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List Price: $26.00 | | Publisher: Broadway
Salesrank: 709425
Released: October 9, 2007 |
| Our Price: $7.78 |
| Used Price: $3.09 |
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| Media: Hardcover |
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Editorial Review:
I found a pattern in my behavior that had been repeating itself for years, decades even. Bad choices were my specialty, and if something honest and decent came along, I would shun it or run the other way.
With striking intimacy and candor, Eric Clapton tells the story of his eventful and inspiring life in this poignant and honest autobiography. More than a rock star, he is an icon, a living embodiment of the history of rock music. Well known for his reserve in a profession marked by self-promotion, flamboyance, and spin, he now chronicles, for the first time, his remarkable personal and professional journeys.
Born illegitimate in 1945 and raised by his grandparents, Eric never knew his father and, until the age of nine, believed his actual mother to be his sister. In his early teens his solace was the guitar, and his incredible talent would make him a cult hero in the clubs of Britain and inspire devoted fans to scrawl Clapton is God on the walls of London s Underground. With the formation of Cream, the world's first supergroup, he became a worldwide superstar, but conflicting personalities tore the band apart within two years. His stints in Blind Faith, in Delaney and Bonnie and Friends, and in Derek and the Dominos were also short-lived but yielded some of the most enduring songs in history, including the classic Layla.
During the late sixties he played as a guest with Jimi Hendrix and Bob Dylan, as well as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and longtime friend George Harrison. It was while working with the latter that he fell for George s wife, Pattie Boyd, a seemingly unrequited love that led him to the depths of despair, self-imposed seclusion, and drug addiction. By the early seventies he had overcome his addiction and released the bestselling album 461 Ocean Boulevard, with its massive hit I Shot the Sheriff. He followed that with the platinum album Slowhand, which included Wonderful Tonight, the touching love song to Pattie, whom he finally married at the end of 1979. A short time later, however, Eric had replaced heroin with alcohol as his preferred vice, following a pattern of behavior that not only was detrimental to his music but contributed to the eventual breakup of his marriage.
In the eighties he would battle and begin his recovery from alcoholism and become a father. But just as his life was coming together, he was struck by a terrible blow: His beloved four-year-old son, Conor, died in a freak accident. At an earlier time Eric might have coped with this tragedy by fleeing into a world of addiction. But now a much stronger man, he took refuge in music, responding with the achingly beautiful Tears in Heaven.
Clapton is the powerfully written story of a survivor, a man who has achieved the pinnacle of success despite extraordinary demons. It is one of the most compelling memoirs of our time.
Clapton: The Autobiography Reviews:
boring 
2009-10-26 - this book had very little information...it was mundane, not well written. I hope his life really wasn't this boring!!
hire a writer 
2009-10-19 - This is one of the reasons why you should hire a professional writer to transcribe your story. Very badly written, uneven, sloppy, shallow. I love Eric. But, trust the art not the artist. Very dissapointing he never told how he learned how to play so good. How much did he practice? When did he first really begin to get serious? Was he to stoned out to remember? Maybe. How can you forget something like that. That's what's missing.And what's with the black and white photos? Too cheap to hire a writer and put in color photos? The Hendrix episode is not how I heard it. Supposedly after Hendrix blew him out, he turned to a friend and said "if I'm God, who is he?".He also says at the end he will just retire and "do nothing". WHAT!!! He has been on tour ever since? I give up you figure it out.
A revealing look at a life mostly mis-spent. 
2009-09-22 -
I enjoyed the book, which he apparently wrote without a ghost writer. He is quite a character. I love the fact that he loves to shop, so unstereotypically male. The story of his struggle with various addictions was heart rending, and his success was well earned.
The part about his son was beyong heartbreaking. When he was talking about his Unplugged CD, which has the song Tears In Heaven, about his son, on it, done just about a year after Conor's death, he talked about how the CD cost so little to produce, and said that if anyone wanted to know what it cost him to make the CD, they should go to Ripley and visit his son's grave. I broke down in tears at that point and am tearing up now typing this. But I loved him for his refusal to allow this tragedy to send him back to drinking. Although he doesn't state this explicitly, it seems to me that for him to have done that would have dishonored his son's memory.
