Eric Clapton and his music

Eric Clapton Looks Back at His Blues Roots

First in a two-part interview.

October 17, 2007 · Eric Clapton has been reinventing himself musically for more than 40 years. But the strong pulse of the blues has powered his guitar playing since the beginning: from the Yardbirds when he was 18, through his stints with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, Cream, and Derek and the Dominoes, to today.

Now 62, the legendary guitarist is the author of a new autobiography, Clapton.

In the first of a two-part interview, Clapton talks to Melissa Block about his musical influences as a young man.

'Uncle Mac' and the Blues

His first guitar, which he got when he was 13, was a steel-string Hoyer made in Germany. It was about as big as he was, Clapton recalls.

"It was a very cheap guitar. And most cheap guitars, as anyone will tell you who tries to play a cheap guitar … they hurt to play," Clapton tells Block.

"It sounded nice, but it was just such hard work, I gave up. So I started when I was 13 and gave up when I was 13 and a half," he says.

Clapton's introduction to the blues — the music that would forever influence his own work — came from an unlikely source: a children's radio show in the 1950s and '60s hosted by "Uncle Mac" (aka Derek McCulloch).

The show's usual fare was novelty children's music, such as "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?"

But every now and then, Clapton says, Uncle Mac would slip in some blues.

"I don't know what this guy was on; I can't imagine how it would get snuck in, whether it was his taste or someone else's, his wife, who knows?" Clapton says.

'I Got What They Were Trying to Do'

Clapton even remembers the first blues song he heard on the show: "Whoopin' the Blues" (full song audio) by harmonica player Sonny Terry and singer and guitarist Brownie McGhee.

"That's where it started for me," he says.

"It got to me on a level that nothing else did. I got what they were trying to do," Clapton says.

"I think the purity of what they were trying to do undercut everything else that you could hear on the radio. Aside from great classical music or great opera, there was a seriousness about it that none of this other music had."

Listening to, Learning from the Greats

Other guitarists that Clapton listened to — and learned from — in those early years include Big Bill Broonzy and Muddy Waters.

Broonzy was "just an extremely good technician" and a "great player."

As he listens to a recording of Broonzy's "Hey Hey" (full song audio), Clapton notes the audible sound of the guitarist's foot tapping.

"His rhythm — it's absolutely perfect," Clapton marvels.

Waters' Playing Acted as 'Milestone'

Perhaps the blues guitarist who influenced Clapton the most is Muddy Waters.

"Muddy was there at a time when, really, the music was getting to me. I was really trying to grasp it and make something out of it," Clapton says.

Clapton says he would listen to a Waters' song such as "Honey Bee" (song clip audio) and try to emulate the guitar great's technique and the effect he created with his playing — in this instance, the chime-like sound of a bell.

"It was a hook to me. And I made this as a sort of milestone for me, for my learning capabilities," Clapton says.

"If I can get that, I'm one rung up the ladder. And I did, finally, manage to do it one day, and I thought, well, you know, I think I can probably do this."

A Mentor and Friend

The two guitarists played together later and became very close. In his book, Clapton describes Waters as "the father figure I never really had." Until his death in 1983, Waters was a part of Clapton's life.

Even so, Clapton says he was not comfortable enough — and perhaps too proud — to ask Waters technical questions about his playing.

"I wish I had," he says now.

But there was more than just professional pride at work.

"When I got to know Muddy, unfortunately, my drinking career was in full sway," Clapton says.

"He liked to drink, too, he wasn't really down on it or anything, but I was definitely not really there as much as I wish I had been."

Excerpt: 'Clapton'

In this excerpt, Eric Clapton writes about his first electric guitar, which he got as a teenager.

