Original subtitles

Every time I come up to making any kind of big life decision,

I see it as a crossroads.

There are three or four different ways to go here.

Which is the one which is,

I don't know,

maybe the most spiritual,

the most honest,

and the most beneficial to everybody?

I suppose,

trying to read the Sun, tell me which way I should go to find the answer. And all the time I'm stuck in this line.

The only time I'm happy is when I play my guitar. Eric Clapton is, by common consent, the greatest living exponent of the electric guitar.

He could be the archetypal guitar hero, but a hero that hardly anyone could say that they really know.

He shuns fame,

a blues man who has lived the blues,

and he has an almost Chameleon-like ability to change,

survive,

and move on.

This was never more apparent than at the height of his fame in the

60s, when he was part of the supergroup Cream.

It's

1968, and Cream's farewell concert at the Albert Hall.

Clapton is about to pull the plug on the world's most successful rock trio.

With an almost dismissive wave of the hand,

three were finished,

and with one gesture,

Eric was creating another chapter in the story of a musical legend.

Throughout both his personal life and professional career,

the crossroads have been used as a metaphor for Eric's ever-changing life.

The addiction center in Antigua in the Caribbean that he founded is named after it.

It refers to a classic track that Eric has often revisited.

It was written by blues legend Robert Johnson,

a man whose vision and dedication acted as a beacon for the young Eric.

When I got Robert Johnson,

it was almost like he closed the door.

And it was...

It was almost another kind of experience in there that I knew that was somewhere I could never go.

I could always aspire to that,

but it was something I would never grasp.

And I think that,

in a way,

he was like the light at the end of the tunnel, in a way that gave me like a horizon to go towards.

Whereas I could probably,

in a conceited way,

say,

oh,

well,

I've got this piece of Brunzine down,

you know,

where I can play.

Peggy, Sue, or maybe baby, in a way that sounded like Buddy Holly.

But you could never say that of any of Robert Johnson's pieces.

Robert Johnson started out as a rather average folk blues player in the Deep South during the

1930s.

However, one year, he disappeared for six months.

On his return,

he was arguably the greatest guitar player on the Mississippi Delta.

The legend soon spread.

That he had sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads in return for his superhuman talents. I don't know anyone yet that has managed to actually, um, totally

imitate anything he's ever done. It's beyond so. To me, he is like the thing to aspire to and at the same time know that I could never get there. Robert Johnson's body was buried here,

in an unmarked grave at the Crossroads in Mississippi.

It was this story, more than any other, that seized the imagination of the young Eric Clapton.

But Eric's background was a million miles away from the deep South and the cotton fields.

He was born and brought up in what is known as London's Stockbroker Belt,

a chain of prosperous country villages on the outskirts of England's capital.

He was born in a small village called Ripley in Surrey.

I couldn't have chosen a better place to come from if I had to,

you know,

if I had to, kind of choose where I was going to be born. All over again.

I don't think I would have opted for the Mississippi.

Pete Richards of the Rolling Stones.

Stones,

although born on the other side of London,

had an almost identical experience as a youngster in the suburbs.

I guess it was the music from America originally that suddenly the world seemed to me to go from black and white to technicolor,

full technicolor.

Suddenly, there was something happening.

The rest of it had seemed to be while I was a kid. And I've no doubt to where it kind of...

Scraping along,

you know,

and they just trying to, like, gather up the bits,

you know,

It seemed because your parents, and,

in Eric's case,

his grandparents or whatever,

you know,

we grew up in a sort of fractured post-war

England, you know,

which is damn boring.

We grew up together from babies,

really.

He's only five doors away.

Rose and Jack brought Rick up and his grandparents.

And they were ever loving to him, and they spoiled him a little bit,

as they would.

He also seemed to have the newest toys,

etc.

Everything they did for him.

Eric's childhood was the childhood of an outsider.

In England in 1945,

there was still a stigma attached to being born illegitimate.

The thing about being an outsider was never put on me by them.

It was something that I felt within myself as...

In a genetic way is that perhaps? And I and I've since learned that my father was a traveler, um, not a Romany or a Gypsy, but he was. He always was on the move, and I think I inherited that genetically. Is that, you know, and I know today that I

still like to divide my time between one player. I like to spend a certain amount of my time here. Then I after a while I want to move. I just to have an inbuilt desire to travel,

which those guys don't have.

They like being...

Exactly,

they liked staying.

Eric was the result of his mother's liaison with a Canadian air force man.

His grandparents brought him up as their own,

and he thought his real mother was his sister until he was 11.

His best friend from that time,

Guy Pullen,

remembers Eric's reaction to finding out the truth about his origins.

It was shock, more than anything else,

I think,

when he realised that Rose wasn't his actual mother.

Because, obviously, Rose could have been his mother with the age gap,

Pat had him when she was only 16.

So we would just think that it was a mother anyway,

she wasn't any older than her own parent.

Eric was seen as an outsider by his contemporaries.

I think whatever he did,

he tended to,

you know,

do it in a quite serious way.

I remember he went to see the film The Magnificent Seven, and was very impressed by it.

One of the seven was a knife thrower,

had a knife and suddenly went like that.

And the person was dead. And that impressed Eric, and he wanted to be the one who threw the knives. Turning from his immediate surroundings, Eric looked across the Atlantic to a more glamorous world. One that he would later conquer, and one that now provided him with inspiration to turn to music. One

of the first books I ever got my hands on, it was a prize at school, when, you know, a prize giving day. They gave me a book on America, and it was like

one that it was like a whole other world,

you know,

photographs of skyscrapers.

And

I had an early interest in American cars and military stuff, and cowboys and Indians.

And it was all outside.

Everything was outside of Ripley,

all the stuff I was interested in.

And, of course,

eventually, music,

when that,

you know,

became a big part of my life,

my earliest recollections of music.

Were music from far away.

I couldn't,

you know,

the stuff that was local,

it didn't intrigue me that much.

It looked pretty much like imitative,

you know.

Eric became driven to master the music he heard from the states, from the likes of Bluesman,

big Bill Brunsin.

I'd say that the formative influences were probably Buddy Holly and Big Bill Brunsin between,

you know,

the white and black.

It's like a yin and yang side of individual.

