Eric Clapton

One of the most beautiful love songs in rock came out of an ugly situation: Eric Clapton fell in love with his best friend's wife and could not tell anyone. So he did the only thing he knew how to do. He put it in a song, hid behind a false name, and waited to see what would happen.

Clapton was born in Ripley, Surrey, on 30 March 1945, and passed through the Yardbirds, Cream, Blind Faith and Derek and the Dominos before a solo career now sixty years long. He is the only musician inducted three times into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: as a solo artist, with the Yardbirds and with Cream. And yet the story that explains him best is not one about a virtuoso guitarist, but about a man who only knew one way of saying things.

The nickname does not mean what it seems

They call him "Slowhand", and almost everybody gets the origin wrong. It is not praise for the elegance of his phrasing. Chris Dreja, his bandmate in the Yardbirds, told it: when Clapton broke a string mid-concert he would stand there changing it, and the audience would start applauding slowly, with that mocking slow clap of people waiting. Giorgio Gomelsky made the pun and it stuck for life. British rock's most famous nickname was born out of a polite heckle.

And in 1967 someone painted on a wall in Islington, north London, the phrase that followed him the rest of his life: "Clapton is God". He hated it. He said it embarrassed him, that he had always wanted to be the best but that he could only accept the slogan "as an ideal". It is worth holding on to that discomfort, because it explains what came next: a man handed a crown he did not know how to wear, who spent decades looking for somewhere to hide.

The Harrison house

In the mid-sixties Clapton became a close friend of George Harrison. In January 1966 Harrison had married Pattie Boyd, a model he had met two years earlier on the set of A Hard Day's Night. Clapton went to their house often. And there, little by little, he fell in love with her.

He could not say it. She was his friend's wife, and the friend was a Beatle. He wrote her letters — desperate, unfiltered, the kind you should not send — and it got him nowhere. So he did the other thing.

The false name and the song

In 1970 he recorded Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs hidden behind a name that was not his. He wanted the music heard without the weight of "Clapton is God" on top of it; what is striking is that even the false name did not come out as planned. The band was going to be Del and the Dynamos — "Del" was what people called him — somebody misread it on a poster, and they went down in history as Derek and the Dominos. Even his hiding place depended on an accident.

He took the title from a twelfth-century Persian tale, the story of a man driven mad by an impossible love. On the other guitar was Duane Allman, of whom Clapton later wrote that he was "the musical brother I'd never had but wished I did". Around that song he built a whole album aimed at one person: "Bell Bottom Blues" is there too, and years later would come "Wonderful Tonight".

And here is the detail that turns this into a novel: Harrison had already written that same woman "Something", probably the most beautiful love song in the Beatles' catalogue. The Beatle and the guitarist, each on his own, wrote Pattie Boyd two of the finest love songs of the century. Neither of them said it to her face. Both of them sang it.

The husband-in-law

The story turned around slowly. Boyd filed for divorce from Harrison — over his infidelities, not hers — and it was finalised in June 1977. Clapton married her on 27 March 1979 in Tucson, Arizona.

And what happened next is the strangest and the most decent part of all of it. Harrison did not cut him off. They stayed friends, and Harrison took to calling him, half joking and half not, his "husband-in-law". The man whose wife Clapton had wanted and won kept him close to the end. When Harrison died in 2001, it was Clapton who organised and musically directed the Concert for George, at the Royal Albert Hall, on 29 November 2002. Few stories in rock end like that.

The marriage to Boyd, on the other hand, did not hold. She left him in 1987 and the divorce was granted in 1989, on grounds of infidelity and unreasonable behaviour. Winning the song was not the same as winning the life.

What could not be said any other way

On 20 March 1991 his son Conor, aged four, fell from a fifty-third-floor window in New York. There is nothing to say about that. Clapton did the only thing he knew how to do with pain: he wrote "Tears in Heaven", which won six Grammy Awards and which millions of people ended up using to mourn their own dead.

There, whole, is the thesis of his life. This is a man who never knew how to say things by speaking. He fell in love with the wrong person and wrote "Layla". He lost a son and wrote "Tears in Heaven". The guitar was not his trade: it was the only place where he could say what he could not say any other way. It is the same economy that makes the blues great — that music which plugged itself in to shout the same old thing louder — and Clapton applied it to his own biography without noticing.

After the blow he came off drink, stayed clean, and in 1998 founded the Crossroads Centre in Antigua, a rehabilitation clinic to pull others out of where he had been. It is the closest thing to a happy ending this story offers: the man who only knew how to turn pain into songs learned, late in life, to turn it into something useful as well.

He is alive and still playing, past eighty. If "Layla", or "Wonderful Tonight", or "Tears in Heaven" ever hit you somewhere deep, now you know why: they were not songs, they were things that could not be said. Go and listen with that in mind. Next time that riff comes on, notice what you are actually hearing — a man who found no other way.

Sources

Eric Patrick Clapton was born on 30 March 1945 in Ripley, Surrey, England. He played with the Yardbirds, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, Cream, Blind Faith and Derek and the Dominos, alongside his solo career; he is the only artist inducted three times into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (as a solo artist, with the Yardbirds and with Cream). The nickname "Slowhand" originated, according to Chris Dreja, in the audience's slow handclap while Clapton changed broken strings on stage; the pun is attributed to Giorgio Gomelsky. The "Clapton is God" graffito appeared in 1967 on a wall in Islington, London; Clapton said he was embarrassed by it and could accept it only "as an ideal". Pattie Boyd met George Harrison on 2 March 1964 during the filming of "A Hard Day's Night"; they married on 21 January 1966 and divorced on 9 June 1977. Boyd inspired Harrison's "Something" and "For You Blue", and Clapton's "Layla", "Bell Bottom Blues" and "Wonderful Tonight". "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" (1970) was released under the name Derek and the Dominos, which arose from a misreading of "Del and the Dynamos"; the title alludes to the Persian tale "Layla and Majnun" and Duane Allman played slide guitar. Clapton wrote that Allman was "the musical brother I'd never had but wished I did". Clapton and Boyd married on 27 March 1979 in Tucson, Arizona; she left him in 1987 and the divorce was granted in 1989. Harrison kept the friendship and called Clapton his "husband-in-law". Conor Clapton, aged four, died on 20 March 1991 after falling from a fifty-third floor in New York; "Tears in Heaven" won six Grammy Awards. Clapton founded the Crossroads Centre in Antigua in 1998 and was musical director of the Concert for George, held on 29 November 2002 at the Royal Albert Hall. He remains active. Interpretations of the meaning of his work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Wikipedia and press coverage.