The electric guitar I chose was one I had had my eye on in the window of Bell's, where we had got the Hoyer. It was the same guitar I had seen Alexis Korner playing, a double-cutaway semi-acoustic Kay, which at the time was a quite advanced instrument, although essentially, as I later learned, it was still only a copy of the best guitar of the day, the Gibson ES-335. It was cut away on both sides of the neck to allow easy access up the neck to the higher frets. You could play it acoustically, or plug it in and play electric. The Gibson would have cost over a hundred pounds then I think, well beyond our reach, while the Kay cost only ten pounds, but still seemed quite exotic. It captured my heart. The only thing that wasn't quite right with it was the color. Though advertised as Sunburst, which would have been a golden orange going to dark red at the edges, it was more yellowy, going to a sort of pink, so as soon as I got it home, I covered it with black Fablon.

Much as I loved this guitar, I soon found out that it wasn't that good. It was just as hard to play as the Hoyer, because again, the strings were too high off the fingerboard, and, because there was no truss rod, the neck was weak. So after a few months' hard playing, it began to bow, something I had to adapt to, not having a second instrument. Something more profound also happened when I got this guitar. As soon as I got it, I suddenly didn't want it anymore. This phenomenon was to rear its head throughout my life and cause many difficulties.

We hadn't bought an amplifier, so I could only play it acoustically and fantasize about what it would sound like, but it didn't matter. I was teaching myself new stuff all the time. Most of the time I was trying to play like Chuck Berry or Jimmy Reed, electric stuff, then I sort of worked backward into country blues. This was instigated by Clive, when out of the blue he gave me an album to listen to call King of the Delta Blues Singers, a collection of seventeen songs recorded by bluesman Robert Johnson in the 1930s. I read in the sleeve notes that when Johnson was auditioning for the sessions in a hotel room in San Antonio, he played facing the corner of the room because he was so shy. Having been paralyzed with shyness as a kid, I immediately identified with this.

At first the music almost repelled me, it was so intense, and this man made no attempt to sugarcoat what he was trying to say, or play. It was hard-core, more than anything I had ever heard. After a few listenings I realized that, on some level, I had found the master, and that following this man's example would be my life work. I was totally spellbound by the beauty and eloquence of songs like "Kindhearted Woman," while the raw pain expressed in "Hellhound on My Trail" seemed to echo things I had always felt.

I tried to copy Johnson, but his style of simultaneously playing a disjointed bass line on the low strings, rhythm on the middle strings, and lead on the treble strings while singing at the same time was impossible to even imagine. I put his album to one side for a while and began listening again to other players, trying to form a style. I knew I could never reach the standards of the original guys, but I thought that if I kept trying, something would evolve. It was just a question of time and faith. I began to play things I had heard on the record, but to add my own touches. I would take the bits that I could copy from a combination of the electric blues players I liked, like John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, and Chuck Berry, and the acoustic players like Big Bill Broonzy, and amalgamate them into one, trying to find a phraseology that would encompass all these different artists. It was an extremely ambitious undertaking, but I was in no hurry and was convinced I was on the right track, and that eventually it would come.

Excerpted from Clapton by Eric Clapton Copyright (c) 2007 by E.C. Music Limited. Reprinted by permission of Broadway Books, a division of the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group of Random House, Inc.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=15333469&ft=1&f=1021

Eric Clapton is to appear on The South Bank Show, for the first time in twenty years, this December.

Interviewed once again by South Bank Show host Melvyn Bragg, Clapton chats at length about conquering his addiction with alcohol which was at it's peak at the time of their first meeting.

The filmed interview also sees Clapton talk frankly about his family, the death of his son, the intensity of his relationships with other great guitarists and with women, his influences and his most moving songs - and how he has now finally found peace.

The show which airs on ITV1 on December 2, will also include rare and exclusive performance footage.

Other highlights on The South Bank Show this Christmas include an interview with Annie Lennox behind the scenes as she prepares for a peace concert. The show airs on December 16.

To celebrate the release of 'Complete Clapton' on October 8 -- a 2-disc career retrospective from the man universally known as Slowhand -- Uncut.co.uk and Polydor Records have joined forces to run an exclusive competition to win a Fender Stratocaster electric guitar!

