Clapton: The Autobiography | Eric Clapton

Clapton: The Autobiography | Eric Clapton | Moving and Memorable

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Clapton: The Autob...

	Clapton: The Autobiography Eric Clapton Broadway, 2008 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 302 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

?I found a pattern in my behavior that had been repeating itself for years, decades even. Bad choices were my specialty, and if something honest and decent came along, I would shun it or run the other way.?

With striking intimacy and candor, Eric Clapton tells the story of his eventful and inspiring life in this poignant and honest autobiography. More than a rock star, he is an icon, a living embodiment of the history of rock music. Well known for his reserve in a profession marked by self-promotion, flamboyance, and spin, he now chronicles, for the first time, his remarkable personal and professional journeys.

Born illegitimate in 1945 and raised by his grandparents, Eric never knew his father and, until the age of nine, believed his actual mother to be his sister. In his early teens his solace was the guitar, and his incredible talent would make him a cult hero in the clubs of Britain and inspire devoted fans to scrawl ?Clapton is God? on the walls of London?s Underground. With the formation of Cream, the world's first supergroup, he became a worldwide superstar, but conflicting personalities tore the band apart within two years. His stints in Blind Faith, in Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, and in Derek and the Dominos were also short-lived but yielded some of the most enduring songs in history, including the classic ?Layla.?

During the late sixties he played as a guest with Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan, as well as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and longtime friend George Harrison. It was while working with the latter that he fell for George?s wife, Pattie Boyd, a seemingly unrequited love that led him to the depths of despair, self-imposed seclusion, and drug addiction. By the early seventies he had overcome his addiction and released the bestselling album 461 Ocean Boulevard, with its massive hit ?I Shot the Sheriff.? He followed that with the platinum album Slowhand, which included ?Wonderful Tonight,? the touching love song to Pattie, whom he finally married at the end of 1979. A short time later, however, Eric had replaced heroin with alcohol as his preferred vice, following a pattern of behavior that not only was detrimental to his music but contributed to the eventual breakup of his marriage.
In the eighties he would battle and begin his recovery from alcoholism and become a father. But just as his life was coming together, he was struck by a terrible blow: His beloved four-year-old son, Conor, died in a freak accident. At an earlier time Eric might have coped with this tragedy by fleeing into a world of addiction. But now a much stronger man, he took refuge in music, responding with the achingly beautiful ?Tears in Heaven.?

Clapton is the powerfully written story of a survivor, a man who has achieved the pinnacle of success despite extraordinary demons. It is one of the most compelling memoirs of our time.

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one man's soul journey

A lively read for the first two-thirds of "Clapton". The early parts of the book cover Clapton's emotional baggage when he learns of his bastard status; the years as an art student; and most interesting, the genesis of his music and his resonation with the blues. The way Clapton talks of his "calling" leads one to the conclusion that some musicians, like Dylan and Neil Young, just fit into their destinies like a gloved hand.

There are plenty of British phraseologies and slang that tend to throw speed bumps into the narrative flow however; you have to second guess what he's talking about if not familiar with Briticisms, which I suspect many of us are not. Still, the book moves along well until the last third, when Clapton opens up about his recovery from alcoholism; his family life; the Cream reunion concerts, and finally his last world tour. It feels like this last part of the book was rushed and actually written by someone else. It comes dangerously close to imploding.

Also the humility does come across as pretty selective, while we're filled in on all the estates, houses, cars, guitars, watches (what am I forgetting?) that his wealth has provided in the acquiring of these possessions. Yes, Mr. Clapton is a full-on materialist; but, giving the man his due, he certainly worked hard over his forty year career and he's entitled to enjoy the fruit of his labors like anyone else would be. It just feels like a strange contrast when he talks about the spiritual part of his life that his recovery has made possible, while we learn about the vast amount of possessions he owns.

In "Clapton", we do have a front row seat as we witness EC's obsessions and addictions: women, especially Patti Boyd; heroin and alcohol; and his magpie tendencies to acquire worldly things. But he does come across as being forthright, even if some of the juicier details of his career have been omitted. We do have to remember that his brain was impaired for many years and he would not recall details of this adventurous life that others in his life would and could. Some of the other reviewers seem to self-righteously gloss over this fact with some real inappropriate judgments.

