[Slowhand] Clapton autobiography nearly tells all

[SEIDENBERG, NOAH]

Clapton autobiography nearly tells all

By Greg Kot | Tribune music critic 

October 14, 2007 

"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.

Only blames himself

His promoters and handlers were a mix of enablers and exploiters disguised as friends. They kept Clapton on the road when he should have been in rehab, and they made sure the money kept rolling in, even as Clapton's personal life was in shambles. To his credit, the singer never blames anyone but himself for most of his sorry behavior.

The book's central characters, besides Clapton, are women: the mother who abandoned him as a child; the grandmother who reared him; his muse, Pattie Boyd, who also happened to be the wife of one of his best friends, George Harrison; and his wife of the last decade, Melia McEnery, who became the one stabilizing figure in his adult life.

There are countless more women, of course, and some of them even have names. They move in and out of Clapton's life primarily as sex toys and surrogates for the ones who mattered most to him. He never got over his mother's rejection, and nearly destroyed himself courting Boyd. When he finally won her, he threw it all away with a series of one-night stands on the road. Through these years, drugs and alcohol were constant companions, and his depression so deep that he tried to kill himself at least once.

It's a cautionary tale that spills over into tragedy several times as love, lives and talent are all wasted. It's a tale that also wouldn't have mattered much to most people had Clapton not been such an important musician. His memories of the '60s are the most enchanting part of the book, vivid snapshots of halcyon youth in London and beyond. Here was the era when the blues was appropriated and then commodified by a generation of middle-class English boys, who became multimillionaires: the young Mick Jagger always carrying a microphone in his pocket; Sonny Boy Williamson pulling a knife on an uppity Clapton; Lennon hiring Clapton for a last-minute gig, then leaving him standing in the rain at the airport while Lennon whisked off in a limo with Yoko Ono.

More than once, Clapton tells the reader that music was the only consolation in his life, the one thing that saved him when all else failed. But he never digs too deeply into the how's and why's of his music, and this paucity of insight is the book's primary failing. His complicated relationship with music and his role in it would make a fascinating read; he was in some ways the humble blues servant, the most self-effacing of guitar heroes, and he has done his best work when he shared the stage or recording studio with musicians who could look past his legend and kick him in the shins when needed. But Clapton fans will have to read that analysis in somebody else's book.

Hated Led Zeppelin

A few nuggets from Clapton's musical world do emerge. He was deeply suspicious of Beatlemania and loathed Led Zeppelin. He was awed by Buddy Guy's power trio, which became a model for Cream. He thought Cream's debut album was innovative, until he heard Jimi Hendrix's "Are You Experienced?" Cream, he writes, soon turned into a complacent "con." It led him to Blind Faith, which he abandoned almost at its inception. Derek and the Dominoes' landmark "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" was written and performed almost entirely under the influence of sleeping pills, cocaine and hard liquor. One of his last great songs, "Let It Grow," "totally ripped off 'Stairway to Heaven.' "

Clapton says he performed most of his concerts in the '70s and '80s while chemically impaired, and his music often sounded like it. Not that the worshipful audience noticed. He agreed to appear at the benefit concert for Bangladesh for his friend Harrison only after being assured that he would be provided with enough heroin to feed his habit. Addiction also colors his obsession with Boyd, and eventually dooms it. It's a soap opera waiting to be turned into a movie, with Clapton as the abusive philanderer. Left unanswered is why Boyd put up with this lout as long as she did.

The last major tragedy recounted in Clapton's life is the accidental death of his 4-year-old son, Conor. It leads him to finally clean up his act once and for all, and enables him to finally find and nurture the kind of mature, loving relationship his life had always lacked. Unfortunately, stability and bliss steal the zest from Clapton's writing, and the book closes blandly, if happily: "Working with B.B. [King] was a dream come true"; "New Zealand and Australia were a big surprise."

In recent years, Clapton has reconnected to the music and the musicians that inspired him, collaborating with King and J.J. Cale and organizing the Crossroads festivals to benefit recovering addicts. His live performances of late have been his best in decades, in part because he finally has a band that won't let him coast.

If nothing else, his autobiography explains without self-pity or sugarcoating why it took him so long to reconnect with what made him special in the first place.

greg at gregkot.com <mailto:greg at gregkot.com> 

 

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