All you need to do to be in with a chance of winning this exclusive prize is to simply upload a video to YouTube of yourself or your friends performing to a clip of an Eric Clapton classic track such as 'Sunshine Of Your Love', 'Layla' or 'Wonderful Tonight'.

Just choose any track from 'Complete Clapton' and get creative! We're looking for anything from an air-guitar mime, simple acoustic guitar rendition, karaoke sessions with all your friends or full-band reinterpretations of any great song, the more entertaining the better!

These videos should be uploaded to this specially-created YouTube Group with the winning entry being selected on October 22.

TO ENTER CLICK HERE: www.youtube.com/group/completeclaptoncomp

http://www.uncut.co.uk/news/eric_clapton/news/10412

Если повтор, пардон!
Eric Clapton: Crossroads Guitar Festival 2007
Release Date: November 20, 2007
Product Description
The second Crossroads Guitar Festival - a day-long concert featuring legendary music & collaborations - was held on July 28, 2007 to benefit the Crossroads Centre in Antigua. Filmed in HD, this two disc DVD features over four hours of historic performances from that day. Since it's inception, Eric Clapton's vision for the festival has been to create an event where his friends & contemporaries can have fun & jam together for the benefit of a good cause.
Disc 1
INTRODUCTION Bill Murray
UBERESSO Sonny Landreth
HELL AT HOME Sonny Landreth with Eric Clapton
MAHARINA John McLaughlin
ROSIE Doyle Bramhall II
OUTSIDE WOMAN BLUES Doyle Bramhall II
LITTLE BY LITTLE Susan Tedeschi with The Derek Trucks Band
ANYDAY The Derek Trucks Band
HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED - Johnny Winter with The Derek Trucks Band
NOBODYSOUL Robert Randolph & The Family Band
POOR JOHNNY The Robert Cray Band
DIRTY WORK AT THE CROSSROADS Jimmie Vaughan with The Robert Cray Band
SITTING ON TOP OF THE WORLD - Hubert Sumlin with The Robert Cray Band & Jimmie Vaughan
PAYING THE COST TO BE THE BOSS B.B. King with The Robert Cray Band with Jimmie Vaughan & Hubert Sumlin
ROCK ME BABY - B.B. King with The Robert Cray Band with Jimmie Vaughan & Hubert Sumlin
SWEET THING Vince Gill
COUNTRY BOY Albert Lee with Vince Gill
IF IT MAKES YOU HAPPY - Sheryl Crow with Vince Gill & Albert Lee
TULSA TIME - Sheryl Crow with Eric Clapton, Vince Gill & Albert Lee
BLUE EYES CRYING IN THE RAIN - Willie Nelson with Vince Gill & Albert Lee
ON THE ROAD AGAIN - Willie Nelson with Sheryl Crow, Vince Gill & Albert Lee
Disc 2
BELIEF John Mayer
GRAVITY John Mayer
DON T WORRY BABY Los Lobos
MAS Y MAS Los Lobos
CAUSE WE VE ENDED AS LOVERS Jeff Beck
BIG BLOCK Jeff Beck
TELL THE TRUTH Eric Clapton
ISN T IT A PITY Eric Clapton
LITTLE QUEEN OF SPADES Eric Clapton
WHO DO YOU LOVE Robbie Robertson with Eric Clapton
PRESENCE OF THE LORD Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton
CAN T FIND MY WAY HOME Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton
HAD TO CRY TODAY Steve Winwood and Eric Clapton
DEAR MR. FANTASY Steve Winwood
CROSSROADS Eric Clapton and Steve Winwood
MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB Buddy Guy
DAMN RIGHT I VE GOT THE BLUES Buddy Guy
SWEET HOME CHICAGO Buddy Guy with Eric Clapton, Robert Cray, John Mayer, Hubert Sumlin, Jimmie Vaughan & Johnny Winter

2zhukoff:
>Если повтор, пардон!
:) Ага, постили уже, но напоминание нужно! :)

Rock 'n' roll hearts: Boyd and Clapton
New autobiographies give two sides of one legendary love story
By Sarah Rodman, Globe Staff | October 21, 2007

They had one of the most tangled love affairs in rock 'n' roll history. If their love was a song . . . well, it was a song. Several, in fact. And really famous ones that everyone knows, including "Layla" and "Wonderful Tonight."

