cream found the introspective, sometimes melancholy tone of Pilgrim disappointing, others have embraced Clapton’s ever-changing style of mixing blues, rock, and his own painful soul into the songs that have aged as gracefully as the singer.
12-Clapton has a drug rehab center
Clapton started his heroin habit in 1970. While Clapton was watching George Harrison put together his group, Badfinger, Clapton often used a dealer who, when he sold cocaine to people, required they also take a certain amount of smack, as it was called in those days. Afraid of needles, Clapton wrote that he never injected heroin, he snorted it instead.
In September 1970, Clapton bought a left-handed Stratocaster, hoping to give it to Jimi Hendrix, but Jimi passed on before Eric could give it to him.
In order to beat Clapton’s heroin addiction, which lasted for about three years, he tried acupuncture using an electrical stimulator attached to his ears. This treatment, combined with abstinence from the drug, helped Clapton beat the addiction. Unfortunately, Clapton ended up replacing one drug with another, in this case, alcohol.
While flying to Tulsa, Oklahoma for a gig, Clapton got drunk and had an altercation with another passenger. Then, after leaving the plane, the Tulsa police questioned Clapton about the argument and he began yelling at the cops until they threw him in jail.
In Frankfurt, Germany in November 1978, since Clapton had built a reputation as an inveterate drunk, when his manager canceled a show because of technical reasons, the headlines in national papers the next day read: ERIC CLAPTON – TOO DRUNK TO PLAY.
. In 1967, Clapton took his first psychedelic drug. This was actually STP, a very potent hallucinogen, which would reportedly keep a person stoned for up to three days. (Clapton wrote that he actually stayed inebriated for this long.) While tripping, Clapton recalls listening to one of the first acetates of the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which the Beatles had supposedly written while on LSD.
Clapton entered Hazelden, a drug rehabilitation facility in Center City, Minnesota and was successfully treated for alcoholism and then released. However, just months later he relapsed and continued drinking for years, eventually hitting bottom again, when he composed a song entitled “Holy Mother,” in which he asked for help from God.
Clapton did a lot of drugs and went into a depression in the early ’70s. He was deeply affected by the deaths of Duane Allman, Jimi Hendrix, and the grandfather who raised him. According to his autobiography Clapton, his heroin addition at one point was costing him about $16,000 a week, and when he finally kicked that habit he turned to cocaine and alcohol.
After struggling with addiction for years and finally getting clean, Clapton opened his own rehab center, Crossroads in 1998. The exclusive live in center is located on the island of Antigua, with Clapton saying he believed island’s serenity and isolation made it perfect place for a treatment center.
13- He collects Ferraris.
“I’ve loved motor races since I was a child …” Clapton said, in comments posted earlier this year byShowbizspy.com. “I love the sound of Ferraris and I, as a musician, can confirm that these engines deliver proper music. I have to say that my weak point is the 12-cylinder’s music. The sound of the 12-cylinder is the most magical thing in the world.” You can watch an interview conducted by Ferrari with Clapton here.
. Clapton has loved race cars since he was just a child, and he thinks that the sound of a 12-cylinder “is the most magical thing in the world.”
Clapton’s favourite car is a Ferrari, and he loves the expensive model so much he’s become a collector. It’s impossible to list the number of Ferraris Clapton’s had in total, but he does own a special one off model named the SP12 EC. The car was custom made for him in 2010 and was estimated to cost around $4.7million!
14-“Wonderful Tonight” was reportedlywritten about Clapton’s first wife Pattie Boyd (who had been George Harrison’s first wife, prior to Clapton’s). Clapton’s song “Layla” was also written for Boyd, as were Harrison’s “Something” and “I Need You.”
15-In 1986, while still married to Pattie Boyd, Clapton saw two other children born to two different women: his son Conor and a daughter Ruth, who was not publicly acknowledged by Clapton until 1993.
16- He’s the only artist who’s been inducted in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three times: Clapton is a three-time Hall of Famer, with three inductions in less than 10 years. The rock legend was first inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1992 for his work in the 1960s rock group The Yardbirds and again the following year for his role in the power trio Cream. In 2000, Clapton was recognized for his work as a solo artist on the first year that he was eligible.
He would have gotten a fourth Rock Hall induction, had he been successful in his quest in join another “Band.”
“I first met Eric in Los Angeles around the time Music from Big Pink came out,” The Band’s Robbie Robertson toldSpinner, earlier this year. “[Later] he came to our house in Woodstock to visit with us. I thought he was just curious but then he said years later that the real reason was that he had come to join The Band. I made a joke out of it, saying, ‘Were you implying that we need a new guitar player?’” Ironically, Clapton presented The Band with their Rock Hall induction in 1994.
17 -He wrote ‘Layla’ about George Harrison’s wife
The Clapton classic ‘Layla’ was inspired by Eric’s unrequited love for his friend George Harrison’s wife, model Pattie Boyd. Eventually Harrison and Boyd divorced and she subsequently married Clapton in 1979. Amazingly Clapton and Harrison remained friends and the former Beatle even attended the couple’s wedding party. However Clapton and Boyd’s marriage didn’t last and they eventually divorced in 1988.
