Eric Clapton and his music

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Гайд парк 1996

...with the King

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Пресс-релиз БиБи Кинговского "80".

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Q MAGAZINE MARCH 1994

BAN ALAN ALAN AND A WWW. NO, HANG ON. That's not it." Eric Clapton is clutching an air guitar in a windy corridor of the Albert Hall, attempting to play the most famous riff in the history of popular music. Which, incidentally, he wrote. "Do you know," he laughs incredulously, "I can't remember how I do it. Ban-alanalana-noawww. Nah, I can't do it unless I'm actually playing."
Humorously bemused, he has one last crack. "D shape, little finger on the bottom strings, yeah I've got it. Strum, hammer on, strum, pull off, strum. Got it. Banalanalannaoawww. Lay-lurrr!"

REED-SLIM AND SPORTING THE SAME CLOSE crop he had as a Yardbird, Eric Clapton could pass for 35. Next year, he'll tell you with only the briefest wince, he clocks up his half century. Dressed down today in jeans, a roll-neck sweater and a designer donkey jacket, the bloke we used to call God is in fine fettle and full-on matey mode.
They say you are more likely to meet a promiscuous panda than pin Eric down for a lengthy on-the-record conversation. Clapton interviews are so rare these days that he actually enjoys them. "I'll talk about anything," he says, and means it. Surprisingly, for one so publicity-shy, he could talk the balls off a buffalo. Pausing only for rapid
sips of coffee and occasional pensive beard strokes, he delivers his thoughts either as chatty asides or well constructed mini-speeches. Often these are peppered with the jargon of recovery therapy (although, touchingly, he stumbles over the words when, at one point, he says, "I am an alcoholic"). But happily he steers clear of the alkie mysticism so beloved of the dundrinkin' brigade. Whenever he mentions drugs, his right hand moves subconsciously towards the crook of his left arm, clutching as it does an imaginary syringe. The subject of death, with which he has become painfully familiar, brings a frustrated crease to his brow and behind round wire spectacles the sensuously slumberous eyes crinkle sadly.
But as he settles himself in the Prince Albert Room, the silkily skilled guitarist's guitarist smiles easily (revealing expensively capped and "bloody painful" teeth) and laughs like a Victorian circus master. He has this morning, he enthuses, taken delivery of a new Japanese car. Collector's item. Wasn't that expensive. Nice to drive around in a piece of art. Show you it later. Take you for a spin if you're good. On first meeting, Eric Clapton is inexcusably charming. Once bitten, as they say, forever smitten.

Q: What emotion do you associate with the Albert Hall?
I still don't think of this place as being my second
home. Everyone always goes on about that. I don't have a very strong connection with it until I'm actually playing here. Emotionally, once I've got through the second or third show then I feel something tangible.

Q: You've said that playing here every year suits your habitual personality. What do you mean?
I have a very addictive nature (laughs). If something feels good, I want to do it again. And every time I play here, I just want to do it again.

Q: If we were to locate you 10 minutes before you took the stage here, how would you be feeling?
I get pretty nervous, obviously. If there's some kind of inconsistency or weakness, then you've got a qualified reason to be nervous. But if I feel pretty confident then what you feel is really excitement. It's not so fear-based. It's a little bit of apprehension and a great deal of anticipation. I know to a certain extent that I'm going to get a good result. I'll tell you exactly what it feels like. You know when you're waiting for your girlfriend to show up when you're really in love? You know that feeling? You just can't wait for her to turn up.

Q: What goes through your mind onstage? Do you think about the actual music or is it more abstract than that?
A whole spectrum of thought. If the music is tight and it's second nature then, because of the excitement, I'll be thinking of the most extraordinary things. Sometimes, before you go on they'll tell you that so-and-so is in the audience and that might be someone you really want to impress or someone you really wish hadn't come because you really don't like them. Often I'll go on with three or four people in my head and they'll keep coming around like a carousel. What will they think of this? What if I did that? They're gonna hate this! Then if there's a mistake made or it's not going as I'd like it to, I get incredibly negative. Oh I'm terrible. I'm no good, this band is no good, my manager's a prat, he should have pointed this out before he let me get into this. I'm a very good blamer.

Q: How are you at accepting blame yourself?
That will come when I'm lying in bed that night. I'll be thinking, You know very well it was your own fault. You know that you're responsible in the end.