Musicology in that, these were both solo artists who had completely mastered their scope of the music from a white side and from a black side. And was actually probably very. The root may have been Robert Johnson for both of them, in terms of its purity, if not Robert Johnson, Leroy Carr, or

I don't know who buddy Holly would have listened to, but it's absolutely guaranteed that it would have been black music.

I'm pretty sure it would have been actually

more like, maybe a mixture of,

you know,

country,

country and blues,

perhaps someone like Bob Wills, or because they were Texans and the music from the South.

So they were,

I mean,

those were my early role models, and they were actually fairly accessible artists.

You know,

like, there were times when

Bill Brunsey would actually make almost white music because he had begun to tour,

I guess, and was playing in Europe.

And had learned to how to compromise a little bit without really watering it down. So he was quite accessible to me in terms of learning, and Buddy Holly was very accessible because of the way he played and wrote. And they were really my formative role

models. It would have been about

10 or 11, I suppose, and Rose bought him a Spanish guitar, nothing too expensive, obviously. That was his first first get you out.

And it was quite incredible to watch him because he used to sit on the village green here in the summer. And just. And he had this old Grundy tape recorder and he continually played Brunzi, we didn't know Brunzi. All the local boys, I mean, we were all into

Buddy, Holly and Elvis. We'd never heard of Brunzi, Robert Johnson, these guys that we know so well now. But he used to literally play Brunswick back,

forward,

back,

forward. And then copy the rip

and copy, direct and copy direct, copy the rift. And he's just like, How does this sound? And it is sound the same. It is a self-taught magnificent, you know? But I want to give us, give me a tag of riding chair. Ripley was very much an

athletic community and and I needed to be,

I needed to meet other people who perhaps

more creative or more oddball.

I couldn't fit into it.

It's a very humiliating experience and I found that the only thing I had to offer was my ability to play the guitar. And I became accepted for that. And I developed in time a reputation which led to all of the work that I eventually got.

When he was 16,

Eric won a place among Surrey's elite students at the Kingston Art School.

It meant travelling to a bigger town and a partial escape.

From Ripley.

We had this one thing that tied us all together,

which was this love of,

or the passion of,

Black music. By way of the blues,

which we discovered.

This was like an endless journey of which we were just starting on.

Collyfield Road in Surbiton was the main school.

We had an annex,

which was three quarters of a mile up the road.

Well,

to get to that,

you had to go past Bell's music Shop.

And the big momentous thing was that Eric's grandmother had bought him this electric guitar,

this K guitar,

which was,

I think,

a Barney Kessel model.

I mean,

it really was a stunning thing and terribly expensive at that time.

If I remember rightly,

it was somewhere in the region of

£90-ish, that sort of price.

Well,

I mean,

if you think that,

I think my father was earning about £8 a week,

that was a lot of money.

Boy,

you accuse me!

Take a look yourself.

It was like another,

like a kind of like, almost like a Hollywood kind of thing going on in Houston.

For someone who came from Ripley,

it was like stepping into

Superstar. I remember there was this pub called the Crown, where everyone would go and drink,

and it had its own hierarchy,

its own pecking order. That were played.

For someone like me,

I had to hang around the fringe.

Until I was kind of okay.

At that time,

though,

I suppose we thought we were refined.

You know,

we were kind of into muddy waters, records and things, and not so much bothering with the pop end of things,

you know.

That side of the show, busy side of, and of course, you were resolutely none showbiz. I think I knew that with the Kingston crowd. I think, um,

Instinctively,

I knew I'd found something which could give me a standing,

a platform,

or a place to be.

It would give me...

It was a way of earning respect.

It was the first sign I'd had of anything that was in my being that could garner some respect,

even if it was momentarily.

I could stop people and get their attention and admiration.

And that's when I knew that that was something I could employ for the rest of my life,

you know,

as long as I developed it.

He used to come over to Kingston on the 215 bus. And again,

because we didn't have any money,

couldn't go out spending all over the place,

He would come to my place and we'd sit and listen, with our ears to the floor,

listening to a dancet record player.

One record was

Big Ball Bruins'

When did you leave Heaven.

Eric's devotion to the blues has never gone away,

but this dedication to his roots was sorely tested when commercial success came his way.

He didn't have long to wait.

Eric Clapton's move from the Surrey dormitory town of Ripley to the relative Bright lights of Kingston gave him an opportunity to show his skills to fellow students at the Kingston Art School.

In the explosion of new music, which took place in 1963,

a new band was being formed by some fellow students.

They asked Clapton to audition when a vacancy in the Yardbirds materialised.

He seemed very sure of himself,

very confident,

a very strong person.

Play with us. And, um, I sort of immediately took an immediate dislike to him for some reason. I thought I thought this guy's a bit couple. There was nothing else like it really around. Um, I mean, he

would even he's my guitars once, just to take it home and and and sort of put it on and work a way out of, you know, a stance, position. And gradually, maybe after about a few months

playing with us, he felt confident enough to start really soloing. He was a consumer stylist in his look and his clothing, and he had a certain, certain sadness about him, which I think was very appealing. Got a girl called Mamey, she'd

be nice and kind, don't care what she do. Why don't you worry? Our band was like

the typical band at the time that was based all based around the lead singer. Lead singer was the front, and so all the attention would go towards Keith. Um, then, after a while after he played in the band for a while, we

noticed that there were a crowd building up on his side of the stage. And lots of, lots of girls and men as well, you know, that were very interest in what he was doing.

So he was doing something or other.

But I don't know exactly what.

He had men and women,

boys and girls,

I guess at that time.

Yes,

he had his coterie of women who would faithfully follow us and him,

possibly because all our gigs were in London or thereabouts,

and they would come to every gig and the all-nighters at the Scene club.

And the adoration was a sort of platonic,

sort of a platonic thing,

you know.

What made him good at that time,

and I would say that that's my,

you know,

what moves me personally in music,

you know,

It has to send a shiver down my back,

and

I have to be really moved by the way somebody plays,

and without a doubt,

at that time,

he could play in such a way that could move one's feelings.

I would say he has that ability, and I mean, when you look at him playing, you can actually see that he's playing from his soul, inner self. Pain. In the same way as the people we were trying to emulate.

How many bridges I've got to clear and keep?

How many times must I explain myself?

Or I can talk to the voice?

Or I can talk to the voice?

It's almost like triangulated.

