Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are tuning
our amplifiers, checking our cables, and turning
the volume all the way up. We're looking at a
figure who is practically synonymous with the
electric guitar. He is the electric guitar for
so many people. A man often called Slow Hand.
And for a brief, pretty feverish period in the
1960s, he was called something, well, something
even more intense. God. The graffiti literally
said, Clapton is God. That's right. We are talking
about Eric Clapton. But here's the thing, and
this is why I was so excited to dig into these
sources. If you only know the classic rock radio
eights, you only know, what, maybe 10 % of the
story? Oh, absolutely. 10 % is generous. The
stack of research we have today, it paints a
picture that's so much more complex. It's often
incredibly tragic. And frankly, at times, it's
deeply, deeply controversial. It really is. We're
going to look at the man who is the only three
-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
We've got... biographical breakdowns, deep dives
into his specific gear. And yes, don't worry,
we will talk about the guitars and amps. We have
to. And we've got records of public controversies
that, well, they haunt his legacy to this very
day. So I guess the question is, where do we
even begin with a life this massive? I think
you have to start at the beginning. You have
to start with the foundational lie. The lie.
Okay, this blew my mind when I first read about
it. We're talking about his childhood in Surrey,
right? Right. He was born in 1945. Yeah. And
Eric grows up believing that his grandparents,
Rose and Jack, are his parents. And he has this
person he thinks is his older sister, Patricia.
But she wasn't his sister. No, she was his mother.
Patricia was only 16 when she had him. His grandparents
were raising him as their own to protect the
family from the scandal of it all back then.
And his father, who was his father? A Canadian
soldier named Edward Fryer. He was stationed
in England during the war, got drafted and shipped
out before Eric was even born, and then just
went back to Canada. Did he ever know he had
a son? He never knew. The soldiers say he was
a bit of a drifter. A musician himself actually
played piano and saxophone. But he died in 1985,
never knowing he was Eric Clapton's father. Eric
didn't find out the truth about any of this for
years. Not until he was nine years old. His mother,
Patricia, came back to visit with his new half
-brother. And that's when the truth came out.
I just, I can't imagine the psychological weight
of that. You're a nine -year -old kid, and your
entire family structure, the very foundation
of who you are, it just dissolves in an instant.
Your sisters, your mother, your parents, or your
grandparents. It creates this profound sense
of isolation. He talks about feeling like an
outsider in his own home. And I think that really,
I mean, really drove him toward the blues. The
blues is music about pain, about being an outsider.
It was a perfect fit for what he was feeling.
So that's the emotional route. And then he finds
the tool for expressing it pretty early on. He
gets a Hoyer acoustic guitar for his 13th birthday.
He does. And he almost gave up on it immediately.
Yeah, it was a cheap steel string German guitar.
Very, very difficult to play. The action was
high. It hurt his fingers. So he put it down
for two years. So what brought him back to it?
Just persistence. At 15, he picked it up again.
And this is where you really see that obsessive,
almost scholarly personality kick in. He wasn't
just noodling around. Right, the methodology.
This wasn't just strumming campfire songs. Not
at all. He had a portable Grundig reel -to -reel
tape recorder. And what he would do was listen
to these old blues records, Muddy Waters, Big
Bill Brunzi, Robert Johnson, and he would record
himself playing along to them. So he could hear
his mistakes. Exactly. He'd listen back to the
tape, hear where he was going wrong, rewind it
and do it again and again and again for hours
until he was satisfied. He was trying to clone
the sound, the feel, the very soul of those old
Chicago and Delta bluesmen. That discipline,
I mean, it paid off incredibly fast. By 1963,
he joins the Yardbirds. And this is really the
first time the wider world hears the name Eric
Clapton. But it's also the first time we see
his, let's call it artistic stubbornness, his
purism. The blues purist era, that's a good way
to put it. The Yardbirds started out playing
covers of American blues artists like Chess and
Checker, which was right up his alley. He loved
it. But then the band's management started pushing
for a hit, for commercial success. And they got
one, a song called For Your Love. Which is a
great song. It's catchy. It's got that harpsichord.
