Clapton! – Ray Coleman, 1986 ★★★

Swapping Out the Man for the Legend

There’s something to be said in favor of a biography of a living person. What you get is incomplete, but unless it’s a book about Hitler or someone like that, less depressing as you get to the end. Here, in the case of guitar hero Eric Clapton, you have the additional benefit of capturing the subject at a high point in his celebrity.

By the mid-1980s, Clapton had been on the scene for over 20 years, shifting smoothly from bluesman to rock star to adult-contemporary balladeer. His personal story could be packaged as a feel-good affair, overcoming drugs and booze and settling into a period of productive contentment with former Beatle wife Pattie Boyd, the love of his life.

Coleman begins his bio explaining what makes Clapton so appealing:

True, he has been inspired by the great American blues masters of the past, but Clapton’s greatness is demonstrated by his implanting his own multi-faceted personality into every tune he plays, every song he writes and sings…Against the backdrop of a true guitar virtuoso and a complicated man who inspires love, loyalty and incredulousness from all who know him, the fragility of the first forty years of Clapton’s story becomes irresistible.

Why spoil it by telling what came next?

Originally written in 1985 and published in the United Kingdom under the title Survivor!, Coleman’s bio is, as the above excerpt indicates, a very positive account. The cover of my 1986 paperback edition boasts “the first fully authorized in-depth biography of rock’s greatest blues guitarist;” Clapton’s consent is evident from his generous, exclusive quotations and reproductions of full pages from Clapton’s journal.

Coleman’s friendly approach certainly paid dividends that way; it had perhaps less intended benefits, too. Clapton’s unguarded approach with Coleman pulls back the curtain rather more than you might get today, revealing a man by turns shallow, self-centered, impulsive, repressed, emotionally needy, and a bad bet for anyone looking for love.

Take the case of Alice Ormsby-Gore. The product of an aristocratic British family, she took up with Clapton in 1969 when she was just 17. For the next few years, he pursued a heroin habit. Alice stayed at his side, picking up a habit of her own which wound up killing her in 1995.

Because Coleman’s book was written before Ormsby-Gore’s demise, by an author focused on presenting his subject in a positive light, you get an unguarded view of what Clapton felt for this woman: Nothing.

“Although we had some good times, I’d never describe it as head-over-heels in love,” Clapton is quoted telling Coleman. “All the time I was with Alice, I was mentally with Pattie.”

For her part, Ormsby-Gore openly laid out for Coleman her deep love for Clapton, a love that went about as unrequited as any involving a long period of co-habitation. She helped Clapton score smack, gave up her portion when he wanted more, drank to excess to compensate, and was finally told by Clapton in 1973 that he cared only for this other woman.

Alice Ormsby-Gore with Eric Clapton. Engaged for four years, she was a loyal companion who found herself out of his life as part of his therapy for heroin addiction. She failed to find her own lasting cure. Image from The New York Daily News.

Coleman’s account credits Clapton with shedding Ormsby-Gore as a necessary step toward conquering heroin. Given Ormsby-Gore was still alive and a cooperative interview at the time, I wasn’t as struck by a sense of injustice when I first read this book back in the day.

That’s what I mean by Clapton! being usefully dated. Say what you will of Clapton’s handling of Alice, at least he talks about her here. A glance at Clapton’s present-day Wikipedia entry reveals no mention of this partner at one of the darkest periods of his life. I can’t imagine he has wanted to chat about her much since 1995.

In other ways, too, Coleman’s book has a quality of a comfortable remove. He was more settled down after surviving the 1970s, but not yet burdened by age, the tragedy of losing a son (Conor, in 1990), or the collapse of the music industry as it was known at the time. He still had Pattie, and could speak with apparent sincerity of her place in his life.

Yet Coleman captures those feelings as almost entirely connected with Boyd’s beauty, not her personality. At one point Clapton asks her if she’s just dating him because he’s famous; she responds by reminding him she’s just as famous being married to George Harrison.

In fact, the couple’s difficulty relating to one another is referenced a few times in Clapton! Even their 1979 marriage had a dark cloud overhead. The couple had been living together for a while, but Clapton remained blatantly unfaithful all the way through what passed for their courtship.