In "Clapton: An Autobiography," the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer lays bare his shamelessness, and in "Wonderful Tonight: George Harrison, Eric Clapton, and Me," Boyd reports that marrying two of the biggest rock stars in the world wasn't all about love songs and rolling around on beds of cash. Considering the amount of drugs and alcohol consumed by all involved, their memories are surprisingly similar. Here are a few interesting "he said, she said" differences.

On 'Layla':
In "Wonderful Tonight" Boyd says Clapton called her up to hear his blistering Derek and the Dominos tale of unrequited love in London in 1970. "He switched on the tape machine, turned up the volume, and played me the most powerful, moving song I had ever heard." It was then that she finally gave up her resistance. (Who wouldn't?)

In "Clapton" the guitarist says the consummation of their attraction and the playback were unrelated, that he coincidentally ran into Boyd one day and "we just kind of collided, to the point where there was no turning back." Interestingly, he places the playing of the song at a different rendezvous.

On confessing to Harrison:
While the former spouses agree that Clapton admitted his love for her to Harrison in the wee hours of an all-night party, Boyd recalls it happening hours after hearing "Layla," while Clapton writes, vaguely, "a little while later." She says Harrison was "furious" and they left immediately. Meanwhile, Clapton writes, "The ensuing conversation bordered on the absurd. Although I think he was deeply hurt - I could see it in his eyes - he preferred to make light of it, almost turning it all into a Monty Python situation."

On 'Wonderful Tonight':
Most rock fans know that this sweet-sounding ode to a partner's beauty was born of anger while Clapton waited for Boyd to go out. "I remember telling her, 'Look, you look wonderful, okay? Please don't change again. We must go or we'll be late.' " He then immediately sat down and wrote the song. "I wasn't that enamored with it as a song. It was just a ditty, as far as I was concerned, that I could just as easily have thrown away." Rolling Stone Ron Wood convinced him otherwise.

If he was angry, Boyd doesn't mention it. "Poor Eric had been ready for hours and had been waiting patiently."

On inspiration:
"Layla" and "Wonderful Tonight" weren't the only songs for which Boyd served as muse. Harrison wrote the Beatles classic "Something" about her and Clapton used her for inspiration for "Bell-Bottom Blues," "I Looked Away," the not-so-nice "The Shape You're In," "Behind the Mask," and "Old Love."

On the sex that went with the drugs and rock 'n' roll:
Clapton may have disrupted the Harrison marriage, but according to Boyd, the quiet Beatle was no saint. She claims that prior to their breakup, he had affairs with the wives of both Wood and Beatle drummer Ringo Starr, among many others. According to Clapton himself, he also had many, many dalliances while married to Boyd and was stripped of an Italian model girlfriend by Mick Jagger. He even admits that he tried to get it on with one of Boyd's friends on the night of their wedding party. (He also dated Boyd's 17-year-old sister prior to his marriage to Boyd.)

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2007/10/21/rock_n_roll_hearts_boyd_and...

Я не верю блондинке! ;)))

Andy’s guitar heroes...
Oct 23 2007 by Alison Stokes, South Wales Echo

Cardiff ’60s superstar Andy Fairweather-Low has toured with rock’s greatest guitarists. In a career spanning almost four decades the 59-year-old former Amen Corner singer has played rhythm guitar with everyone from Eric Clapton to the late George Harrison. Now out on tour on his own, he tells Alison Stokes about his own guitar heroes...

ERIC CLAPTON

“I remember first seeing him in Cardiff in 1965 when he was playing with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers.

“After that I would travel to London to see him playing at the Flamingo Club and it left a lasting impression.

