"I am, and always will be, a blues guitarist." ~Eric ClaptonIt’s Dylan Days in the Northland, but since I just finished reading Eric Clapton’s autobiography I can’t help but address it one more time.
First, a few details. I listened to the audio version, which was abridged. It was very good and covered his life with ample detail to be satisfying. According to some reviews the unabridged version has dry spots. Perhaps he felt an obligation to produce a lengthier tome, as opposed to a slimmer volume, because he was paid $7 million dollars to write it and did not wish to shortchange his sponsors.
The book comes across as a remarkably candid personal account of his life. He doesn’t flinch from things that put Eric Clapton in a poor light. It's real, tragic at times, actually quite powerful. It's not something you pick up for the juicy gossipy bits. It's a real account of one man's struggle to achieve manhood. This is, in fact, the single theme throughout: Clapton’s struggle to become a mensch. Despite great personal pain, escapist behavior and setbacks, he came through the dark valley and up the other side to make a contributions beyond his own self-promotion.
First, a few details. I listened to the audio version, which was abridged. It was very good and covered his life with ample detail to be satisfying. According to some reviews the unabridged version has dry spots. Perhaps he felt an obligation to produce a lengthier tome, as opposed to a slimmer volume, because he was paid $7 million dollars to write it and did not wish to shortchange his sponsors.
The book comes across as a remarkably candid personal account of his life. He doesn’t flinch from things that put Eric Clapton in a poor light. It's real, tragic at times, actually quite powerful. It's not something you pick up for the juicy gossipy bits. It's a real account of one man's struggle to achieve manhood. This is, in fact, the single theme throughout: Clapton’s struggle to become a mensch. Despite great personal pain, escapist behavior and setbacks, he came through the dark valley and up the other side to make a contributions beyond his own self-promotion.
Being one of the luminaries of the rock scene this past four decades, it’s not surprising that Clapton’s career bisected many other greats of the era and he gives much praise to these with whom he had the privilege of performing. As someone quite talented, his assessments carry a measure of weight.
If you do a Google search you’ll quite a few reviews of this book, and I would encourage you to check them out. I like Greg Kot's review of October 14, 2007 which opens like this:
“Clapton is God,” the graffiti in London once said. But Eric Clapton knew better. He wasn’t God. He was struggling mightily to be a man, and by his own admission didn’t quite become one until he was well into his sixth decade.
If you do a Google search you’ll quite a few reviews of this book, and I would encourage you to check them out. I like Greg Kot's review of October 14, 2007 which opens like this:
“Clapton is God,” the graffiti in London once said. But Eric Clapton knew better. He wasn’t God. He was struggling mightily to be a man, and by his own admission didn’t quite become one until he was well into his sixth decade. “Clapton: The Autobiography” (Broadway Books) does what many rock historians couldn’t: It debunks the legend, de-mythologizes one of the most mythologized electric guitarists ever, puts a lie to the glamor of what it means to be a rock star.
“Backstage, John [Lennon] and I did so much blow that he threw up.” Those few words capture the book’s tenor: intimate, scandalous, titillating, but ultimately sad, at times pathetic. Legends reduced to drug-addled buffoons.
As a first-time author, Clapton has a matter-of-fact, self-deprecating touch. In this autobiography, for which he was reportedly paid nearly $7 million, the guitarist who launched the Yardbirds, Cream and Blind Faith psychoanalyzes himself and recounts a life riddled with drugs, booze, womanizing, shame, self-doubt and self-destructive choices. He sleepwalks through the prime of his life in a haze of self-medication, and rightly trashes most of the albums he released in the ’70s and ’80s. “There was no reason for me to be making records at all,” he acknowledges, yet he went right on making them, tarnishing a great legacy almost beyond repair.
What struck me most about the book is the feeling of transparency it conveys. At the end I felt I understood his views, convictions as it were, regarding music and art and the values he possessed. He lays his heart bare in this story, and perhaps that has always been the power behind his work.
Consider these lines from the song Tears In Heaven, written with Will Jennings after the horrorific loss of his four year old son Conor. I still remember the shock I felt when I heard that nightmarish news in 1991, having a son of my own at a similar age. I can't even imagine going through something like that.
Time can bring you down,
Time can bend your knees.
Time can break your heart,
Have you begging please, begging please.
When I finished the book last night I put on his Greatest Hits album Time Pieces, followed by Derek & the Dominoes and his breakout Journeyman album while making art in my studio. It was a nice evening after a thought provoking read.
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