I had a very,

very...

I was on my journey, without a doubt towards,

you know,

rhythm and blues and Blues.

And I think the other guys, like Keith and Paul Samuel Smith, were going in different directions.

And I think both of those guys,

Keith,

I don't know that Keith had really made up his mind what he wanted to be,

but he was attracted to a lot of different things.

I mean,

he was attracted to jazz,

to folk and to,

you know,

superstardom.

And Paul was like listening to Bob Dylan and Joan Baez in the days when no one knew who they were. And was probably much more into organic music.

So,

and those kinds of things were conflicting with one another.

And a lot of the time, we didn't really have any access to express that conflict.

It was just like disgruntled.

I mean,

we weren't,

I mean,

I think we could all tell that we weren't seeing it the same way,

but didn't quite know how to.

To bring it back together again. You know how many times when God said, I love you, oh, you finally understand, won't be my. I'll

try to be your father.

Well,

I think possibly the Yardbirds was the first time he established an audience, and he realised that an audience were turned on by him. And it wasn't just the playing.

You know,

again, going back,

I almost think it's actually,

you know,

in his character,

it's kind of more important in a way,

Not so much the playing,

which, of course, is superb,

but it's the charisma that's sent out,

the vibes,

that actually makes him more interesting.

When John was not saying, I love you,

Oh,

do

I understand?

Won't you be my poor woman?

I'll be your poor little man.

I'll be your,

gotta

be your father. What I think about Eric is that he has developed such a devoted following worldwide,

which is both men and women.

And I think what's interesting,

and in retrospect, what I can see from the very early days,

he had an attractiveness which

I can see would be very appealing to younger women.

I think in a way, he probably misconstrued the Yardbirds to a degree in

what we were and actually how serious and experimental we wanted to be.

Also,

you have to remember that he had actually joined a family that although...

Only in a short term,

but had already been formed.

So he was slightly the outsider.

I mean,

I think that it's been quoted that he thought we were rather middle class.

Well,

actually,

at the time,

that is completely untrue.

I think what he probably meant was that we had a pretty normal family and maybe that was part of the puzzle.

And anyway,

what happened? was he...

Decided, I think that, you know, this particular song was very commercial. It's too poppy for him. It didn't, but how did it relate to the blues? Also?

I mean, I wasn't party to the sort of Stalin-esque goings on behind the scene,

But I felt he didn't feel that he was in control of that music,

which he was a great influence earlier in the Yardbirds.

I mean, a lot of the songs we did came from him and his musical collection.

He got the nickname Slow Hand Clapton, actually from

Hamish Grimes.

We were playing really frenetically.

He'd really be bashing into his strings, and he'd break a string, Of course, he'd take a while to change the string. And this was the joke. And slow hand Clapton don't go to suit you. I think I lose. I think there was several different schools of thought in the art birds. I saw that there was a way forward without it becoming totally commercial. Um, and

I had, um.

We were kind of given this like exam situation by the guy that was managing us,

Giorgio,

said,

well,

we got this opportunity to make a record. And we need a single kind of thing.

So you've all got to come up with it.

It was like everyone come up with an idea.

And the closest I could come to it, without really compromising our ideals, was this Otis Redding song.

And what they ended up doing was a Graham Gouldman song,

which is a great song for any band,

but it wasn't the...

I didn't want to be our first record of any state that's being harnessed or anything that I was involved with,

so that kind of image,

that quickly.

With the Yardbirds moving towards the pop charts with the single For Your Love,

Eric decided to move the other way.

He quit the band,

but the legend of Clapton was gathering pace.

That there was actually another agenda going on,

which was that I wasn't a very likable guy.

And I wasn't,

you know,

I was a very nasty piece of work a lot of the time then.

I was unreliable,

dogmatic,

and unsociable a lot of the time.

And I think they saw me as being the fly in the oil,

you know,

And it was like,

once we got rid of Eric,

we can get on with this,

you know,

and become like a really successful group.

But sooner or later,

I've got to go back,

back home to Ripley,

perhaps,

and admit that this has all been a...

A mistake and go back to work with my grandfather on the building site.

And then Eric received a call that would both change his life and confirm his image as a loner,

a man who had put his music before financial gain,

a purist and a musical genius.

And then I got the call from John Mayer and I thought,

this is it.

I've met somebody else who has that same view of how it can be.

He was the only guitar player that I'd heard that was on the scene who had really any idea of what it really was all about.

I think he was to be regarded pretty much as a nomad,

and it was something you put up with,

right?

As a band leader,

it was a little frustrating not to have that reliability that I was used to.

But,

of course,

his talents and his playing were worth putting up with,

you know,

the aggro.

I had an album.

Called Blues Breakers by

John Mayall.

And Eric was the guitarist.

And he played a Freddie King song called

Hideaway, Which

I learned by slowing it down to 16 and learning every lick, and then gradually being able to wind it up to 33 rpm. And then playing it with him,

every note,

note for note.

And I could play the whole album like that eventually.

So I learned to play lead guitar listening to Eric Clapton.

How many times must we tell the tale?

How many times must we fall?

We have to see.

We've never lost memory,

we've just begun.

It was obvious from his playing that he'd absorbed far more than most and had assimilated a multitude of...

With Eric,

it's just really been a blues-based thing. That has been refined here and there and extended backwards in time and refined around what there is there.

And it's an excellent base for explorations,

really,

and for just doing different things. because,

well,

in fact,

you can hear it when you get figures who are maybe popular in rock bands who play,

but they don't have that basis.

And they try and do bluesy things or blues type things.

And

I remember Eric Lafferty,

you know,

some people's efforts to do that.

Because I suppose people achieve a sort of facility on instruments.

And then so they think that they can therefore play that stuff.

And it's not.

It's not as easy as that.

It's a craft.

You know,

I don't really respond to this idea. That rock and roll should be something that is so spontaneous that as soon as you can play,

you can't do it anymore.

I think that's nonsense,

you know.

It is a craft.

It's an instrument with a long,

long tradition,

a thousand years of tradition.

The more you practice,

the better you get.

The more choices you have at your fingertips,

literally,

we must respect that.

We must respect learning and craft.

And Eric Clapton is someone I respect greatly.

If you think that you can doodle around on a guitar,

so why can't you get up and do that?

