March 30, 2020
Continuity and loyalty are not his thing – neither in his many bands nor in his relationships. The Roosters, which he joined when he was 17, were followed by the Yardbirds, John Mayalls Bluesbreakers, Cream, The Dirty Mac, Blind Faith and later Derek And The Dominos.
He married Pattie Boyd, whom he spanned from Beatle George Harrison. That didn’t stop Eric Clapton from having children with other women during their marriage. The model Carla Bruni was one of his groupies as was Sheryl.
The reason is probably in his screwed up youth. Because his father, a Canadian soldier, has left the dust, he is raised by his grandparents in post-war England. The young Eric rarely sees his mother, who is just 16 years older than her big sister.
After the dizziness is revealed, a shy guy with a penchant for self-loathing remains, Peter Kemper writes in his recently published biography about the musician, who has sold more than 130 million albums and played with all the greats in the industry.
Number two behind Jimmy Hendrix
The constant in the life of Eric Clapton, who was born in Ripley on March 30, 1945, is obviously the blues. Myths of outsiderism, rebellion and non-conformism, of masculinity, freedom and free movement unite in him, he once said. The musician, who has long been ennobled as “guitar god”, created numerous hits that mutated into evergreens, such as “Lay Down Sally” or “Wonderful Tonight”. This gave him not only 17 (!) Grammys, but in the specialist magazine “Rolling Stone” the second place of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time behind Jimmy Hendrix.
Before that happened, however, Clapton had to overcome several crises and addictions in the 1970s. So he not only had a veritable drug problem, but also an alcohol problem. “The only problem was that I was hopelessly attached to the bottle and had practically lost all control over my drinking behavior,” he admitted in his 2007 autobiography “Mein Leben”. It took several withdrawal treatments to free him from addiction. The tragic death of his son Conor in 1991 also made it difficult for him. The four-year-old fell while playing through a window on the 53rd floor of a New York skyscraper. A little later he processed this stroke of fate with “Tears in Heaven”.
Eric Clapton was last heard in Austria in June 2019 and delighted visitors in the Wiener Stadthalle with numbers such as “Cocain”, “Crossroads” and “Tearing Us Apart”.
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