“I worked with Eric Clapton, pictured below, for 13 years and I never tired of his playing.

“Every new year he holds a private bash in Woking, near his home, and I play with him.

“Of all the people who had an influence on me in my formative years as a guitar player, he was the one. He asked me to join his band for his 1992 Albert Hall gig and the following January we were in the studio recording Eric’s MTV Unplugged album.”

GEORGE HARRISON

“I remember getting a phone call when I lived in Beulah Road, Rhiwbina. It was Eric Clapton’s manager asking if I would be available to tour Japan with George Harrison. The year was 1991.

“I could never get it out of my head that he was a Beatle as the Beatles were a great influence on me as a teenager. They were the first band who really started writing their own songs. And I learned to play I Want To Hold Your Hand on guitar.

“If I had written just one of The Beatles songs I would be a happy man. The tragedy of George, pictured above, getting stabbed and then having cancer was that he was such a good man.”

ROGER WATERS

“In July I finished the Dark Side of the Moon tour with Roger Waters.

“I first met Roger, inset right, when we toured with Pink Floyd as Amen Corner. The I bumped into him again in 1983 and started working with him, when he was recording his first solo album The Pros and Cons of Hitchhiking.

“On the Dark Side of the Moon tour we were out on the road for 15 months and we travelled all over the world – India, China, South Africa and South America, playing the album every night.”

KEITH RICHARDS

“I was 16 and in my last year at Llanrumney Secondary Modern School, when one of my friends persuaded me to go to see the Rolling Stones at Sophia Gardens.

“They were on a bill with Bern Elliot and the Fenmen and Jet Harris. I remember they started off with Talking ‘Bout You and I knew there and then that my education was finished and I wanted to be in a band, I wanted to be like Keith Richards, pictured above.

“After that night I borrowed a friend’s guitar and learned a few simple licks like Chuck Berry used to play and started learning. I’m still practising even now. I got my first band together The Firebrands and started playing gigs at clubs like the Kennard Rooms on Albany Road, Cardiff, and the Valleys.”

JIMI HENDRIX

“When we first toured with Amen Corner we were on a bill with The Move, Pink Floyd, The Nice, The Outer Limits and Heir Apparent and Jimi Hendrix, pictured right.

“My first introduction was at a sound check. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

“After that day I used to go up to see bands play at a club called the Speakeasy in London. On a couple of occasions Hendrix came to the club and got up and played.

“I saw him again when he played at Sophia Gardens in 1969.

“Later that year I went to New York with (legendary producer, impresario and former Stones manager) Andrew Loog Oldham and I ended up backing Hendrix when he laid down a track called Stone Love Again. It was unbelievable, a little Welsh kid singing with Hendrix.”

Slowhand's autobiography: Sex, drugs and boredom
by Terry Lawson
Detroit Free Press (MCT)
23 October 2007

So who knew Eric Clapton was such a bore? OK, maybe everybody who bought his last few albums or saw him on his last world tour, which had all the fire and spontaneity of a Fred Thompson interview.

But even that couldn’t prepare us for the snooze that is “Clapton: The Autobiography” (Broadway, $26), which hit bookstores two weeks ago.

The best thing that could be said about “Clapton” is that it’s tasteful, which one might expect from a chap who claims Giorgio Armani as one of his best friends.

Clapton apparently wrote the book himself. It, however, has the unmistakable cadence of dictation, the sort of repetition one often finds in anecdotes recalled on the private jet between gigs.

It has the same distant feel of Miles Davis’ as-told-to autobiography, which turned out to be primarily a rehash of stories well known from another biography, sometimes word-for-word.

As a rule, I don’t read show-biz autobiographies. Where once they were sanitized beyond recognition, in the style of Billie Holiday’s “Lady Sings the Blues,” they now have been smutted up and strutted out like rap videos. How many groupies, how many drugs, how many rehabs before one finds inner light?

Ironically, Clapton’s life could make that of any Motley Crue member look like a Unitarian minister.

