As an youngster, Clapton's first exposure to Rock 'n' Roll was a Jerry Lee Lewis appearance on British television. Lewis' explosive performance, coupled with young Eric's emerging love of the Blues and American R&B, inspired him to learn to play guitar. Eric enrolled at the Kingston College of Art, but was soon expelled for playing guitar in class. At seventeen, he took a job as a manual labourer and spent most of his free time playing the electric guitar he persuaded his grandparents to purchase for him. In time, Clapton joined a number of British Blues bands, including The Roosters and Casey Jones, and eventually rose to prominence as a member of The Yardbirds, whose line-up would eventually include all three British guitar heroes of the sixties: Clapton, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck. The group became a sensation for their Blues-tinged Rock, as did the budding guitar virtuoso Clapton, who earned the nickname Slowhand because his forceful string-bending often resulted in broken guitar strings which he would replace on stage while the crowd engaged in a slow hand-clapping.
Despite the popularity of the band's first two albums, "Five Live Yardbirds" and "For Your Love", Clapton left in 1965 because he felt the band was veering away from Blues in favor of a more commercially viable Pop focus. He joined John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and his talent blossomed at an accelerated rate. He quickly became the defining musical force of the group. "Clapton is God" was the hue and cry of a fanatic following that propelled the band's "Bluesbreakers" album to #6 on the English pop charts.
Clapton parted company with the Bluesbreakers in mid-1966 to form his own band, Cream, with bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker. With this line-up, Clapton sought "to start a revolution in musical thought, to change the world, to upset people and to shock them." His vision was more than met as Cream quickly became the pre-eminent Rock trio of the late sixties. On the strength of their first three albums ("Fresh Cream", "Disraeli Gears", and "Wheels of Fire") and extensive touring, the band achieved a level of international fame approaching that of The Rolling Stones and The Beatles and Clapton became even more almighty in the minds of his fans. Drug abuse and inflated egos eventually led to a split of the band and to a farewell tour in 1968 as well as the release of the "Goodbye" album in 1969. Early in 1969, Clapton united with Baker, bassist Rick Grech, and Steve Winwood, formerly of The Spencer Davis Group and Traffic, to record one album as Blind Faith, Rock's first supergroup. In support of their self-titled album, Blind Faith set out on a sold-out, twenty-four-city American tour, the stress of which resulted in the demise of the band less than a year after its inception.
Clapton kept busy for a time as an occasional guest player with Delaney and Bonnie, the husband-and-wife team that had been Blind Faith's opening act during their tour. A disappointing live album and the singles, "Never Ending Love" (#13) and "Only You Know And I Know" (#20) were released in 1970, as was Clapton's self-titled solo debut. That album featured three other musicians, bassist Carl Radle, keyboardist Bobby Whitlock, and drummer Jim Gordon, from Delaney's band, and yielded a modest Pop hit with Clapton's version of J.J. Cale's "After Midnight" (#18). The four eventually called themselves Derek And The Dominos, and recorded Clapton's double album "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs", with the added contribution of slide guitarist Duane Allman. An anguished lament of unrequited love, "Layla" (#10) was inspired by a difficult love triangle between Clapton, his close friend George Harrison, and Harrison's wife Pattie (she and Clapton eventually married in 1979 and divorced in 1988). Unfortunately, personal struggles and career pressure on the guitarist led to a major heroin addiction. Derek And The Dominos crumbled during the course of an American tour and an aborted attempt to record a second album.
Clapton withdrew from the spotlight in the early seventies, wallowing in his addiction and then struggling to conquer it. Following the advice of the Who's Pete Townsend, he underwent a controversial but effective electro-acupuncture drug treatment and was fully rehabilitated. He rebounded creatively with a role in the film version of Townsend's Rock Opera, Tommy, and with a string of albums, including the reggae-influenced "461 Ocean Boulevard", which yielded a chart-topping single cover of Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff." Some critics and fans were disappointed by Clapton's post-rehab efforts, feeling that he had abandoned his former guitar-heavy approach in favor of a more laid-back and vocal-conscious one.