Q: Van Morrison has this idea of reaching a point in your performance where you lose yourself. Can you achieve that when you're soloing particularly well?
Yes. What happens then is that it feels very, very good. It often happens when you've set yourself some sort of emotional goal that you want to reach in a short space of time and you just hope that your hands, your technique and your band can follow suit. Then maybe you'll get to that place and it will feel fantastic but you can listen to it back and it'll often sound awful because it's a purely selfish act. It's like shooting yourself up with a drug to make yourself feel good.

Q: How frequently can you attain that feeling?
If you've become well trained in abandonment then you can do it as often as you want.

Q: Do you ever go out on stage and feel completely cold?
Often. But the beauty of that is that you never know how you're going to feel. Sometimes I've gone out there feeling on top of the world having had a beautiful day, given myself a little bit of rest in the afternoon so my head is clear, I'm in perfect physical shape, I have a lot of energy to spend and I'll walk on stage and it'll fall as flat as a pancake. For no known reason. Then two or three days later I'll have been emotionally stressed out by some personal crisis, things have mounted up, my mother isn't feeling well, I've clipped someone trying to park my car, I didn't sleep the night before and I'm really ratty and I'll go on, really not wanting to, and I'll play my arse off.

Q: What is the main difference between playing drunk and sober, apart from the fact you can remember the latter?
Being there really. Sober you have a certain innocence towards the music, a certain joy. Sober is vastly preferable because my drinking became very cynical, as most drinking does after you've done it habitually for a long time. You develop a fairly bitter attitude. But as an experience, it really is as simple as you said: you don't remember it or sense it while it's happening. You just see it through this cotton wool fog.

Q: But do you never think, I'd enjoy this even more if was drunk?
(Slowy)Yeeees. Maybe. I only think of drunkenness as a state now in terms of anaesthetic.

Q: You've given up smoking too and you used to smoke at international level.
I gave up three months ago and, yeah, I used to
smoke alcoholically. I smoked like I drank. All the time. I used hypnotherapy to stop smoking and I found it a very easy route. Although I'd really had enough of cigarettes. I was sick and tired of it. I needed a helping hand but I was in the right mental state to stop. You know when you've taken a very nice lady out or you're with people you've met for the first time and you're trying to be on your best behaviour and you suddenly get that rattle of phlegm in your throat and then your chest? It just blows it. It's a disgusting, ugly thing to hear and feel. That was happening all the time.

Q: When do you most crave a fag now?
Getting back to the anaesthetic thing, I found it isn't just an anaesthetic for pain, although it is, but at times of great excitement I feel myself reaching out for a cigarette. Drinking and smoking kept me in a controllable state. There were no highs and lows. Drinking was a way of preventing change.

Q: Although it must have created extreme situations.
Absolutely. But then I'd just drink more to keep even the strangest situations within this sort of tunnel.

Q: You're talking about drinking as something that controls your life. What about drink as a mere fun-enhancement device?
I felt like that about it originally. It broke down a lot of inhibitions and gave me access to a lot of the fun that other people seem to have. The smell of alcohol to me now is very powerful. It's like when you're filling up your car and you get a whiff of petrol. Even if I smell it on someone's breath, because I am a self-confessed ... alcoholic ...

Q: How long have you been sober now?
Six years. That was the last time I had a drink.

Q: If you were to have one now, what would it be like?
I've no idea. I'd probably find it quite scary. I recognise it as a poison to my system because, really, I have an allergy to it.

Q: Is there nothing attractive about the idea of drinking any more?
Oh yeah. It does have some attractions but I think it through quite quickly. It has an attraction as an alternative. If I'm in a crisis, the first thing that's up for me is, Oh fuck it, I'll have a drink. These days it isn't quite like that; instead I'll pick up the phone and talk to someone and tell them what's going on and they'll say, In a week's time you won't even remember feeling like this. But if I picked up a drink I could probably kill myself. That's the knowledge I have. The idea of one drink to me is fascinating and fantastic but it's also an impossibility because one is too many and a thousand isn't enough. That's a famous saying and it's very true for me.

