In he released his second solo album, Ocean Boulevard. The album went to number one on the charts as did his remake of the Bob Marley song "I Shot the Sheriff. Unfortunately, Clapton had traded one addiction for another, and this period marked his fall into a serious drinking problem.
Each album was only marginally successful. Although this event brought great happiness to Clapton, it also marked the end of his marriage to Patti who moved out and subsequently filed for divorce.
Clapton renewed his effort to give up alcohol, entered a rehab center, and became a member of Alcoholics Anonymous. At the same time, his popularity rose again dramatically after the release of the box set Crossroads and a new album Journeyman Although brought Clapton his first Grammy Award for "Bad Love" off the Journeyman album, and were marred by tragedy for Clapton.
First, in , Clapton once again lost close friends when guitar virtuoso Stevie Ray Vaughan and two members of Clapton's road crew died in a helicopter crash. Then, in , Clapton was getting ready to pick up his then four-year-old son Conor for lunch when he received the news that the boy was dead after falling from a fifty-third-story window of a Manhattan high-rise apartment.
Clapton responded to this tragedy by writing the super hit, "Tears in Heaven," as a tribute to his son. The song was featured in the sound track of the movie Rush. It also appeared on the acoustical album Unplugged , which turned out to be Clapton's biggest selling album and swept the Grammy Awards.
With the success of Unplugged, Clapton found the courage to return to his beloved blues, and in , released the blues album From the Cradle. The album was both commercially successful and critically acclaimed.
After releasing a four-CD box set, Crossroads 2: Live in the '70s, in , Clapton became involved in a new age, techno-jazz duo with Simon Climie called T. Clapton, who used only the pseudonym "x-sample," and Climie released Retail Therapy in Although this experimental recording received mixed reviews, Clapton was still doing well on the pop charts.
He claimed two Grammy Awards in record of the year and best male pop vocal performance for his collaboration with Babyface on "Change the World," which appeared on the soundtrack for the movie Phenomenon. In March , Clapton released his latest project to date, Pilgrim.
The album is filled with almost all original Clapton songs; most noticeable are two songs that pay tribute to Clapton's son Conor, "Circus" and "My Father's Eyes," both written in Although those looking for the Clapton of Cream found the introspective, sometimes melancholy tone of Pilgrim disappointing, others have embraced Clapton's ever-changing style of mixing blues, rock, and his own painful soul into the songs that have aged as gracefully as the singer.
Eric grew up believing that his grandmother Rose, and her second husband, Jack Clapp, Patricia's stepfather, were his parents, and that his mother was actually his older sister. Clapton married Pattie Boyd in She had previously been married to Clapton's friend George Harrison from to Clapton's songs 'Layla' and 'Wonderful Tonight' were inspired by her. They divorced in He married his second wife Melia McEnery in a small church ceremony in January Melia was born in , and is 31 years younger than Eric.
They met at a party in when Eric was 53 and Melia was Although both were married to other people at the time, they had a daughter in She was named Ruth Kelly Clapton, but she was kept from the public until the media realised she was his child in Clapton and Boyd tried unsuccessfully to have children, and tried in vitro fertilisation in , but had several miscarriages.
Clapton had an affair with Italian model Lory Del Santo, who gave birth to their son, Conor, in As it turns out, Clapton's absent father was also a talented pianist who had played in several dance bands while stationed in Surrey. Around the age of eight, Clapton discovered the earth-shattering truth that the people he believed were his parents were actually his grandparents and that the woman he considered his older sister was in fact his mother.
Clapton later recalled, "The truth dawned on me, that when Uncle Adrian jokingly called me a little bastard, he was telling the truth. The young Clapton, until then a good student and well-liked boy, grew sullen and reserved and lost all motivation to do his schoolwork. He describes a moment shortly after learning the news of his parentage: "I was playing around with my grandma's compact, with a little mirror you know, and I saw myself in two mirrors for the first time and I don't know about you but it was like hearing your voice on a tape machine for the first I saw a receding chin and a broken nose and I thought my life is over.
However, he showed a high aptitude for art, so at the age of 13 he enrolled in the art branch of the Holyfield Road School. By that time, , rock 'n' roll had exploded onto the British music scene; for his 13th birthday, Clapton asked for a guitar. He received a cheap German-made Hoyer, and finding the steel-stringed guitar difficult and painful to play, he soon set it aside. At the age of 16, he gained acceptance into the Kingston College of Art on a one-year probation; it was there, surrounded by teenagers with musical tastes similar to his own, that Clapton really took to the instrument.
Clapton was especially taken with the blues guitar played by musicians such as Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters and Alexis Korner, the last of whom inspired Clapton to buy his first electric guitar — a relative rarity in England.
It was also at Kingston that Clapton discovered something that would have nearly as great an impact on his life as the guitar: booze. He recalls that the first time he got drunk, at the age of 16, he woke up alone in the woods, covered in vomit and without any money. Clapton was expelled from school after his first year.
He later explained, "Even when you got to art school, it wasn't just a rock 'n' roll holiday camp. I got thrown out after a year for not doing any work. That was a real shock. I was always in the pub or playing the guitar. That year, he joined his first band, The Roosters, but they broke up after only a few months. Next he joined the pop-oriented Casey Jones and The Engineers but left the band after just a few weeks.
At this point, not yet making a living off his music, Clapton worked as a laborer at construction sites to make ends meet. Already one of the most respected guitarists on the West End pub circuit, in October Clapton received an invitation to join a band called The Yardbirds.
With The Yardbirds, Clapton recorded his first commercial hits, "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" and "For Your Love," but he soon grew frustrated with the band's commercial pop sound and left the group in The two young guitarists who replaced Clapton in The Yardbirds, Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, would also go on to rank among the greatest rock guitarists in history.
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