Then just try it and see what sort of an effect that you have.

You know,

that it's a hard-won thing.

And it comes from being...

In love with it and being obsessive,

semi-obsessive,

or really obsessive to a fairly extensive degree about it.

That's how you get to have a touch like that and a sound like that.

Because you are your own thing,

it's not just derivative.

It's not just completely derivative.

You know,

you end up getting your own sound and your own approach to things.

There are times on stage when I've stood next to and just been blown away by.

Some of that stuff because it's great, it's really great. Blues guitar playing, you know, nothing, nothing less than that.

I get lost in alibi,

sadness, can't prepare. Everybody knows Tom's a good guy. Berwick at that time was,

in my mind,

totally brilliant.

There were nights when he felt like playing,

when he really had it in him.

He was coming out with things on the guitar that would make your jaw drop.

But,

you know,

he had to be in the mood.

He was one of those very up-and-down things.

He never quite knew what you were going to get.

But like I say,

when he was on form,

I mean,

there was nothing like it.

Um, I

am very conscious of, um, its significance. And, uh, and even then, I, I actually must admit that I was resistant

about making a record.

Now,

I think what it was was that I've always considered, to a certain extent, that what I do isn't the real thing.

And even now,

I'm haunted by it,

that the real thing is over there, somewhere on the other side of the Atlantic, or in a club.

And so, therefore, being put on record has suddenly forced me to stand up and account for the fact that I'm...

Actually in the marketplace with that, and must be and have to be ready to be. Compared to the thing I've always wanted to emulate. So suddenly now, and I think, especially at that stage of mine, was, if it's still very young, I don't. I didn't think I was ready to

step into the into that kind of

arena?

The making of the Blues Breakers album was for us just business as usual.

We went into the studio and basically recorded what we had been playing on stage.

And,

you know,

at the time, we didn't expect it to do anything other than just document what we were doing.

That Blues Breakers album is now regarded as a groundbreaking record.

For the first time,

the sensibilities of amplified rock were combined with the sound of the great Chicago bluesmen.

It was a virtuoso performance.

But even as the Blues Breakers album was being pressed,

Eric was elsewhere,

on the move,

and restless to escape any sort of pigeonholing.

It was symptomatic of the inner conflict between private needs and the public acclaim.

Eric just did not want to play the fame game.

All the time that I was with John,

I was leaving and coming back.

I mean,

it never happened in one go.

It was like I would go off little jaunts or not show up at gigs, too.

You know,

it was quite normal for me to forget, maybe, or just not be bothered or want to do something else.

I mean,

it's hard for me now to imagine the kind of guy I was that would do that to somebody.

But

I think at the time,

you know,

I was with John and I wasn't with John.

There was part of me that was saying,

this is okay,

but it's not okay.

That I was already thinking of moving on.

So I think what I would probably be doing would be to John,

just to let him know,

Was that? Every now and then I sabotage the whole thing? So that he know he couldn't count on me and that I actually was passing through.

I don't know where I'm going,

but I'm not staying here.

I suppose I thought,

some were in the back of my mind,

bit.

I was going to be ready, perhaps when I was about 40, to make a record.

You know,

up until then,

I was going to be a student of getting and trying to get it right.

You know,

there was going to be another 10 or 15 or

20 years of getting it right before. I would ever have to stand up and account for what I had achieved.

And yet here I was, like

20 years old and shoved in.

I mean,

I remember being shoved in the studio,

although I,

you know.

I'm sure I was very happy to be there with muddy waters and Otis spann when I was 19 years old.

And these were already,

you know,

men.

Men's men.

And I was a kid,

you know,

with a guitar.

And I felt very,

I mean,

terrified.

Beyond belief.

I had no idea of how to conduct myself whatsoever.

I had no idea.

And I don't know whether I did well or not.

It didn't...

I was just,

I was,

it was almost like I blanked it out of my memory.

I was so frightened.

And these guys were in their suits, and there were men in their,

in their

40s, who'd achieve,

they were the kings,

you know,

and,

uh,

and in a way,

this didn't seem right to me.

It still doesn't seem right.

By the time the classic Blues Breakers album was issued,

Eric had already left the band.

His diffidence is probably best shown in the way he's pictured on the sleeve,

reading the comic,

the Beano.

But despite his attitude,

the album spawned London's most famous rock graffiti all over the capital.

Eric was hailed as the master.

His next band proved the point.

In 1967,

Ginger Baker,

Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton formed the first and mightiest supergroup of the

60s, called Cream.

They changed the face of rock music forever.

In who God is,

and who can change me.

God is first,

and only He is.

I can say I'm...

I never didn't see the point in recreating kind of Chicago blues band.

You know,

that's...

And I remember discussions with him and,

you know,

saying,

well,

I want to take it somewhere else,

which is really presumptuous,

you know,

very...

Daring and kind of arrogant and everything,

but you know,

I was young.

For the first time,

Eric was playing alongside his musical equals.

The results were electric.

I had met my mash with both of them,

you know,

and up until then, I'd really been able to kind of manipulate and dominate situations,

musically speaking.

Around these guys,

I felt like a younger brother,

and I was very...

I was very aware of the dynamic being out of my control.

And that interested me,

no doubt about it.

I thought it was something where I could almost step into the background.

It was all going on all the time between Jack and Ginger.

It was a tremendous,

a lot of energy,

either aggressive and loving, too.

They were very,

very,

they were active human beings and very big in their emotions and their ambitions.

And their creative abilities. They were very, very big people, bigger than anyone I'd met. Until that point, Green became one of the biggest bands in the world. Their music crossed over between the pop charts and the growing underground scene, and each album they produced outsold the last. We

were conscious of the fact that we were held in awe, uh, even amongst, like the music press here, which, would, you know, in those days, was quite an achievement. Um,

you know,

when we did the first gig,

we didn't even have a full repertoire.

We played at some jazz festival,

Reading Jazz Festival,

I think,

with half,

you know,

like about five songs,

which was what we had.

And people were blown away.

And we were very conscious of what we had.

I'm going to do a little bit of a speech and then we'll start.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Hello.

Thank you.

And we've got a growth portal.

And we've got a growth portal.

And we've got a growth portal.

And we've got a growth portal.

And we've got a growth portal.

And we've got a growth portal.

And we've got a growth portal.