Coleman writes: Eric and Pattie followed the tradition of not meeting until they reached the altar; in her mind she flashed back to the memory that the last time she had seen him he had been snuggled up to another woman.

However much Coleman sets up Pattie as Eric’s polestar, the cornerstone of this “Survivor” myth, you are always aware of the sands shifting under their feet.

It is strange to find no mention of Clapton’s best-known song, “Layla,” especially as it was famously inspired by his infatuation with Pattie, until well into the second half of the book. Coleman does eventually make some time for the music. As far as Clapton’s most famous band prior to his solo career, Cream, Coleman spends more time detailing Eric’s tears as he watched bandmates Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce argue than explicating Cream’s musical merits.

Cream was on top of the rock and fashion world in 1967. From left to right: Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Jack Bruce. Image byhttp://www.fanpop.com/clubs/cream/images/38000943/title/cream-band-photo.

Coleman eventually arrives at a place where he begins to take stock of Clapton the musician. It’s a solid examination, too. You learn what drives him in the studio and on stage, what he means by his guitar having what he calls a “woman’s tone” (described by Coleman as a “warm, bassy tone” that Clapton debuted on a solo in Cream’s “I Feel Free”) which became an elemental feature to Clapton’s sound.

When Clapton is disappointed with either his performance or an audience’s reaction to same, he has a unique way of signaling this to the band after a show: holding his guitar up facing back-to-front.

Coleman also identifies Clapton’s essential humility when it comes to plying his craft. He quotes Clapton on this point:

“Funnily enough, what I like about my playing are still the parts that I copied. If I’m building a solo, I’ll start with a line that I know is definitely a Freddie King line and then, though I’m not saying this happens consciously, I’ll go on to a B. B. King line. I’ll do something to join them up, so that part will be me. And those are the parts I recognize when I hear something on the radio. ‘That sounds like me.’ Of course, it’s not my favorite part, My favorite bits are still the B. B. King or Freddie King lines.”

For all his faults, related consciously or not by Coleman, Clapton remains in this account inherently likeable. Clapton appreciates Coleman’s interest and, even when giving banal answers, seems utterly real as a person. This presents a perfect counterpart in that way to the career-retrospective record compilation Crossroads, released in 1988.

The best part of Clapton! comes before the music plays. Coleman tells of Clapton’s unique upbringing in the rural English town of Ripley, raised by his grandmother and her husband. His mother was introduced to a young Eric as his sister, to conceal he was the product of her brief union with a Canadian flier in the last days of World War II.

He would grow up wondering why he alone among his schoolmates had a different surname from his “parents.” Coleman suggests Clapton’s later womanizing was a result of having no clear mother of his own.

Descriptions of Clapton’s boyhood are fascinating for their particularity: “Nobody except Eric was allowed to pour the milk on his Weetabix since it had to go into the dish at a certain angle.” Later on, he would display a similar punctiliousness when it came to which groups he chose to play with. He went through a number of them, including major bands like The Yardbirds, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Cream, and Blind Faith, all well in his rear-view by his mid-20s.

Fellow Yardbird Paul Samwell-Smith recalled Clapton’s attitude at the time: “Oh, it’s gotta be right or what’s the point?”

Coleman’s ability to draw Clapton out has its limits; he doesn’t seem to press the musician about the whys, or question his impulses even when they push Clapton to strange extremes of behavior. Nor does he really draw out Clapton’s musical development over time, his evolution from accomplished sideman to rock god to signature singer. You’d think from Coleman’s account that Clapton did little other than play the blues, even when working with R&B/country rockers Delaney and Bonnie in the early 1970s or recording an album, 1985’s Behind The Sun, with Phil Collins, master of synth and gated drum. In fact, he morphed, a lot.

As far as addictive behavior goes, Clapton gets a pass for being a guy with a rock ‘n roll heart. He talks about his heroin addiction, and a later alcohol problem, like Edmund Hillary recounting his climb of Everest:

“There was definitely a heroic aspect to it. I was trying to prove I could do it and come out alive.”

Not everyone did, though. That’s a point worth remembering even while enjoying Coleman’s pleasantly packaged take on the myth of Clapton!