It's a fantastic pop song. But that's the point.
It is a pop song. It was written by Graham Goldman,
who later formed 10CC. He was a professional
pop songwriter. To Clapton, this was the ultimate
sin. He felt they were selling out. Completely.
Moving away from the raw, authentic blues toward,
you know, commercial pop. He hated it. He refused
to even play on the track, other than the middle
bridge section. So what does he do when it becomes
a hit? He quits. On the very day the single is
released. Think about that. Your band has its
first huge hit, and you walk away. That's making
a statement. That is a serious commitment to
your principles. But before he left, he did the
band a massive favor. They obviously needed a
replacement, and Clapton suggested his friend,
a young session guitarist named Jimmy Page. Who
declined the offer, right? He did, yeah. Out
of loyalty to Eric, he didn't want to take his
friend's gig. So Page turned around and recommended
his own friend, Jeff Beck. That is just an unbelievable
lineage of guitarists for one band. You trade
Clapton for Beck and then a little later you
get Page in there anyway alongside Beck. That's
staggering. But Clapton moves on. He needs a
home that's more musically pure for him. And
he finds it with John Mayall and the Blues Breakers.
Okay, so this is where the legend really starts
to solidify. The God era is dawning. This is
it. And a huge part of it is the gear. He swaps
out his equipment here, which is just crucial
to the story. He moves from a Fender Telecaster
to a 1960 Gibson Les Paul Standard. The famous
Beano guitar. That's the one. And he plugs it
into a Marshall JTM -45 amplifier. Yeah. And
that combination, the humbucking pickups of the
Les Paul, pushed through a cranked -up Marshall.
They created this thick, distorted, sustaining
sound that nobody in Britain had really heard
before. That became the sound of British blues
rock. And this is the era of the Beano album.
Why is it called that? Well, the album is officially
titled Blues Breakers with Eric Clapton. But
everyone calls it the Beano album because on
the cover. Clapton is just sitting there casually
reading a copy of The Beano, which is a popular
kids comic book in the UK. He looks totally disinterested
in the photo shoot. Exactly. It's like he's saying,
this is just another day at the office. I'm so
cool. I'm just going to read my comic. Yeah.
It was the epitome of effortless cool. Cool.
And while he's playing in these London clubs,
his reputation just hits a fever pitch. This
is when the graffiti shows up. This is it. Islington,
North London, 1967. An unknown admirer, a fan,
spray paints Clapton is God on a wall. There's
that famous photograph of the graffiti, isn't
there? There is. A photographer named John Varley
captured it. And in the photo, there's a dog.
Well, a dog urinating on the wall right next
to the words. Which feels like a perfect, if
accidental, metaphor for the nature of fame.
It really does. And for his part, Clapton was
apparently mortified by it. He later said he
was embarrassed. He wanted to be the greatest,
sure, but he knew he wasn't God. But the slogan
stuck. It created this mythic persona around
him. And that persona set the stage for his next
move, which was, I mean, it was huge. The formation
of Cream. The first ever super group. Right.
You have Ginger Baker from the Graham Bond organization
on drums, a monster of a player. And a monster
of a personality. Then you have Jack Bruce, also
from Graham Bond, on bass and lead vocals. another
absolute virtuoso and then clapton on guitar
a power trio they took the blues cranked the
volume to 11 and injected this this arty psychedelic
pop sensibility into it songs like strange brew
and sunshine of your love they're just on another
level the sheer volume and improvisational firepower
of that band was unheard of We have to talk about
the woman tone. This is a term that gets thrown
around all the time with Clapton's Cream era.
Can you break down what it actually was? Yeah,
it was a very specific sound he chased and perfected.
He was primarily using his Gibson SG at this
point, the famous one painted with psychedelic
art known as The Fool. That's an iconic guitar.
