Things you don’t know about Eric Clapton: addictions, tragedies and illnesses

This Saturday, March 30, Eric Clapton turns 79. One of the great rock guitarists, with a history in which contrasts are the rule. A huge talent as a musician with a successful career and personal life in which there was no shortage of addictions, tragedies and illnesses during the sixty years of his career.

Clapton will perform On September 20th at the Vélez stadium; It will be his fourth visit, since his debut in Buenos Aires, in 1990 and his two previous performances, in 2001 and 2011.

His “60 Tour” tour will resume on May 9 in Newcastle, England, and continue with shows in Liverpool, Birmingham and four performances at the Royal Albert Hall in London. A farewell tour, at least for this type of tour in which the musician crosses the Atlantic towards South America.

Music has always helped him

Clapton’s story has been extended struggles with drugs and alcohol, the tragedy of losing a child, and a nervous system disordera peripheral neuropathy, which involves not only severe pain but also the inability to perform on stage and which he has managed to manage for the moment.

Now, none of all these vicissitudes managed to distract him from music, a character that evidently helped him overcome blow after blow.

Rarely does an artist receive immediate acceptance from peers and the public as Clapton had after his stint The Yardbirds (1963), where he surprised with his ability to express that special feeling that the blues possesses.

He was so surprised that, less than two years later, the legendary John Mayall invited him, in April 1965, to join his band. Bluesbreakers. At that time, the famous “Clapton is God” graffiti appeared at Islington station on the London Underground.

would come later Creamwith Jack Bruce on bass and Ginger Baker on drums and then, Blind faiththe first rock supergroup, with Baker, Stevie Winwood, on keyboards and vocals and Rick Grech, on bass.

While his star was still on the rise, he recorded with his great friend George Harrisonparticipated in the Plastic Ono Band, John Lennon and released his first album Eric Clapton (1970).

Seeking to put together his own band, he crossed the Atlantic to record a standout album with Allman Brothers lead guitarist Duane Allman. under the name Derek and the Dominoes they throw Layla and other assorted love songswith Laylathat unprecedented composition dedicated to his hitherto impossible love, Patty BoydHarrison’s wife.

Clapton and drugs

Drugs have always been a permanent presence in the rock scene, Clapton He started using it at the age of fifteen.. While the heroin He met her during his time at Cream, alcohol he was always present.

However, around 1970, his heroin use went from sporadic to permanent. At one point, after struggling for several years to give it up, he admitted that, due to his visceral fear of needles, he was aspirating it and this required larger amounts and more money.

In Clapton, The Autobiography (2007) recognizes this He spent about $16,000 a week on heroin. About three years have passed which brought the musician to the brink of financial bankruptcy.

He gave up heroin, which was used for him, but fell into alcoholism. “He exchanged shooting for stabbing,” they would say in the neighborhood. What would happen would be even more serious, darker and would put Clapton on the brink of death. Before experiencing situations between the painful and the undignified, like when at a concert (he wasn’t the only one), on the West Coast, He fell to the ground and urinated on himself..

It was a long binge that began in the mid-1970s and ended in January 1982, when after calling his manager for help, he was put on a plane and admitted to the Hazelden Treatment Center in Minnesota, trying to kick his addiction. .

“I don’t know how I survived, especially in the ’70s. There was a moment on the Minneapolis-St Paul trip when I was dying. He had three ulcers and one of them was bleeding.. At the time she was drinking three bottles of brandy and taking handfuls of codeine for the pain. “I was about to die and I don’t even remember it,” she noted in her autobiography.

He also said: “The only reason I didn’t commit suicide is because I knew I couldn’t drink if I died. It was the only thing I thought about and the only thing worth living for, drinking.

Sobriety wasn’t going to come easily. It took him a few years to realize it and he did it the precious help of the Alcoholics Anonymous community.

Among the urban legends of Buenos Aires, there is one that refers to Clapton during his first visit to Argentina, in October 1990. One afternoon, in the English-speaking AA group of the Corrientes Methodist Church, Casi Maipú, in the capital , sat down and I simply said “I’m Eric and I’m having a good day.”

The defense of anonymity makes confirmation impossible, but at that moment that visit transcended, in fact it was natural for those who participate in the meetings to maintain their sobriety.

The tragic death of his son

Recovering from his addictions, Clapton faced the greatest blow a father can endure, the loss of a son. On 20 March 1991, his son Conor, aged 4 (born from the relationship with Lory Del Santo) he fell from an open window, from the 55th floor, in Manhattan. Apparently he was playing hide and seek with the babysitter.

Clapton was going to pick him up to visit the Bronx Zoo to see the elephants. The day before they had gone to the Nassau Coliseum circus on Long Island, where Conor had been fascinated by the elephants and the visit to the zoo had been a response to continuing to watch those fascinating beings. That night, the night before the tragedy, Eric told Lory, “I intend to be a real father.”

The guitarist had not had a relationship with Conor, from the relationship with the Italian model a “love at first sight” was born while Clapton was still in a relationship, albeit in the midst of a breakup, with Pattie Boyd.

It was Clapton who had to go to the morgue. “Whatever physical damage Conor suffered in the fall, by the time I saw him they had already restored his body as much as possible. I remember looking at his beautiful, resting face and thinking. “This is not my son, he looks a little like him, but he is already gone.”

At the funeral, at St. Magdalene Church in Ripley, England, where the guitarist was born, Del Santo said: “I didn’t see Eric cry, but I know people cry in different ways.”

Clapton entered a depressive state that only his willpower and AA groups could reverse. Let us remember that seven months before Conor’s death, on August 27, 1990, he tragically died Stevie Ray Vaughan, who had participated in a festival in which the figure was, in fact, Clapton. The helicopter he was traveling on crashed into the side of a mountain, a few kilometers from the stage, on a stormy Monday morning.

A contract to compose music for the film brought him out of that state of depressive paralysis. Rush, produced by Reprise Records. A film premiered in January 1992, in which the plot is accompanied by new songs composed by the guitarist, including that beautiful ballad Tears in Paradisewhich summarizes that legitimate desire of every parent to see their child again.

A theme that did not go unnoticed by the public, who succumbed to the charm of the melody and the soft voice with which the artist sings.

Peripheral neuropathy

In June 2016, Clapton confirms that he is having serious health problems.

“I had some pain last year; “They started out as mild back pain, but eventually turned into what they call peripheral neuropathy, where I feel like I’m getting electric shocks down my legs,” she said at an impromptu news conference.

The problems began in 2013, when he had to cancel a series of concerts due to pain. “It’s difficult to play the guitar like that, even standing up is sometimes very difficult for me,” she added.

Two years later, in 2018, he admitted in an interview with BBC 2 that he had become deaf due to tinnitus. a disease that can also cause hearing lossgenerates a persistent sound that does not come from an external source, but from inside the ear itself.

“I’m going deaf and my hands don’t work like they used to,” the musician added. The pain in his hands comes from the peripheral neuropathy from which he has been suffering for eight years and which creates serious difficulties for him in playing the instrument, even if Clapton, faithful to his story, continues to overcome it.

He has an important discography, with more than 30 solo works, some as EC was here (1975), disconnected (1992), From the cradle (1994), Me and Mr. Johnson (2004) excellent. Also his work with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers and the historic albums with Cream. He has won 16 Grammy Awards in different categories.