‘Layla’ was a song written by Eric Clapton for a lady named Patti Boyd. She actually was the wife of George Harrison, his best friend. It seems that the song really works since Patti left his husband for Eric.
Clapton was featured in the film version of Tommy, which was a rock opera written by the Who. Clapton appeared as a preacher in the movie.
18- He loved George Harrison, but he thought Beatlemania was “despicable.”
“It showed how sheep-like people were, and how ready they were ready to elevate players to the status of gods,” he wrote, in his autobiography. “Most of the artists I admired had died unheard of, sometimes penniless and alone.” Of course, in due time, Clapton himself would be dubbed a “god.”
19- He once hit actress Shirley MacLaine in the face with a pie.
In 1975 Clapton was invited to participate in a “celebrity circus” alongside James Bond legend Sean Connery, director John Huston, actor Burgess Meredith (of future Rocky fame), and Shirley MacLaine. One skit called for Clapton and Meredith to hit one another in the face with pies. For the first two shows they performed as scripted, but for the third show, they (drunkenly) surprised MacLaine with a face-full from both sides. The actress remained furious with Clapton for months.
Clapton appeared in the bizarre 1970’s short film Circasia, where he played a clown alongside Sean Connery. In one scene, Clapton and actor Burgess Meredith surprised Shirley by drunkenly hitting her in the face with a cream pie. The actress was furious and reportedly refused to speak to Clapton for months. This is one that’s worth checking out,
Eric Clapton – Circasia (Richard Harris, Shirley McLaine, and Burgess Meredith) – 1975 Film
20-He once dated Sheryl Crow
Though they tried to keep their relationship quiet, Clapton and Crowe briefly dated back in 1996. Crow’s song ‘My Favourite Mistake’, off her 1998 album The Globe Sessions, is widely thought to be about her relationship with Clapton.
21- Of all the bands he’s been in, the one he wishes had lasted longer was … Blind Faith.
“I think Blind Faith was over too soon,” he told MSNBC, in 2007. “We could have gone on maybe a couple more years. But I’m not really a band member. I think all [the other] bands probably lasted about the right amount of time for what they were meant to do.”
He lived in a house in Miami on 461 Ocean Boulevard. The address became the name of one of his albums. The Bee Gees later lived in that house.
22-There’s a planet Clapton
Yes Harvard University named asteroid (or minor planet 4305) after Eric. If your looking for it, 4305 Clapton can be found somewhere in between Mars and Jupiter.
Planet Clapton’s orbit is located between that of Mars and Jupiter in an area of space known as the Asteroid Belt. It is in a 5-year elliptical orbit around the Sun. The closest it gets to the Sun is 405 million kilometers (253 million miles). In contrast, the Earth’s orbit around the Sun takes only 365 days and its distance from the sun is 149 million kilometers (93 million miles). Planet Clapton’s orbit is inclined at about two degrees to the ecliptic plane (the plane of the Earth’s orbit and the Sun).
23- Clapton’s only solo song to hit No. 1 on Billboard charts was his 1974 cover of Bob Marley’s “I Shot the Sheriff.”
461 Ocean Boulevard is Eric’s album created in 1974. This album also includes a cover of I Shot the Sheriff. It was the song of Bob Marley. In 1977, he released an album called Slow Hand.
24- In August 1990, Clapton performed at a gig at the Alpine Valley Theatre near Chicago, Illinois. Clapton played with Buddy Guy, Robert Cray and Stevie Ray Vaughan. After the show, four helicopters loaded everybody up and took them home. Tragically, the pilot of the chopper in which Vaughan flew lost his way in the thick fog and crashed into a man-made ski slope, killing Vaughan and everybody else aboard. Viewing the fog before takeoff, Clapton had felt apprehensive and thought, This doesn’t look right.
25- In 1990, Clapton was beginning to feel good about being a father to his four-year-old son, Conor, whose mother was Italian model Lory Del Santo. Sadly, while staying in a high-rise hotel in NYC, Conor accidentally walked through an open window, which had been left open by a janitor, and plunged 49 stories to his death.
26- Clapton idolized his uncle Adrian. The album Reptile is a sort of tribute to Adrian, who died in spring 2000.
27-Now married to Melia McEnery, with whom he has fathered three daughters, Clapton is now a happy family man, and also clean and sober for over 25 years.
28-Clapton reunited in 2005 with his old bandmates, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, formerly of Cream. The first series of concerts in Royal Albert Hall in the U.K. went well for Clapton, but the second set of gigs in Madison Square Garden in NYC just weren’t the same. Clapton thought some of the old animosity and arrogance had crept into their performance. Nevertheless, he was happy Bruce and Baker had gotten a good payday out of it.
29-It was a very interesting fact to know that Eric can get a little bit information about his biological father in 1998. When he was 53 years old, he realized that his father was a Canadian pilot.
30- He plans to retire from being a rock star…and it could be soon: Clapton once told Rolling Stonethat he’ll likely stop touring when he’s a septuagenarian. “When I’m 70, I’ll stop,” he said. “I won’t stop playing or doing one-offs, but I’ll stop touring, I think.” Eric Clapton turns 70 on March 30.
