David Bowling - Eric Clapton FAQ

Copyright 2013 by David Bowling

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, without written permission, except by a newspaper or magazine reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review.

Published in 2013 by Backbeat Books
An Imprint of Hal Leonard Corporation
7777 West Bluemound Road
Milwaukee, WI 53213

Trade Book Division Editorial Offices
33 Plymouth St., Montclair, NJ 07042

The FAQ series was conceived by Robert Rodriguez and developed with Stuart Shea.

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

Print ISBN 978-1-61713-454-8
epub ISBN 978-1-61713-574-3
Kindle ISBN 978-1-61713-575-0

www.backbeatbooks.com

To Josef Casimir Hofmann and Thomas Edison

Contents

When I started this project, I googled the name Eric Clapton. I received 10,400,000 responses. It was not 10,400,401 or 10,399,999 but a nice round number. No matter how you look at it, thats a lot of information about one person. There is more to come, as his career shows no signs of slowing down.

Amazon also had 650 books dealing with him in some manner or other, and that is not counting compilation or omnibus-type volumes. All this calls for the question, is another book about Eric Clapton really necessary?

The answer, up until this point, has always been yes. There has been an insatiable urge by millions of his fans for more and more knowledge about the man, his life, and his music. I feel its a combination of the type of society in which we live and the magnitude of the career he has carved out for himself.

He has been a fixture on the music scene for half a century. The Yardbirds, Cream, Blind Faith, and Derek and the Dominos are all testament to his talent and creativity. If he had retired in his mid-twenties after folding Derek and the Dominos, he would have left a lasting imprint on the music world. It turned out he was just warming up, as his solo career now spans four decades.

Eric Clapton is still alive and well and adding to his legacy and bank of information. He continues to be active in the studio and on the road. He released his latest studio album, Old Sock , in 2013. He has already scheduled a number of concerts for 2013 that may well have been completed by the time this book is published. He is constantly adding to the information files about his life. His own book Clapton: The Autobiography and Pattie Boyds tell-all autobiography just whetted the appetite for more information, as they are only the tip of the iceberg.

FAQ books are a gathering together of just that. They are not all-inclusive, nor are they biographies in the normal sense of the word. I have divvied his career into different components, so in a sense they are a number of mini biographies centered around different parts of his professional life. While this led to some repetitiveness in places, I felt it was a good way to present the material.

I also decided to go a little further afield and present some of the people who have meandered through his life and even some who influenced it but had passed away before he was born. They are important components to his life and thus his story.

No one fan knows everything or every fact about Eric Clapton, and I realize there are people whose knowledge is much vaster than mine. So we are back to a gathering of pertinent, and hopefully interesting, information in one place.

While this is a book based on the presentation of facts, at times I have tried to make it more accessible and folksy, if you will, by using a more interactive style such as is used in reviews.

Claptons story is constantly changing, and any person, whether a public figure or not, creates quite a history during his or her lifetime. I am confident others could write about his life from a different perspective and create an entirely different book. If you are so inclined, I say have at it, as there is always room for more.

In the final analysis, if this book entertains or educates you in some way, it will have been a success and a worthwhile endeavor. Above all, as you turn the pages, enjoy.

Who, Me?

It was an average day in 2010 when the phone rang, and much to my amazement, it was not a telemarketer. It was Robert Rodriguez asking if I had any interest in writing the Eric Clapton book for Backbeat Books FAQ series.

It seemed like an exciting idea at the time. What I didnt consider was the time and effort that would go into accomplishing my simple yes to his question.

I have been aware of Clapton since his time with the Yardbirds. We are of the same generation, although he does have a few years on me. I became a fan during his time with Cream and have followed his career since that time. I was not obsessive about Clapton but rather about his music as I have a complete run of his singles and albums in my collection, including most of his work with other artists. When I began researching the man and all he entailed, I was stunned at how much was out there. It was reduce, reduce, and reduce.

I had just completed a series of reviews about each of his studio albums, so I had listened to them fairly recently. There was a lot of material, however, that had not graced my stereo system in years, and so I became a veritable Eric Clapton roadie in my record room, as singles, live albums, and collaboration efforts were continually blasting from my speakers. It was a virtual trip down memory lane as his career just about spans my lifetime of listening to and collecting music. It was a trip worth taking for my own sake.

I realized I could have added more material to the story and introduced additional chapters almost ad infinitum, but there always comes a point when you say enough is enough. Its like a term paper in school where you add, delete, adjust, but eventually there comes a point where you must have the resolve to say I have done my best and submit the finished product with hope and a little faith as well. I finally reached that point.

In My White Room

The closer I got to my submission date, the more I burrowed into my computer/record room, which is indeed white. There are a number of people to thank for this project and some whom it will affect in the future.

To my wife Susan, who, against her inclinations, did not disturb my piles of stuff that were accruing at an alarming rate in my little hideaway. She has also humored my passion for collecting vinyl records, which now number in the tens of thousands, and has only skimmed one or two out into the backyard when the impulse became too much to overcome.

To my grandparents, Guy and Edith Fish, who, although born in the late 1890s, established a love of music within my soul. It may not have been music they could relate to at the time, but it was music nevertheless. They also gave me a small allowance each week plus the ability to do odd jobs, allowing me to begin purchasing music.

To Heriouxs Music Store in downtown Woonsocket, Rhode Island. It was a small mom-and-pop operation that is long gone and forgotten by most, but it was there I spent many Saturday mornings flipping though the latest releases. The first record I ever bought was from that store. The Little Old Lady from Pasadena by Jan & Dean still holds a place of honor in my collection. Support your local record stores, as they are the heart and soul of the music industry. They make music personal, which is an important component of the experience.