"Clapton: The Autobiography" (Eric Clapton)
is it possible that living the life of a drugged-out rock and roller isn't all that mythologizing reporters have made it out to be?
“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 glamour 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 psycho-analyzes himself and recounts a life riddled with drugs, booze, womanizing, shame, self-doubt and self-destructive choices. He sleep-walks 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.
[snip]
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.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.’ ”
[From Turn It Up - A guided tour through the worlds of pop, rock and rap | Chicago Tribune | Blog]
Wait, Clapton despised Led Zeppelin, but then ripped off one of their (most overplayed) songs? Pathetic. For the record, I do like the most recent Clapton/JJ Cale album, but from Blind Faith dissolution until 2006 is a long time of making crap music.
Seth:
These revelations made by Eric Clapton go hand-in-hand wit his own self-image. He was known back then not to have a fixed "look." Beard, no beard, short hair, long hair, just check the records. Thanks for publishing the review. From the peanut gallery ;P
In a certain mood, I can listen to Derek and the Dominoes, but other than that, his music of the 70s, 80s, and 90s does absolutely nothing for me. John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers and Cream had a lot more oomph.