The other thing that struck me was at the end of book, where he mentions that he is virtually deaf, but refuses to wear a hearing aid, because he wants to hear everything naturally, even if he can barely hear it. I can imagine that this is frustrating for his family, having to shout at him all the time. My father was hard of hearing to a degree not as severe as EC's, but it was awful trying to communicate with him, repeating stuff and having to yell to be heard. I feel for his family, and hope he changes his mind about the hearing aid....
I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't just a puff piece, but after reading it, I think I know why. Part of the AA ethos involves telling your story to other people, in order to help them not get in the same fix. I am sure that this biography is an attempt to do that, as well as the face to face "witnessing" he has no doubt done. I am also sure that profits from the book go to his Crossroads foundation, which is a place for people to get help with addictions. For that reason alone, I think people should buy the book.
I also think that a lot of people really trash him, his music and so forth, for reasons I don't understand. People seem to love him or hate him, which says more about them than about him, personally or musically, imo.
Great read.
2009-09-18 - I thought I knew something about Eric Clapton but there is much more to his story than most realize. This is a no-holds barred look at his life with nothing held back.
All of the gory details are in this book--a fascinating read 
2009-09-17 - I grew up with the music of The Blues Breakers and Cream and bought Clapton's first solo album when it first came out (one of his best). I continued to buy his albums and followed his musical journey for his entire 40+ year career. Therefore, I thoroughly enjoyed reading Clapton's life story in his own words and relating the stories to the music. I knew that he had shaken a heroin addiction but I didn't know the details. I also knew that he turned to alcohol as his drug of choice after he broke his heroin addiction, but I had no idea how big of an alcoholic he was. I have trouble playing even a simple song on my guitar after even one beer, so I am in awe of a talent so great that he could play to tens of thousands of people while totally smashed. All of the gory details are in this book--a fascinating read.
Clapton was born with a huge talent and he almost fell into guitar playing to escape a painful childhood. He explains this in considerable depth in the early chapters. At times the book gets bogged down in great detail about all of the musicians, producers and people that he has known and I found myself skipping over some of that. But he almost too proudly tells of his dalliances with women, and this, I think, degrades both himself and those women. I don't blame him for taking advantage of his fame to get around all he could but it sometimes comes across as bragging. He must know that his children will read this book. On the other hand, maybe he just wanted to come clean about his sordid past. Some things should have been left unsaid.
I don't respect his fascination with hunting though he says that he has grown to eat everything he kills (apparently a challenge for him). What he doesn't say, however, is that he gave a concert in support of fox hunting in Britain in 2006 in which Roger Daltry, Roger Waters, Bryan ferry and a few other musicians participated. Fox hunting is about as honorable as bear baiting. I guess he's not that proud of his killing animals as a hobby or he would have told us of his support of fox hunting. So, reading the book, I lost even more respect for Clapton the man than I had already lost over the years. I can, however, separate Clapton the man from Clapton the musician, and I don't allow that to spoil my appreciation for the awesome music that he has created.
The major technical disappointment with the book was that there are virtually no insights into how he learned how to play guitar or how he plays guitar. He says that he just practiced a lot in his teen years on a cheap guitar on which the strings were hard to depress and he first fell in love with blues when he heard Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee. He says little more than that about guitar playing. I and the thousands of musicians or wanna-be musicians that will select this book want to know much more. Did he practice a lot? How many hours per day for how long before he started to see results? He spent most of his life stoned, how can you practice when you're drunk? Did he use any instruction books or instructors? Did he practice scales? Does he use major, minor, country and jazz scales or just pentatonic scales? Does he modify the scales, and if so, why and how? How did he figure out which chords to play--is it all trial and error? Did he totally improvise his live Fillmore East solo of Crossroads, one of the greatest guitar solos in history, or did he think most of it out beforehand? What is his approach to song writing? Words first then music or visa versa? Etc., etc. .... So, the three stars is not because he is a morally weak person or that he hunts but because he omitted what could have been the best part of the book, i.e., how he got to be so good at guitar and what it felt like to do with apparent ease what others would give anything to be able to do.
I really wanted to hear more about his guitar playing and song writing efforts and the book failed to satisfy my curiosity. I am glad that I read the book because it provided an insight into the lives and lifestyles of Clapton and other famous musicians--lives that are incredibly complex and involve situations that are almost unimaginable to most people.