Anyway, having prevailed through a long wake of wreakage and heartache, this man Clapton has shown much faith and courage to recreate his life, and thus come to terms with himself in his later years. That is the real message that comes across in this book; one only needs to read past the narrative in the lines to get the more fundamental narrative of this man's soul journey.

The Cloud Reckoner

Extracts: A Field Guide for Iconoclasts

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Moving and Memorable

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and read it in one sitting. Clapton gives a no holds barred account of his life, his failings and his successes. The portion about his son's death is very sad and disturbing. What's even sadder is how Clapton, a serious alcoholic at the time, admits he didn't devote the kind of attention to his young son that he should have.

I'm not sure what the negative reviews screaming "arrogance!" here are all about. The man in question is extremely talented as well as opinionated. He also repeatedly acknowledges he is a deeply flawed person. He comes across as confident in his undisputed musical ability, and humble about how lucky he is to have been given a second chance at happiness after a lifetime of drug and alcohol abuse. I further admire the fact that Clapton even at a young age, and at a time when he had no fame or fortune, stuck to his guns and played music on his own terms when many around him were selling out. Furthermore, he is quick to point out the irony of his life and his own idiosyncrasies.

I won't go into to too much detail about his life, I think the reader should read the book.

I'm not giving it 5 stars because I would have liked to hear more about Clapton's music and how he got to be the guitar virtuoso that he is.

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An eye-opener for sure, but not arrogant at all.

I'm reading various negative reviews of this book, and I cannot believe that people are calling Eric Clapton arrogant in his writing. This book had its flaws, but Clapton's supposed "name dropping" and "arrogance" does not exist, at least not in this book.

I'll say first that I love Eric Clapton's music. He's the reason I'm playing my guitar, and he's taught me a lot about music. I'm only 24, though, and the only image I've ever had of Clapton is his current old man image. It's not much of an image, so I've always just focused on his guitar playing and music making. And because the guitar playing is one-of-a-kind amazing, I've managed to put Clapton up on this pedestal, and I didn't mind. To me, he deserved it.

The book erased that godly image of Clapton I had. As soon as he started getting into details about his life instead of his music, that image was erased from my mind. He did tons of drugs and drinking, had a bunch of issues with sex and women, which probably led to his crazy first marriage. I couldn't believe that the actual Eric Clapton was letting this stuff out! He's always been extremely shy, and you can tell in this book. The way he writes about his experiences are detailed, but at the same time so abstract. For example, when he starts to talk about his son's death, or his daughter that he didn't raise, you wonder some things, because he just doesn't talk about how those things made him feel.

I also could've gone with more guitar details. He talks about what his first guitar was, how much it cost, where his parents bought it for him and how he learned to play it, but he just doesn't talk about how playing it made him feel, and how he felt owning it for the first time (funny, because he's got the blues, and blues players are all about the feel. He just lets it out in his guitar playing, I guess.)

I honestly don't know where people get the "arrogant" criticisms from, though. He actually downplays his skills and does not reflect with happiness when he thinks about all the people he screwed up. Maybe the arrogance criticism comes from the fact that he only focuses on his side of the story. But how can he tell someone else's story? Either way, he reflects with remorse, and a little bit of shame as well. And calling Clapton a name dropper is an oxymoron. He was part of a music movement and an innovator, not a hanger-on. If anything, people were name dropping him.

Don't criticize the book because it only has a few black and white pictures. Clapton has always been very private, and him writing this book (all by himself, by the way, which explains why the writing is jumpy and brief at times) was enough insight into his life. And did a reviewer here actually think it was wrong that he married a younger woman and bought a boat? Why does that even matter?

And I'm biased here, but I found the story admirable and kind of sad at the end. Unlike a lot of his peers, he lived to tell his story. It broke my heart when he said the only thing he dislikes about getting old is that he won't see his young daughters when they're grown. In the end, he's a man who got down on his knees and admitted every single thing he did wrong. You can't turn back time and take everything back, but you can learn from your mistakes. And I think that's what Clapton did, and in this book he tries to tell the reader.

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