For starters, his supposed mother was really his grandmother, and his older brother was really his uncle. He lived in relative poverty before acquiring a cheap guitar and learning to play blues by listening to old Muddy Waters records.

By 14, he was earning spending money in a band, and while still in his teens joined the Yardbirds, then quit after one album because the group released a single, “For Your Love,” that he thought wasn’t authentic enough.

Months later, he was holding down the lead chair in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and was called into the studio to record with Bob Dylan, a session he barely remembers that yielded no music.

Then Cream, Blind Faith, superstardom and a crush on his friend George Harrison’s wife, Pattie Boyd, that produced the love song “Layla.” At that time he was an unrepentant junkie, but he won her away (he and George had a friendly chat, the substance of which is not revealed here) and he wrote her the beautiful (if slightly nauseating) “Wonderful Tonight.”

The lyric was not written because, as the song says, she looked stunning at a party they attended, but because she would try on dozens of outfits before they went out, making him so crazy he told her she looked wonderful in all of them.

We haven’t gotten to the crazed two-bottle-a-day alcoholism and the death of the son he barely knew, Conor, whom he immortalized in a song first given to a movie about junkies. By the end of the book, he can barely be bothered to recall the last names of all the supermodels he squired before settling down with a wonderful wife and three daughters.

The last chapter is given to a year on the road, which sounds even less interesting than the junkie year spent watching TV and waiting for the man.

It could be that the only passion Clapton ever had was expended in a handful of live shows and recordings - the Bluesbreakers record, Derek and the Dominos’ “Layla.”

He notes with some pride that his all-time best -seller was the “Unplugged” CD, which he didn’t feel was worthy of putting out. Then why did he? To prove the point that passion is overrated? That a public that would dig “For Your Love” isn’t worthy of him?

At one point in “Clapton” he does sidestep into his immense talent briefly to explain to us what a blue note is, that bending sound that takes us somewhere deep and true.

Maybe in the second edition he’ll catch that and take it.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/news/article/50185/slowhands-autobiography-sex-drugs-and-b...

Ага, у них тоже есть журналистика вроде нашей, по принципу "всё обоср...ть, ничего не пропустив". К объективной критике это никакого отношения не имеет. Такие писания больше говорят об авторе, чем о герое публикации.

Eric Clapton Tsunami Concert

http://community.livejournal.com/slowhand_461/46373.html


All the Best from CROSSROADS GUITAR FEST 2007

(включая все самое интересное, что не выйдет на ДВД)

http://community.livejournal.com/slowhand_461/46826.html

http://community.livejournal.com/slowhand_461/46952.html

http://community.livejournal.com/slowhand_461/47235.html

http://community.livejournal.com/slowhand_461/47513.html

http://community.livejournal.com/slowhand_461/47708.html

http://community.livejournal.com/slowhand_461/48009.html

http://community.livejournal.com/slowhand_461/48248.html

Drug haze obscures much of Clapton's recollections
PHIL KLOER
Cox News Service
Oct. 19, 2007 12:24 PM

ATLANTA -- The DJ plays the song, and at dances from high school proms to 30th high school reunions, couples snuggle in to one another in one of their favorite slow dances: "Wonderful Tonight," by Eric Clapton.

So it was with a curmudgeon's glee that I read the real story about how Clapton wrote "Wonderful Tonight." He spent a lot of time waiting for his wife to get ready for social events, and he would try to hustle her along by telling her she already looks great, so come on already, something husbands worldwide can relate to. The song that so many couples view as their special love song was actually written in "anger and frustration," Clapton writes in his new autobiography.

The woman he was addressing, as music buffs know, was Pattie Boyd, ex-wife of George Harrison, and the inspiration of two other classic songs: "Something," Harrison's lilting tribute to her, and "Layla," Clapton's anguished howl from the time when he was secretly in love with his good friend's wife.