It is. He would plug it into a Marshall stack,
turn the volume on the guitar all the way up,
but roll the tone control knob all the way down.
This filters out the high -end treble frequencies.
So it's not a sharp... biting sound. Exactly.
It creates this thick, piercing, but also creamy
and smooth sound. It's not harsh. It sounds almost
like a human voice singing or like a violin.
It's very vocal -like. Sunshine of Your Love
is probably the most famous example of that sound,
right? That main riff. That is the definitive
woman tone riff. But even as Cream is basically
conquering the world, Clacton is having a bit
of a crisis of confidence. And that crisis came
in the form of an American guitarist named Jimi
Hendrix. The arrival of Hendrix in London in
66 seems like it was an earthquake for the entire
music scene. It terrified them. All of them.
Pete Townshend, Jeff Beck, Clapton. Hendrix came
in and was doing things with feedback, the whammy
bar, effects pedals, things nobody had ever seen
or heard before. He was a force of nature. There's
that legendary story of Hendrix sitting in with
cream. Yes, at the Regent Street Polytechnic.
Hendrix gets up on stage with him and just...
into a version of Howlin' Wolf's Killing Floor.
Yeah. And he played it with such ferocity and
showmanship. Clapton was reportedly standing
there just slack -jawed. He said later his hands
felt like they couldn't even move. He suddenly
wasn't the only god in town anymore. And the
band itself, Cream, was notoriously volatile.
Oh, extremely. Baker and Bruce famously hated
each other. They would have these epic fights
on stage trying to outplay and outvolume each
other. It was musically brilliant, but... personally
destructive. And then there was the critical
backlash. This was a turning point for Clapton.
A review in Rolling Stone magazine came out,
and the writer John Landau essentially called
their live show boring. He criticized the endless,
self -indulgent, virtuoso soloing. And Clapton
read that review. He did, and it devastated him.
Because deep down, he agreed with it. He was
getting tired of the Guitar Hero arms race. He
agreed with the negative review. He did. Around
the same time, he heard music from Big Pink by
the band. And that album just changed his whole
perspective. How so? He heard that rootsy Americana
sound, the focus on the song, the ensemble playing,
the harmony vocals, the lack of ego. And he decided
he wanted out of the guitar hero business. He
wanted to be a songwriter, a singer, part of
a real band, not a circus act. So Cream breaks
up at the height of their fame, and he tries
to disappear into a new band. Derek and the Dominoes.
The name itself was an accident, wasn't it? Total
accident. It was supposed to be Del and the Dominoes.
Del was a nickname for Clapton from his friend
Delaney Bramlett. But the announcer at their
first gig got it wrong, introduced them as Derek
and the Dominoes, and it just stuck. But the
intent was clear. Anonymity. He didn't want to
be the star. He wanted to be a sideman in his
own band. Right. But you can't really hide when
you're Eric Clapton. And you certainly can't
hide when you release an album like Lila and
other assorted love songs. Which is arguably
his masterpiece. And it is just drenched in personal
drama. It is pure, raw, unrequited love and pain
pressed onto vinyl. The whole album was fueled
by one thing. Clacton had fallen desperately
in love with Patti Boyd. Who just happened to
be the wife of his best friend, George Harrison.
The ultimate forbidden love triangle. He was
writing her letters, calling her completely obsessed.
A friend gave him a copy of the Persian story,
the story of Lila and Majnun, which is about
a man who goes literally mad because he can't
marry the woman he loves. And he saw himself
in that story? He saw himself as Majnun and Patti
was his Lila. That's what fueled every single
song on that album. And musically, he had a secret
weapon, a partner in crime on this record. Oh,
you cannot tell the story of the Layla album
without talking about Dwayne Allman. Slide guitarist
from the Allman Brothers band. Yeah. Their producer,
Tom Dowd, was also working with the Allman Brothers.