Q: When was the last time you took drugs?
The last time I took drugs was for a toothache. I've had bad trouble with my teeth over the years and I took these very heavy duty painkillers and I found that very attractive. I ended up having to get help with that, having to speak to people. I'd take two and the toothache would go away and then I'd work out when to take the next one before the pain started again. I wouldn't wait for the pain to start again, I'd anticipate it
coming back and what happens then is that you just keep on taking them even when the pain is gone.

Q: What if I were to produce some cocaine now and offer you some?
That would be (laughs) very interesting. I started drinking when I was 14 and I didn't drink alcoholi-cally for a while but in the meantime I went through all the drugs. Each drug led me to next. I don't have anything to say to people who take drugs. It's all their own business. I'm not a person who says, Say No! You have to do what you have to do. But my experience of drugs was starting on black dexedrine which then led me on to marijuana and red wine which led to cocaine which led to acid which led to heroin. Something like that. They all introduced one another. For me there is nothing that is not addictive.

Q: When Billboard magazine ran a tribute to you recently, Jack Bruce took out a congratulatory advert which said, To Captain Madman. Remember Ben Nevis? Wasn 't that referring to an acid experience?
Yes it was. We climbed up and ran down Ben Nevis. It was the first time that Cream had all taken acid together as a group. We were touring Scotland and just as the acid kicked in, we stopped the car and got out and belted up Ben Nevis. It was perfect timing.

Q: But recreational drugs have no interest for you now?
Um. I like living in the moment now. What I treasure most of all is my ability to be of use to people who have the problems I had. What I've really got out of being sober most of all is having a sense of responsibility towards others. That's what keeps me sober. Because if I blow that, then I blow it for other people as well. If someone calls me up and they're having a problem with drink or drugs, I need to know that I can help them out and if I'm not taking care of myself then I can't.

Q: When a new drug comes along do you never think, Well, I've sampled the rest of the menu, maybe I should try this one?
I know basically that it's the same tenet that works for all of them, which is to be removed from the reality which I'm unable to cope with. It may seem like fun, and it probably is, but then I really need to do it again because I don't like coming back to what I left.

Q: Are you frightened of the mundane reality?
There's no such thing. I'm in and out of reality all the bloody time (laughs).

Q: Three years ago you said that it was as if your personal life were being directed by Fellini. Has it become any less weird?
(Laughs) I have access to alternatives these days. As time goes on and I discover more about the recovery process, I have more courage about taking steps to do things about myself. The longer I'm around, the more things become glaringly obvious. Like the one thing that was always glaringly obvious to everyone else apart from me is that I don't do very well in relationships. I've made fun of it as I did with that Fellini thing but then I just carry on anyway.

Q: What's at the root of the problem?
I'd say it was dysfunctional relationships from day one. From when I was a child with confused family issues.

Q: In certain respects your childhood was extraordinary. You thought your grandparents were your parents and you mother was your sister. Is that right?
Yes. And I think the needs that don't get fed as a child keep coming up. They just repeat on you, wanting to be addressed. You think you can ignore it and it will go away but it will come back to you in different disguises. If I talk about what's happening with the relationship I'm in now, it'll sound exactly the same to the person I'm telling it to as the one I told them about a year ago. In fact, I was talking to a friend this morning about what's happening in my relationship and he said, Hang on, you told me exactly the same thing five years ago. I said, That's because it's the same problem. I don't want to be specific about it, it's a fairly anonymous programme I do. But there are things I can do now simply because I'm willing to approach them. Even a year ago I would have said, Nah, that's mumbo jumbo, I'm not touching that, it's silly. But now I'd rather try silly things than go on repeating the same bloody pattern.

Q: That's a very English attitude, isn't it, that all therapy is nonsense?
Very much so. But things have changed a great deal. In the last 10 years, people have started to talk about recovery. Younger people come into these 12-step programmes at the age of 18, 19, 20, because they've been drinking and sniffing drugs for 10 years or so. They start at 10 or 11 years old these days.

Q: Doesn't the first step of the 12-step programme involve acknowledging that there is a higher power?
Yes, but it doesn't necessarily have to be God, as long as it isn't you.

Q: Which of course you have been accused of in the past. You didn 't have a hand in any of that Clapton Is God graffiti in the '60s, did you?
No!(Long, fruity laugh.)