"Just One Night", Clapton's 1980 live album, reminded fans just exactly who their guitar hero was, but unfortunately this period marked Clapton's slide into a serious drinking problem that eventually hospitalized him for a time in 1981. He experienced a creative resurgence after overcoming his alcoholism, releasing a string of consistently successful albums: "Another Ticket" (1981), "Money and Cigarettes" (1983), "Behind the Sun" (1985), "August" (1986), "Journeyman" (1989). Though some say Clapton never regained the musical heights of his heroin days, his legend nevertheless continued to grow. That he was a paragon of Rock that became more than apparent when Polygram released a rich four-CD retrospective of his career, "Crossroads", in 1988. The set scored Grammy awards for Best Historical Album and Best Liner Notes.
In late 1990, the fates delivered Clapton a terrible blow when guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan and Clapton road crew members Colin Smythe and Nigel Browne, all close friends of Clapton's, were killed in a helicopter crash. A few months later, he was dealt another cruel blow when Conor, his son by Italian model Lori Del Santo, fell forty-nine stories from Del Santo's Manhattan high-rise apartment to his death. Clapton channelled his shattering grief into writing the heart-wrenching, 1992 Grammy-winning tribute to his son, "Tears in Heaven". (Clapton received a total of six Grammys that year for the single and for the album "Unplugged".)
In 1994, he began once again to play traditional Blues. The album "From the Cradle" marked a return to raw Blues standards and it hit with critics and fans. Clapton showed no signs of slowing down. In February of 1997 he picked up Record Of The Year and Best Male Pop Vocal Performance Grammys for "Change the World" from the soundtrack of the John Travolta movie Phenomenon. In 1998, Clapton, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, founded the Crossroads Centre, a medical facility for recovering substance abusers. The year 2000 saw Clapton's "My Father's Eyes" climb to #16 on the Billboard Airplay chart, to score yet another hit for the legendary guitarist. In 2004 he was awarded a CBE (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) for his services to music, in a ceremony at Buckingham Palace.
In 2005, Eric reformed Cream with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce for four shows at London’s Royal Albert Hall, the same venue where their farewell shows took place 37 years earlier. In October of that same year, the trio performed three more concerts at New York’s Madison Square Garden. The London shows were released on CD and DVD in late 2005. In 2006, he was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Grammy as a member of Cream. In October, 2007, Eric’s autobiography, Clapton, was published in twelve languages and topped best-seller lists around the world.
Following his 70th birthday series of shows at London's Royal Albert Hall, Clapton's concerts were scheduled to hit movie theaters worldwide in September, 2015. In mid-February, 2016, he announced his 23rd solo album, "I Still Do", would be released on May 20. Clapton continued what he called his Farewell Tour, but insisted that he would retire from touring in 2017. In January, 2018 he told BBC radio host Steve Wright that although he was scheduled to headline the British Summer Time festival in July, he was struggling to overcome painful nerve issues in his hands and crippling hearing issues. The guitarist was quoted as saying, "I am still going to work. The only thing I am concerned with now is I am going deaf. I've got tinnitus, my hands just about work. I mean, I am hoping people will come along and see me, me more than I am a curiosity. I know that is part of it because it's amazing to myself that I am still here." Along with a private Greenwich, Conn. show in May and a July appearance at London's Hyde Park, he was also slated to perform at New York City's Madison Square Garden on October 6 and 7. A Billboard 200 album chart dated October 27th 2018 listed Clapton's "Happy Christmas" LP at #168 overall and #1 on the Holiday Albums chart.