He played some of the early Dominoes tracks for
Dwayne, and Dwayne was blown away. By chance,
the Allmans were playing a show in Miami where
the Dominoes were recording. And they met. They
met, and it was instant chemistry. They stayed
up all night just jamming, trading guitar licks.
Clapton invited Dwayne to the studio the next
day, and he ended up playing on most of the album.
That high, weeping, bird call slide guitar you
hear on the song Layla, that's Dwayne. That's
all Dwayne Ullman. He pushed Clapton and the
band to a level they just would not have reached
otherwise. It was a... perfect fiery collaboration.
But the tragedy that seems to follow Clapton
around is just relentless. The album comes out
in late 1970 and initially it flops. It was a
commercial failure. It was a double album. No
picture of Clapton on the cover. The band name
was unknown. People just didn't get it. And this
rejection on top of the rejection from Patty
Boyd it's in him spiraling. And then the people
around him start to die. It's just awful. In
September 1970 just before the album is released
Jimi Hendrix dies. Clapton had just bought him
a left -handed Stratocaster as a gift that he
never got to give him. Then, a year later, in
October 1971, Dwayne Allman is killed in a motorcycle
accident. It's just too much loss in such a short
time. It completely broke him. Clapton withdrew
into total isolation in his Surrey estate, Hurtwood
Edge. He spent the next two, three years in a
deep haze of heroin addiction. He barely played.
He didn't. He sold his guitars to buy drugs.
He famously passed out on stage at George Harrison's
concert for Bangladesh. He was a recluse. Everyone
thought his career was over. It took Pete Townsend
from The Who to pull him out of it, right? Yeah,
Townsend was horrified by what had happened to
his friend. So he organized the Rainbow concert
in 1973. He basically forced Clapton to get a
band together and get back on stage, hoping it
would reignite the spark. And did it work? It
worked to an extent. It got him playing again.
It helped him get off heroin. But as we know
all too well, addiction is a shapeshifter. He
traded one addiction for another. Exactly. He
traded heroin for alcohol. And this really leads
us into his solo career era, which is a massive
shift in his sound, his image, everything. This
is the 461 Ocean Boulevard era. 1974 a very different
sounding eric clapton totally different he's
in miami he's sober from heroin and he moves
away from the extended blues rock solos the songs
get shorter tighter more laid back more song
focused and he has a massive hit with a cover
of a bob marley song i shot the sheriff yeah
it went to number one in the u .s and This was
huge. It wasn't just a hit for Clapton for a
lot of white America. This was their first real
introduction to Bob Marley and to reggae music.
He really helped break reggae to a mass audience.
He absolutely did. And you have to notice the
gear shift here, too. This is just as important.
He's not playing the Gibsons as much anymore.
He switches to the Fender Stratocaster. The era
of Blackie begins. Tell us about Blackie. It's
one of the most famous guitars in rock history.
It's a fascinating story. In 1970, he walked
into a shop in Nashville, Showbud, and they had
a bunch of old, unpopular 1950s Stratocasters
for sale for a bargain price, like $100 each.
$100, wow. You bought six of them. He gave one
to George Harrison. one to Steve Wynwood, and
one to Pete Townsend. And he took the best parts
of the remaining three, the best body from one,
the best neck from another, the best pickups
from the third, and he had a luthier assemble
them into one composite guitar. A Frankenstein
Strat. A Frankenstein Strat. And he named it
Blackie. That became his main guitar for over
a decade. He wrote and recorded Cocaine, Wonderful
Tonight, everything on that guitar. It's amazing
to think of these iconic instruments as being
cobbled together like that. But while the career
is rebounding in the mid -70s, the personal life
is. It's still spiraling because of the alcohol.
He was drinking an incredible amount. The sources
say like two bottles of brandy a day plus beer
and cocaine. He had this deep -seated fear that
he couldn't play or be creative without chemical
substances. He truly believed the magic was in
the bottle, not in himself. When did he finally
get help? It wasn't until 1982. He finally hit
rock bottom and checked himself into the Hazelden
Rehab Center in Minnesota. And even then, it
wasn't a straight line to recovery, was it? No.
