Clapton - The Autobiography - Audio Book CD - Eric Clapton
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5 CDs 6 Hours
The legendary musician who defined rock in the 1960s and continues to astonish and delight a wide spectrum of music lovers tells, for the first time, the story of his personal and professional journeys in this pungent, witty, and painfully honest autobiography.
Eric Clapton is far more than a rock star. Like Dylan and McCartney he is an icon and a living legend. He has sold tens of millions of records, played sell-out concerts all over the world and been central to the significant musical developments of his era. His guitar playing has seen him hailed as 'God'. Tracks such as 'Layla', 'Sunshine Of Your Love', 'Wonderful Tonight' and 'Tears In Heaven' have become anthems for generations of music fans. Now for the first time, Eric tells the story of his personal and professional journeys in this pungent, witty and painfully honest autobiography.
Eric was born illegitimate in 1945 and raised by his grandparents. He never knew his father and until the age of 9 believed his absentee mother to be his sister. In his teens his solace was the guitar and he soon became a cult hero in the club circuits of Britain. With the foundation of the world's first super group Cream in 1966 he became a world superstar.
But the rock star lifestyle has had a darker side. In more than forty years at the forefront of his profession he has twice survived near fatal addictions to drugs and alcohol, the death of his four-year-old son, the deaths of friends such as Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon, the break-up of marriage and the disintegration of relationships with a succession of beautiful women.
These are the memoirs of a survivor, someone who has reached the pinnacle of success, who has had it all, but whose demons have never left him. Eric is now ready to tell his story as it is, hiding nothing, with a directness and searing honesty that will make this book one of the most compelling memoirs of our time.
More About the Author Eric Clapton:
The Yardbirds & the Bluesbreakers
Clapton joined The Yardbirds, a blues-influenced rock and roll band in 1963 and stayed with them until March 1965. Synthesising influences from Chicago blues and leading blues guitarists such as Buddy Guy, Freddie King and B.B. King, Clapton forged a distinctive style and rapidly became one of the most talked-about guitarists in the British music scene. The band initially played Chess/Checker/Vee-Jay blues numbers and began to attract a large cult following when they took over the Rolling Stones' residency at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond. They toured England with American bluesman Sonny Boy Williamson II; a joint LP, recorded in December 1963, was issued belatedly under both their names in 1965. In March 1965, just as Clapton left the band, the Yardbirds had their first major hit, on which Clapton played guitar: "For Your Love."
It was during his time with the Yardbirds that Clapton acquired the nickname "Slowhand". Whenever he broke a guitar string on stage he would immediately replace it himself; British audiences would respond with slow hand claps until he was finished and ready to play again. Inspired by this, and also in ironic reference to Clapton's 'fast' playing, the Yardbirds' manager Giorgio Gomelsky christened him "Slowhand" Clapton.
Still obstinately dedicated to blues music, Clapton was strongly offended by the Yardbirds' new pop-oriented direction, partly because "For Your Love" had been written by pop songwriter-for-hire Graham Gouldman, who had also written hits for teen pop outfit Herman's Hermits and harmony pop band The Hollies. Clapton recommended fellow guitarist Jimmy Page as his replacement, but Page was at that time unwilling to relinquish his lucrative career as a freelance studio musician, so Page in turn recommended Clapton's successor, Jeff Beck. While Beck and Page played together in the Yardbirds, the trio of Beck, Page, and Clapton were never in the group together. However, the trio did appear on the 12-date benefit tour for Action for Research into Multiple Sclerosis, as well as on the rare blues album Guitar Boogie, but not all on the same tracks.
Clapton joined John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers in April 1965.His passionate playing in nightclubs — and on the immensely influential album, Blues Breakers — established Clapton's name worldwide as a blues guitarist. With his 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard guitar and Marshall amplifier, Clapton's playing by then had inspired a well-publicised graffito that deified him with the famous slogan "Clapton is God". The phrase was spray-painted by an admirer on a wall in an Islington Underground station in the autumn of 1967. The graffito was captured in a now-famous photograph, in which a dog is urinating on the wall. Clapton is well reported to have been embarrassed by the slogan, saying in The South Bank Show profile of him made in 1987, "I never accepted that I was the greatest guitar player in the world. I always wanted to be the greatest guitar player in the world, but that's an ideal, and I accept it as an ideal." Contrary to a popular myth (perpetuated by, amongst others, the South Bank Show programme itself), "Clapton is God" slogans did not appear all over the place but only on that wall.
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