And we've got a growth portal.

And we've got a growth portal.

And we've got a growth portal.

And we've got a growth portal.

And we've got a growth portal.

And we've got a growth portal.

And we've got a growth portal.

And we've got a growth portal.

And we've got a growth portal.

And we've got a growth portal.

And we've got a growth portal.

Um,

I'm a little crazy.

A commercial foundation? It was, it was, it was undescribable. It wasn't jazz, it wasn't blues, it wasn't rock and roll, and it definitely wasn't pop music. So it was something that a grown-up person could listen to. And yet it had a lot of other things, too, that were quite poppy, you, you know,

and it was very exciting.

At

the time, he was known as the greatest guitarist in the world.

You know,

I mean,

this is hyperbole that Eric wanted to live down for a long time,

you know,

because it was embarrassing.

But he was certainly up there.

But Eric always identified his sources.

He never hid away from the fact that he didn't say,

well,

I invented this stuff.

You know,

he was steeped in a knowledge of the blues.

Had done his apprenticeship,

done that.

He's a modest man.

But also an extraordinary musician.

And he's a craftsman.

You know,

he's a guy who works this craft,

who studies and works hard and gets better as he gets older.

That's a lesson for all of us.

I'm going to turn it over to you,

and I'm going to ask you to stand around.

Stand around.

I want you to get your hands up.

And I want you to put,

I'm going to take a picture of the time I spent in the lab.

I'm going to start with the first question.

What do you want to do?

And we have to do it,

But what we know is that we may have to get the final results if we do not get the results we want.

So,

we have to know that there are any new results,

and we have to do it.

And we have to do it.

So,

we have to do it.

But what are the things that we need to do?

So,

that's it.

It's a great experience.

So,

that's it.

Thank you.

I suppose we're responsible for a lot of dodgy heavy metal bands.

For that, I apologize.

I think probably we took the pop music into areas that I hadn't been before. And you were able to do things,

to get away with things,

that things crossed over.

But that's a thing that's always happening anyway.

I don't see those years as really any different to now.

With the cream,

you know,

Jack and

Ginger, I knew them as well as I knew Eric,

if not better,

you know,

for a while.

But Eric's a searcher,

that's what I think,

and he doesn't stop searching.

Sometimes it takes him into some morose areas,

you know,

which I think they cheer up,

you know.

Bloody millionaire guitar player,

you should be miserable.

I think Ginger had problems with success.

I had problems with success,

but Ginger really had them.

And

Ginger would try to make,

whenever we were about to have this great success,

he would try to make it not happen. So that it wouldn't have happened yet.

But I don't think Eric had any real problems with that.

I'm sure he always knew he was going to be successful,

and I'm sure he was very ambitious for a certain kind of success,

which he has more than achieved.

And,

you know,

I don't think he ever had a problem with it.

We had almost,

like,

invented our own language. So that when we were touring around England,

the promoters would come and talk to us,

or someone would,

you know,

ordinary people would come up to us,

and we would compose a barrier,

we would talk in it.

Amongst ourselves, in a way that these guys couldn't understand.

I mean,

it was almost...

I've seen it with the Beatles, too.

I saw that when they were all alive and working together.

They had this same kind of, like a human fortress aspect that was very powerful and very impenetrable and scary and exciting to be around.

What we were doing up until that point was we were doing little...

Short versions of our songs,

you know,

three,

four,

five minute things,

which was nice.

But then everybody was so out of it,

you know,

the film, or we're all lying on the floor, going,

just play.

So we did.

We just sort of did these.

And then that became the albatross,

as it were,

you know,

which kind of broke the camel's back.

That's a good one.

Because we always had to play these really long solos.

It was kind of like the WHO had to destroy the drum set every night.

We had to play really long solos every night.

Hello,

my name is David.

I'm a teacher at the University of Colorado,

and I'm going to teach you how to use the language of the language. In the language of the language of the language.

I'm going to teach you how to use the language of the language in the language of the language.

I'm going to teach you how to use the language of the language in the language of the language.

So,

we have a video of the first time I've ever seen a Black man.

It was a long shot.

I was even worried I was going to die in the next episode.

I was telling myself that I was going to die,

so I went straight into the flash.

I found it.

I was like,

what's happening to this?

I thought it was something I needed to do,

but it was just a very,

very long night.

Praying combines psychedelia with power rock.

The mix came together in the best-selling album Disraeli Gears.

It became one of the style icons of the Summer of Love in 67.

As far as I remember,

we were driving to the gig and just talking about the fact that Ginger was a racing cyclist before he became a drummer.

And the roadie said,

oh,

when you had that racing bike,

did you have Disraeli Gears?

Something like that.

You know,

instead of derailleur Gears.

That was the album title.

Disraeli Gears remains one of the classic, groundbreaking psychedelic albums of the 60s, and, amazingly, it was recorded in New York City in only three days.

Everything about the album was revealing here. All of these new techniques, these new traditions. It was an absolutely bizarre experience to record and I had no guideline. So caution

to the wind. If they're crazy, I'll be crazier.

Cream were the first true crossover band to enjoy both singles and album successes.

Their combination of virtuoso power playing and a solid blues grounding had never been done before,

and it spawned a thousand imitators.

Eric has done something different with the blues music.

I mean,

when he and

Cream did their version,

their take on blues,

yeah,

they changed it up.

It made it more accessible to a lot of other people.

And it had the rock feel to it,

and it spawned countless bands,

countless guitar players,

brought it to a world of people who had never heard of

Robert Johnson, or Willie Dixon, or Albert King.

And,

yeah,

it was a major boost.

Eric scared everybody,

but that's what you have to do.

You have to do that.

It's kind of like being a gunslinger.

Yeah,

I can play faster,

I can play louder,

I can play more,

I can play less,

I can play more of less and less of more, and bigger and wider and thinner.

So that's what you do.

We just scared everybody,

I'm sure.

The late 60s became the era of the guitar hero,

and Eric was top of the pile.

He became the guy to aim for.

Others tried to play longer and faster,

but it was a competition that Eric did not see in those terms.

It was a throwback.

To the movies of his youth, that gave him a cultural reference point.

It's almost like a samurai thing.

It's very interesting that I was always very interested in samurai movies.

The great ones are the ones who kind of play a defensive role.