In the final verse of "Wonderful Tonight," though, the singer has his wife drive him home from a party and put him to bed. And that seems to be inspired by an even more important thread that runs through "Clapton": his debilitating years of addiction, first with heroin, then with alcohol. While he did play high for many years - he can't even remember playing the Concert for Bangladesh in 1971 - he also was such a mess that he spent a couple of years in the 70s just hiding at home, watching TV and doing heroin.

The first part of the book is splendid, and Clapton shows a keen eye for detail. Born illegitimate in 1945, he was abandoned by his biological mother and raised by his grandparents, whom he thought were his parents, in postwar poverty.

He taught himself guitar at 14, listening first to rockabilly, then the blues greats, particularly Big Bill Broonzy and Robert Johnson. Of his first electric guitar, he explains it was "a double-cutaway semi-acoustic Kay ? cut away on both side of the neck to allow easy access up the neck to the higher frets. ? Though advertised as Sunburst, which would have been a golden orange going to dark red at the edges, it was more yellowy, going to a sort of pink." Hardly ever does he write about any of the women in his life with such loving detail.

Clapton comes across as talented but difficult. He quit the Yardbirds just as they were about to succeed cause they weren't pure enough, and he quit Cream because he thought the band was a "con."

This period, roughly 1964-69, is the sharpest in the book, in part because Clapton's memory is still good, and because he's young, a worldbeater, running into Jimi Hendrix here and John Lennon there.

Then the drugs take over, and his life and his autobiography both get a bit hazy. "Clapton" becomes, for long stretches, just another "junkie memoir." He uses, he bottoms out, he goes to rehab. He relapses, he bottoms out, he goes back to rehab. Even the music in the second half of the book becomes "and then, and then, and then." He's 62 now, 20 years sober, demons dormant, and it's impossible not to be happy for him.

Clapton has already written chapters of his life in his songs, and that is clearly the medium he was meant to use. His hoarse shout on "Layla": "Got me on my knees/ Beggin', darlin, please" captures his longing for Pattie Boyd far better than the pages devoted to her here. When his son Conor fell to his death, he wrote "Tears in Heaven," and nothing he writes here about Conor comes close to that song. Turns out we had Clapton's autobiography all along, with guitar solos.

http://www.azcentral.com/ent/music/articles/1019clapton-ON.html

Ух ты!
На старых треках звук подправлен в ЛУЧШУЮ сторону, прям по новому зазвучал!!!
Буклет очень добротно сделан.

Сразу предупреждаю, у меня американское издание.

2SergeK:

>Ух ты!
>На старых треках звук подправлен в ЛУЧШУЮ сторону,
>прям по новому зазвучал!!!
>Буклет очень добротно сделан.
>Сразу предупреждаю, у меня американское издание.

В Европе альтернативная обложка с портретом?

2Primal Scream:
Ага. Здесь, портрет внутри :)

Clapton: 'I wrote from what I could remember'
The Associated Press
Article Last Updated: 10/27/2007 11:37:51 AM MDT


From his early days with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Eric Clapton quickly assumed a position in the center of the music universe. He hung out with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, jammed with Muddy Waters and Duane Allman, influenced Stevie Ray Vaughan, Derek Trucks and untold thousands of other guitarists.
He confesses, without embarrassment, that he can't remember all of what happened. ''My memory of the late '60s right through the early '80s is severely hampered,'' he says. ''I wrote from what I could remember, and I needed nudging, too.''
Clapton's book is not totally devoid of tabloid-worthy material. He recounts how Mick Jagger once stole his girlfriend - an Italian model - setting off homicidal fantasies in the late 1980s.
''I went on a rampage, mentally,'' he recalls. ''I wanted to kill him.'' He also delves into his romance with Pattie Boyd, who wound up with Clapton after her split with Beatle George Harrison. Their star-crossed affair made her the muse for some of Clapton's most memorable songs, including ''Layla'' and ''Wonderful Tonight,'' before giving way to recriminations.
Clapton recalled a recent Sunday-morning trip to his local grocery store, where Boyd's new memoir, Wonderful Tonight, was excerpted in the British press. The Page 1 headline jumped out as he grabbed the paper: ''ERIC CLAPTON'S DRINKING KILLED MY MARRIAGE.''
''The headline editor chose to castigate me quite strongly,'' Clapton says with more than a touch of British understatement.
''I'm in the local shop, and I'm thinking, 'Are the neighbors watching me read?' ''

УРА!!! I've got it!