Plans for 2019 included shows on September 11th in San Francisco, Las Vegas on September 13th and a gig in Phoenix on September 14th. Those three dates would build up to his Crossroads Guitar Festival, scheduled for September 20th and 21st at the American Airlines Center in Dallas. Clapton would serve as the headliner for both dates, which include appearances by Billy Gibbons, Joe Walsh, Peter Frampton, Jeff Beck, Bonnie Raitt, Gary Clark Jr., Los Lobos and many others. His plans for 2020 included a special tribute to Ginger Baker at London's Hammersmith Apollo on February 17th. Most of the rest of the year's scheduled events were shelved due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
In December of 2020, Clapton ruffled some feathers when he collaborated with Van Morrison on an anti-Covid-lockdown song called "Stand and Deliver", which resulted in both artists facing heavy backlash online. With the pandemic shutting down nearly all venues in 2020 from March on, Clapton fans were delighted to learn that a recording of Cream's show at the Forum in Los Angeles during their Goodbye Tour in 1968 was scheduled for release on vinyl for the first time on April 23rd, 2021. In mid-May of that year, the guitarist was back in the news again when it was confirmed that he sent a letter to architect and anti-lockdown activist Robin Monotti Graziadei. In that correspondence the musician claimed that after receiving his AstraZeneca shot in February, he suffered severe reactions which lasted ten days. "Needless to say the reactions were disastrous, my hands and feet were either frozen, numb or burning, and pretty much useless for two weeks, I feared I would never play again. I continue to tread the path of passive rebellion and try to tow the line in order to be able to actively love my family, but it's hard to bite my tongue with what I now know." Fans received some great news in mid-June, when Clapton announced that he would be playing eight concert dates in Texas, New Orlean, Nashville and Florida, with Jimmie Vaughan as his opening act, beginning in September, 2021. A month later he released a statement that said he would not perform at any venue that required mandatory vaccinations. After U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared event locations hosting large crowds must require visitors to provide verification of their vaccine status, Clapton hinted that he had considered moving out of the U.K. entirely due to the health restrictions. In late August, 2021, he released another protest single called "This Has Gotta Stop", which referred to political figures, creeping technological interference, environmental issues and rampant groupthink. However, when he took to the stage again in mid-September, he appeared to break his own rule against appearing at venues that required proof of vaccination when he performed at the Smoothie King Center in New Orleans, which followed public health rules. Clapton then treated his fans with a new single called "Heart Of A Child" the following December.
His anti-vaccine stance came back to haunt him on May 16th, 2022 when he was forced to announce the postponement of two dates of his European tour after testing positive for COVID-19. A statement from Clapton's management team said, "He has been told by his medical advisors that if he were to resume traveling and performing too soon, it could substantially delay his full recovery. Eric is also anxious to avoid passing on any infection to any of his band, crew, promoters, their staff and of course, the fans." His tour was scheduled to resume with two shows in Bologna on May 20 and 21. Later that Summer, Reprise Records announced a limited edition release of a 12-LP boxed set titled "The Complete Reprise Studio Albums – Vol. 1", which revisits Clapton's first six albums for the label along with an LP exclusive to the collection that features rarities from the era. The price for the collection was $249.98 U.S.
Plans for 2023 included six dates in the U.S. and Canada starting September 8th in Pittsburgh and wrapping up on September 16th in Denver. Set to arrive on June 23rd was an extended box set edition of his 1991 live album "24 Nights". The collection contains previously unreleased audio and video from his celebrated run at London's Royal Albert Hall. On November 16th of that same year, Julien's Auctions in Nashville sold Clapton's Gibson SG guitar, dubbed "The Fool", for a whopping $1.27 million (£1.03 million).
As he continued his tour of North and South America, a new live album titled "Crossroads Guitar Festival 2023" was slated for release on November 29th, 2024. The LP and DVD features Clapton, along with Stephen Stills, Joe Bonamassa, Gary Clark Jr, Sheryl Crow, Eric Gales, H.E.R., Christone 'Kingfish' Ingram, Los Lobos, John Mayer, The Marcus King Band, Roger McGuinn, John McLaughlin, Santana, The Wallflowers, and many others. A second album titled "Meanwhile" was also on tap, scheduled to be issued in digital form on October 4th before coming to CD and vinyl on January 24th, 2025. That album includes fourteen songs, eight collected from singles Clapton has released over the past few years, and includes collaborations with Van Morrison, Bradley Walker, Judith Hill, Daniel Santiago, Simon Climie and the late Jeff Beck.
Over the course of his career, Eric Clapton has rolled up plenty of honors, including numerous hit records, nineteen Grammys and becoming the first musician inducted three times into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame.