The great samurais are the ones that don't go charging in.

They wait,

they wait, and they wait,

and they usually give...

Their opponent, the first shot at it,

You know what I mean?

And it's much the same way. In my knowledge of our culture,

the guitar players,

is that the great ones never appear to go into combat.

You know,

they always,

like,

give up the stage to whoever's coming on,

you know,

and take a back seat. and,

in a way,

win by default.

At the peak of Cream's success,

Eric was saddled.

Not only by the graffiti that labeled him as God, but also by common consent. He was the world's greatest guitarist. It was quite a cross to bear a lot of the things that people rave about. I don't get at all. I mean, like, the live version of Crossroads, which is supposed to be my the

peak of my career, I think is awful. My enjoyment of that experience is in the recollection of the relationship, the events that that took place and the live music.

And a lot of that was on dope,

you know,

and so it may have felt better than it sounded, and probably did.

It was probably awful to listen to,

but was great to play.

Three were only together for two and a half years,

but their influence is still around today.

Rather unlike Eric's next project,

Blind Faith made one rather controversial album.

Controversial for its sleeve rather than its content, and then faded from the firmament.

On the group's U.S. tour,

Eric took to traveling on the support Act Delaney and Bonnie's tour bus, rather than with Stevie Winwood,

Ginger Baker and Rick Gretsch.

At the tour end,

everyone knew blind faith were no more.

The result, though, was one of rock's greatest albums.

We'll look back to the evening,

the old days,

how we did once,

the same great, huge boy,

yes.

But now,

instead of going out,

there's no good once,

only very much,

and that's why we go out twice.

As the 60s drew to a close,

Eric Clapton was left without a band.

He created some of the most memorable music of the decade,

like the song Badge he wrote with George Harrison.

Not to mention providing the solo on while my guitar gently weeps off the Beatles'

White Album.

But with Blind Faith and Cream, both in the past,

Eric looked closer to home for inspiration.

His friend George Harrison had written Here comes the sun at the bottom of Eric's garden.

Now, George's wife Patty became Eric's most famous inspiration.

On the 23rd of August in 1970,

Eric flew to Miami with musicians from Delaney and Bonny's band.

There, he was introduced to another guitar legend.

With typical modesty,

Eric became Derek, and a new band was born.

Derek and the Dominos recorded just one studio album together,

but it was a great one.

That night,

the whole Allman Brothers band and

Derek and the Dominos went back to the studio. And here are Eric and Dwayne playing licks.

I mean,

here are two strangers.

That are not strangers, it's like they've been lifelong friends, feeding each other, and that was the beginning of Layla. Well, we've been working and living together for about a year as the dominoes back in, back in England, here in England, living down in the country and touring and doing clubs. And we were writing as we went along, but it hadn't really, um,

we hadn't really put together a concept for this thing at all.

It was going to be one,

perhaps one album.

But then when Dwayne came into the mix,

it was just a question of. Like, opening every door we could and going in every room,

trying every piece of material that I could think of from my past and his past.

And then it was a double album.

But I think the group,

the Dominoes were already pretty well.

I mean,

we'd done,

we'd been,

I'd known them and played with them as Delaney and Bonnie,

and then,

you know,

when Delaney had left and everything,

it was,

we knew one another pretty well.

The combination of Dwayne Allman and Eric Clapton produced a guitar classic.

The a minor,

da-da-da-dee-doo-doo-doo,

off the e to the G to the A.

I think it was played as a lick inside one of the portions,

and all of a sudden they said,

put that up front.

Well,

to begin with,

it didn't do very well.

It was actually quite a long time before it became a popular record.

I think it was out for a long time before it took off,

because I think it was anonymous,

you know,

and then people didn't really know anything about it.

And we didn't do,

I mean...

I didn't promote it,

you know.

I've never really wanted,

I mean, that was a classic example of my philosophy about record promotion is not call it somebody else and don't do anything.

Because then, if it's good, it will sell on its own merit.

I think the greatest thing now that

I'm recognized from it is that how lucky I was to be around those kind of musicians,

especially like Jim Gordon,

Carl Radel.

I mean,

every one of them,

Bobby Whitlock,

Dwayne Ormuth.

I mean,

that was an incredible.

If I'm proud of anything,

I'm proud of the fact that I was enough.

The album, Layla, is rumoured to have been recorded in a narcotic haze.

The next part of Eric's life wavered dramatically between serious bouts of superstardom and complete seclusion.

For nearly two years,

Eric was in a drug-induced hinterland.

Retiring at first to his house near Uhurst,

he even spent the summer as a farm labourer in Wales,

as he grappled with his much-publicised personal problems.

The death of Jimi Hendrix,

Eric's grandfather,

Dwayne Allman.

And others near and dear to him,

coupled with his torment over Patty,

fueled his addiction.

Drugs caused in me like a kind of stupor,

which,

especially,

you know,

the major drugs,

turned me into like a zombie.

And I couldn't do much harm to myself, just sitting in front of the TV on a

24-hour basis.

I hadn't ever done it intravenously,

so there was not...

The great danger of overdosing that you get with a needle,

for instance.

But alcohol had me.

I was driving drunk a lot of the time,

and I was doing things drunk aggressively with other human beings. That took me into a lot of life-threatening situations, which I didn't need to do.

And so for me,

alcohol was and is far more threatening.

I used to...

Handle all kinds of stuff for him.

Well,

I would always have to have a packet of cigarettes in my pocket,

a small pair of nail clippers,

a bottle of Covocier,

bottle of

7up or Sprite,

a glass or two.

I had a little box which I used to carry, which had all that in with the initials WBA on it for West Bromwich Albion.

Eric was a big fan.

Brandy.

Yeah,

Brandy.

It's always large Brandy.

Large brandy lemonade.

Didn't drink anything else.

Odd beer,

but that was it.

Large Brandy.

And he was getting to three bottles a day.

And we knew that.

My main responsibility was to ensure that Eric got on stage sober.

My evaluation of my achievements was very different to everybody else's.

I felt that I hadn't done anything of any great value.

And yet it was,

and that people out there,

especially around that stuff with Green,

were saying all kinds of things.

And I thought,

well,

they've missed the point.

And especially on top of that,

you know,

being told that I was this sort of legend.

And I had no way of carrying that.