Eric Clapton Recalls Drink, Drugs, Divorce, Not So Much Music

By Mark Beech

Oct. 29 (Bloomberg) -- Back in 1987, Eric Clapton initiated an annual medley of concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

One night, he'd do blues, all ``Have You Heard'' and ``Old Love.'' Another performance was pure rock. He even did gigs with an orchestra, to highlight his work on film soundtracks.

I snagged tickets for the whole set each year and came away dazzled by his guitar genius, by his ability to sound like Chuck Berry in one number and J.J. Cale in another. Only later did I think to ask whether Clapton had his own style -- or even his own identity.

Those doubts returned as I read his long-awaited, oversold autobiography, ``Eric Clapton,'' billed as the first account of a career that ignited more than 40 years ago when fans began scrawling ``Clapton is God'' on London walls. For this is no slick, ghostwritten memoir of yet another rock star who almost threw his life away on drink and drugs.

Though these pages recall the usual pop bacchanalia, Clapton delivers it in Martini-dry prose. The style matches the man: It's downbeat and self-absorbed, yet rarely dull.

At age 62, Clapton is still uncomfortable with adulation. Brutally honest, he lists his flaws and failures, tragedies and traumas. He describes one girlfriend he lost to an overdose and another he lost to Mick Jagger.

He castigates himself for the freak death of his four-year- old son Conor, who fell from a 53rd-floor window in an ex- girlfriend's Manhattan apartment in 1991. Clapton was sober at the time -- and resolved to stay that way.

``I realized there was no better way of honoring the memory of my son,'' he writes.

Ferrari Crash

There's little bragging about his triumphs in this book, though he's a Grammy-winning artist who has been admitted three times to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Nor does he boast about his wealth, which the Sunday Times Rich List this year estimated at 140 million pounds ($288 million).

Of his Ferraris, he offers only a rueful note about how he crashed one at 90 miles, or 145 kilometers, per hour while drunk. (``They had to cut me out,'' he says.) Of his homes, he recalls the time he holed up in a mansion, spending the equivalent of $16,000 a week on heroin. And then there was the time he went on stage so drunk that he played lying down.

Clapton, who kicked his addictions two decades ago, traces his troubles to his childhood. He grew up with his grandmother and her husband, believing they were his parents. The girl he took to be his sister was his real mother, a discovery that left him ``so insecure and scared that I just couldn't respond.'' In the end, ``music became a healer for me,'' he says.

Sunburst Kay

In one telling moment, Clapton recalls how badly he wanted a special guitar -- a semi-acoustic Kay in sunburst orange -- as a teenager. ``As soon as I got it, I suddenly didn't want it anymore.'' That pattern was repeated throughout his life.

Time and again, he strove for the impossible, achieved it and simply moved on. He split the Yardbirds, Cream and Blind Faith as the bands succeeded. He romanced Pattie Boyd, his Beatle friend George Harrison's wife, won her hand and then lost interest.

Boyd is the model who famously inspired Clapton to write ``Layla,'' and this is where the book falls down. Here, as elsewhere, he gives little insight into how he crafted his best- known songs, saying only that he was thinking of Boyd when he wrote the line, ``What'll you do when you get lonely?''

And when, the reader might ask in return, will the real Eric Clapton stand up?

"...Насколько известно нашему сайту, одно из крупнейших издательств России уже вступило в переговоры с издательством «Random House» о переводе автобиографии Эрика Клэптона на русский и издании ее у нас..."

http://www.bluesnews.ru/news/?id=3316