Q: Can you explain the notion of the blues as a healing power?
It's a mystery, isn't it? It seems to be wallowing in the problem but it really does work. What they do in these recovery rooms is talk about the problem. If you communicate with someone about a problem and express it and the person who is listening to you knows what you're talking about because they had the same set of experiences, for some reason you feel better. You feel that you've shared some of your burden. And I think playing the blues is the same principle. Actually - I've got to refer to this -1 was reading Q magazine and dear Phil (Collins) said, How can he stand up there in a £5,000 suit and play the blues? Well, the point is, (pointedly) Phil, that the blues is a state of mind, it's got nothing to do with acquisition. Phil should understand this. I can have all the money and cars in the world and be very unhappy. It's an inside job.

Q: But a lot of people refuse to sympathise with that. You're rich, famous, handsome, gifted, therefore you cannot be unhappy.
But it can get even worse because once you find out that money and fame and success doesn't do it, where do you go then? That's a big dilemma.

Q: At what point did you realise that?
Well, I made a lot of money playing this music from a very early age. And it didn't do it. When I was at the height of my drinking, and this is another answer for Phil, I had all those things: a beautiful wife, cars, a home, money, friends. All the things you think a man could need and it didn't stop me drinking. I was depressed. I was suicidal.

Q: What was missing?
I didn't love me. And I had the blues. When I first heard the blues, it was the first music I identified with because it was someone crying out in pain. And nearly always that pain is caused by the basic inability to have a relationship. It's not usually dressed up in that sort of prose but it's about a man and a woman. It's about a man who can't keep a woman. It's about a man whose woman has left him. Or it's about a man who can't get anywhere near a woman. It's always about the basic thing between the sexes. It's not about material things, it's about the affairs of the heart.

Q: You've had an awful lot of relationships. You'd have thought you might have got it right by now.
Yeah! (Laughs) I been with many different types of female partner and a lot of the problems have been to do with me trying to get the answers
about myself from someone else.

Q: Don't your girlfriends find that a bit much to cope with?
I think they do. Once they find out what I want from them they get scared and run away. What I get up to a lot of the time is actually" beyond acceptability because I want them to confirm to me that I'm OK. And that's not their job. That's no-one's business but mine.

Q: How do you feel when the situation is reversed, when they're looking to you for answers about themselves?
Well, generally speaking, because of what I know of recovery, I can address that. But putting it into practice on myself isn't that easy. Human beings are very good at sitting in judgement and passing diagnosis on others. But fix thyself? That's much harder. The first thing that comes with any problem is denial. I'd much rather set about fixing you than fixing me. Because it fucking hurts.

Q: When people first heard Tears In Heaven, a common response was that people felt they already knew the song,
I think there's a subconscious link between all of us. We'll all respond collectively to certain things: an image or a sound, a series of notes. I don't think we have any control over that but I know in moments of great emotional stimulation we tap into something which is huge. We have access to it for a brief amount of time and then it's gone. But if you have the opportunity to learn it or write it down or paint it or sing it and somehow capture it, then other people will know immediately where it's come from and they'll say, I feel like I wrote that. I had this the other night. I'm in the middle of a thing now with a very beautiful lady and I was going through a lot of pain and I wrote a few lines. I never write poetry -1 very rarely sit down and try to write songs - but I only do it when I am really in that aroused state of great tribulation. You feel you can't do anything but express yourself. It's like a prayer. I just wrote four lines of prose and I know that other people would immediately recognise the feeling within those lines. That's how it happens.

Q: "Wonderful Tonight is an odd song. It seems to be dreadfully slushy and yet it was written whilst impatiently waiting for a woman to get ready and is rather sarcastic.
(Laughs) I know. It's actually quite angry.

Q: And what happens at the end? You're a bit pissed, you've turned out the light. Are we into a leg-over situation?
We're not actually (laughs). That part is purely romantic. The rest of it is quite bitter. There's a lot of cynicism in it. When it was written, it was like, yeah, for fuck's sake you look wonderful, let's go, for crying out loud. I wasn't even looking at her. It was a bare-faced lie. But in the last verse, it was a sincere tribute to my wife. I'm drunk and I've been driven home and it's just me telling her that I love her really. That woman, the woman we are speaking of (Pattie Boyd) put up with an awful lot of shit from me. She is truly a wonderful human being and I really do love her and I constantly think, Oh how can I repay her for what she had to put up with?