I had no means.

I think Eric's always searching for himself,

which I think is a great thing.

Hence the changes in persona and look.

And there's kind of an outward sign,

or something that's still,

you know,

but see,

that's what the whole thing is about,

searching.

And we are the first Black people to have a second child.

One of the first Black people to have a second child.

We need to respect the rules of the world.

We are the first Black people to have a second child.

We are the first Black people to have a second child.

Hi,

my name is,

I'm a student at the

University of Minnesota and

welcome to the Best Friends Family Awesome Game Podcast.

We're with our YouTube channel,

and we're going to talk about,

Hey,

buddy.

I'm here to do a project for your new blog on the age of 45.

Oh,

yeah.

It's...

Oh,

yeah.

Alright.

I see.

So,

what are you going to do with this project?

I'm going to do this in my first,

and I'll leave it there.

So,

if you're interested in learning the game,

go into the link in the end,

and go into the blog.

I'm still not sure how to do it.

Oh,

okay.

So,

thank you very much.

And I'm going to leave it in the end,

and I'll leave it in the end,

And I'll leave it in the end,

and I'll leave it in the end,

thank you.

In 1973,

the WHO's Pete Townsend hauled Eric out of semi-retirement.

The following year,

he was back in Miami with Tom Dowd,

recording the album that would mark the transition to global solo recording star.

The album was named after the place where he stayed,

461 Ocean Boulevard.

I suppose,

forced to consider myself as a solo artist.

And it had been something that was probably waiting to occur.

It was either I was going to have to really consciously make up my mind. That I was going to be in a band as just a sideman for somebody,

or I was going to take the bull by the horns and be

Eric Clapton.

The solo artist? And it's like three years before I came back to do 461 Ocean Boulevard. And and the net result was that there was a great deal of, um, a great deal of kind of subconscious meditation went on during that. And the album itself from that came from that, 461 was very powerful as a result. In

the band that played the tracks from that album On the Road was Marcy Levy. He just blew me away, he was so passionate.

The thing about Eric that was always great is,

whereas there were all these people playing 10 million notes showing off,

Eric would play this one note. And it would just make you want to cry,

just bring it to your knees.

And that happened every night.

And it wasn't always the same every night.

It was something different.

It was just amazing how he could do that.

Even though the 70s and

80s were decades fueled by booze,

it was a problem that Eric's fans were largely unaware of.

In fact,

the legend of Clapton grew,

now he was a frontman,

as well as a unique instrumental talent.

The other thing about Eric that I've always said,

he's one of my favorite singers.

To me,

he's kind of like a white Ray Charles,

in a way.

But in 1991,

his grief and suffering became horribly public.

His six-year-old son,

Connor,

fell to his death from his New York apartment,

as Eric was making his way across town for a visit.

Eric's

grief became the centerpiece for the outpouring that was tears in Heaven.

It brought a whole new generation of fans to the man, who is now grappling with all his demons.

His personification of,

you've got to have the blues to play the blues,

took on a new meaning.

And the stripped down,

honest and pure approach Eric now took to his life,

and his music,

was totally in tune with his audience.

And once again,

he became one of the world's most successful performers.

This all adds up to what we have as our eclat,

you know.

His entire life is his work, and it comes through his work, and he's had some terrible tragedies in his life.

But it's been fortunate to have a mode of expression like music, where that can be processed and healed again.

I think time has probably been the most important thing for Eric.

Like,

time is for anybody who's a musician.

Time teaches you,

you know,

more about life.

You go through all kinds of different situations.

And only through the experience of life does one,

you know,

learn from those situations.

It's what he's gone through personally.

That's gotten him to where he is.

And because he's willing to express that through his music and be vulnerable and put himself out there,

that's why he is there,

because he's experienced it and he shares it.

Tears in Heaven and the unplugged Session were a huge commercial and artistic success.

Eric walked away with a record haul of Grammys.

After his initial soundtrack work with Michael Kamen,

Clapton now became Hollywood's favorite composer,

his soundtracks Adorning Phenomenon,

Lethal Weapon,

and The Color of Money.

Star

She's my mother and

I love

if I can reach the stars,

no wonder I'm shining on the stars.

So you could see the tree,

and there's a love I haven't seen,

but for now, I'll find you.

It's only in my dreams and I can change

the world.

I hate to say it,

I hate to say it,

but it's probably me.

And to see how they jump.

That's the legacy.

He's not pretending he's 17,

he's not tying himself into latex trousers or wearing a wig or a corset,

he is himself.

I think

Eric's style,

to me,

I like the fact that he plays really clean,

really simple,

uncluttered.

It's like having a conversation with somebody.

If you listen to a solo in Eric's style,

it's what I like about guitar players who have meaning with what comes out of what they play.

There's a story behind it.

It's not just a bunch of notes garbled together as a show-off kind of thing, or any kind of antic or anything like that.

It's musical,

very melodic.

And it speaks to you. Ask yourself, who watched for me? My only friend? Could it be? Is hard to say it, I

hate to say it. It's probably,

Well,

I think it's without equal.

Any time he plays anything,

regardless of whether it's a blues piece or a pop piece, or whatever,

he's got his own unmistakable stamp on it.

And I've always followed everything he does with great interest and enjoyment.

Eric's a classic electric blues guitar player based on the styles of

Buddy Guy.

Freddie King and people like that, that's where it all comes from. And of course, going back their styles and that kind of music goes back to country, blues, too. And Eric, of course, is very keen on that, well, that whole side of things. Ask

yourself, who'd watch for me a solitary voice to speak out and set me free? I hate to say it,

I hate to say,

but it's probably me.

I think what's cool about Eric is I don't think that he knows how good he is.

And that's cool.

I don't think any player should have this idea that they're above leagues,

above anybody.

And there should be some humility behind it.

And he has that.

When you play,

you just play for the song.

I mean,

it's great to stand up on stage with Eric,

and he's going to play the song.

He's not going to do anything else.

He's going to play the song.

When he comes in to sit in with us or anybody else,

he comes up to play the song,

and that's great.

It makes the band look good,

it makes himself look good,

the whole thing sounds good.

It's crazy.

It makes no sense.

It's only one voice that comes

to your defense,

and lose your result.

When your eyes search the room,

one thing to face is all you need to see

if that's one guy,

just one guy. The 90s were also to be the decade when Eric cleaned up his private life.

He stopped the intake of drugs and drink,

and set up Crossroads,

a clinic in Antigua.

To help both local and international casualties of addiction.

He sold his beloved guitars to fund the center.

It was painful drawing up the list more than anything, because deciding what,

because I kept quite a lot and looking at what I had was a shock.

I had no idea.

I felt quite guilty that I'd amassed that many guitars. And so part of it was like a very,

very good purging experience that I really thought it was.

Um, it was very kind of greedy to have all of them needed to move them, you know? But then, you know, each time I looked, ticked on them and then they thought, Well, you've got. One thing I know about this is this is like, I have a responsibility to share. I

will probably slip back into my old ways because I've, as I share this. As a human being, I get to, I get to recognize. Um,

what a great gift I have.

Every day is like a bonus,

really.

I'd have no right to be here,

considering the amount of situations that I put myself in.

I should be really in the ground.

But I've set a date,

which will be at the end of 2002,

when I will not work.

I've reached an age where that could be a call to retirement.

I don't think it will be.

But it is that thing I'm talking about.

We're actually having the guts to say,

no,

we won't do anything now for maybe a year or a couple of years.

And then see what happens on the other side of that.

It seems like Eric has now gone full circle in a way.

He's a teacher nowadays,

a counsellor.

He helps other people to deal with their addictions.

It shows that he's travelled far in his life.

But one thing has remained constant.

His music.

And his dedication to the blues.

Well,

I know he was a genius when I heard him in

John Bell Blues Band.

He's a dedicated blues man.

I don't know him to play anything else but the blues.

When he played rock,

it was the rock blues.

He can do it all,

but it's all the blues.

And he loved it.

I think he has dedicated himself to what he loves.

He has dedicated his whole life to his music.

And when you do that,

you'll be the best that you can.

And he is the best that you can get.

It's not a life of milk and honey,

this stuff.

You know what I mean?

On the surface,

from outside,

I can understand everybody.

You know,

you're a millionaire,

rock star.

But,

uh,

But the fact is that Eric's still got to get to the crossroads.

So do I.

Because there's not just one.

There are several crossroads.

And if you think there's just one,

well,

look out now.

It's

late in the evening,

she's wondering what goes to bed.

She'll put on her makeup and brushes a long,

long hair.

Eric's just the best.

No question.

I was very,

very fortunate to have played with him and to have been influenced by him.

He's also a great teacher,

which people probably don't mention.

He taught me a lot of things about myself and about music that I will never forget.

I'm so thankful for that.

Well,

he's one of these people who immediately picks up.

The guitar,

it plays the first note,

and there's that very,

very clear signature.

You know,

it's like hearing

Stevie Wonder play the harmonica,

or Stevie Wonder play the

hammond organ.

It's immediately recognizable.

It just comes through.

Oh,

that's Eric.

That's Stevie.

And so you're playing with a legend.

You're playing with a real human being,

but also you're playing with a legend.

And I'm never blasé about that.

I don't know the feeling I get when

I miss you.

We got heartaches every day.

You don't know me.

He's one of the best blues guitarists that there is,

I think.

One of the reasons I love standing on stage with him is to enjoy going down there.

You're getting up and playing.

Apart from the fact that there was just no pressure. Because you're on the side and you're just playing,

it's just to listen to the song,

listen to his voice.

It always seemed to me to have that soul,

you know,

a soul about not just about his playing,

but his singing, too,

which people tend to forget.

He's a really good singer.

I've been such a jamming brother.

I'm not a terrorist.

I'm not a terrorist.

I'm not a terrorist.

I'm not a terrorist.

I'm not a terrorist.

I'm not a terrorist.

I'm not a terrorist.

I'm not a terrorist.

I'm not a terrorist.

I'm not a terrorist.

I'm not a terrorist.

I'm not a terrorist.

Eric will definitely be a major influence for...

Basically, from now on,

as far as guitar players are concerned.

When you mention guitar,

Eric's name always comes up.

Always comes up.

And that's a great thing.

It's...

Oh, um,

I respond in a very,

very instinctive way to something that's new and powerful.

And I don't really often know quite what it is that causes that.

I mean,

I am very,

very stimulated by design of any kind,

even musical design and visual design.

So good songwriting,

great songwriting,

great playing.

Great singing,

great drawing,

great designing,

hits the same point in me.

And if I get excited,

that's the first thing that happens.

And then I kind of got to sit down and figure out why,

usually.

I mean,

I have to try and do a bit of analysis to understand what it is about, the form of that thing that is causing that effect,

you know.

And that's the kind of academic side of it,

I guess.

But they're all,

to me,

part of the same picture.

And it's usually to do with the kind of,

with purity and tradition,

you know.

That's a great point.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm sorry.

He's a very integrated person now,

I feel.

There's an edge of melancholy about the man and a seriousness about the man,

but that really is a pillar of strength,

you know.

And

I respect him deeply.

He's a very serious man.

One thing that I like about Eric is he appreciates...

What he has learned from the different musics that he's listened to,

blues.

When we did the nights at Albert Hall,

about 90, and I guess it was 91, maybe.

That year,

those years,

bringing people like Johnny Johnson,

Albert Collins,

and Buddy Guy and the Blues people to having those different nights that he had with all the different music.

That's great.

That's a great thing to do.

That brings,

that shows respect to the people who he's learned from and has respect for.

And Eric does things like that, too.

To come out to Austin to do the tribute for Stevie Ray Vaughan,

what I thought was an excellent thing that he's done.

And,

you know,

he's just a very passionate and kind-hearted soul.

And she asked,

Do you feel of me?

And I said,

Yes,

I feel of you.

Two,

three.

When I feel all the glory,

when I see the light in these girls'

eyes,

in the wonder of it all,

to just...

With anything that I said about to do, there's the idea which is kind of perfect,

the seed of the idea which is perfect. And then when you make it into reality, it becomes human and it becomes fallible, and it becomes not quite right. And then the rest of the journey is about trying to get it to fit the way it did. In my head, to try and make that as

close as I as what I believe God would want me to do. As I get older, I take much more time

deliberating over any one of these crossroads things. And but I don't for a minute imagine that they'll ever go away. And I think that's part of the journey. For as long as I shall be alive.