He had a relapse a few years later. He finally
went back to treatment in 1987. And he has been
sober ever since. But just as he finds that stability,
just as he gets his life back on track. the worst
thing imaginable happens. We're talking about
March 1991, the death of his son, Connor. It
is. I mean, it's the defining tragedy of his
life. Connor was only four and a half years old.
He was in New York City with his mother, Lori
Del Santo, staying at her friend's apartment
on the 53rd floor of a skyscraper. And the window
was open. A housekeeper had been cleaning and
had left a large floor -level window open to
air the room out. Connor, just being a little
boy, ran past and fell. 53 floors. I can't even
begin to imagine that. The sources say Clapton
was just minutes away from picking him up for
a trip to the zoo. He was. He arrived at the
scene shortly after it happened. He described
the feeling in his autobiography as going off
the edge of the world. He said he felt like he
had walked into someone else's life. Just total
protective dissociation. And in that moment of
absolute unimaginable darkness, who's one of
the first people to reach out? Keith Richards.
He was one of the first people to offer condolences.
And Keith knew that specific pain because he
had lost his own infant son, Tara, back in 1976.
He knew what that was like. And instead of relapsing
into drink or drugs, which I think everyone would
have understood and feared, he poured it into
the music. He wrote Tears in Heaven. He wrote
it with the lyricist Will Jennings. And it wasn't
originally meant for public consumption at all.
It was just a letter to his son, a way to process
the grief, to ask that question. Would you know
my name if I saw you in heaven? And that song,
along with the entire Unplugged album it appeared
on, became this massive cultural phenomenon.
Unplugged was huge. It showed this raw, vulnerable
side of Clapton. He played an acoustic, slow
-down version of Lila. And by stripping away
all the wailing electric guitars, you were left
with just the bare, painful lyrics of unrequited
love. It was heartbreaking. And it swept the
Grammys. It did. Record of the Year, Song of
the Year for Tears in Heaven. It was this incredible
artistic and commercial validation, but it was
born from the most terrible loss a person can
endure. And he turned that loss into something
tangible and positive with the Crossroads Center.
Yeah, in Antigua. Having finally gotten sober
himself, he wanted to help others. So he founded
a world -class affordable rehab facility. And
to fund it, he made a huge personal sacrifice.
He decided to auction off his guitars. Including
Blackie. Including Blackie. In 2004, it sold
for nearly $1 million at Christie's Auction House.
All the proceeds went to the Crossroads Center.
He literally sold the tools of his trade, the
instruments that made him a legend, to help others
fight the same demons that had played him for
so long. That's a really powerful arc of redemption.
But... And this is the deep dive part of the
show. We can't tell this story honestly without
looking at the other side of the coin. Because
there are moments in Clapton's life and career
that are much, much harder to reconcile. Yeah.
We have to talk about Birmingham 1976. This is
an incident that has quite rightly shadowed him
for decades. What happened on that stage? He
was performing in Birmingham, England. He was,
by his own admission, extremely drunk. This was
during the height of his alcoholism. And between
songs, he went on a tirade. He stopped the show
and started voicing his support for the right
-wing politician Enoch Powell. Powell, who was
infamous for his anti -immigration rivers of
blood speech. Exactly. And Clapton didn't just
support him. The quotes are pretty horrific.
He used racial slurs. He shouted phrases like,
keep Britain white. He told people in the audience
that if they were foreigners, they should leave
the country. It is just shocking, especially
coming from a man who built his entire career,
his entire identity on the music of Black American
bluesmen. He worshipped Muddy Waters and Robert
Johnson, yet he's on a stage shouting this. That
is the great glaring contradiction at the heart
of it. And the reaction at the time was immediate
and fierce. That incident actually sparked the
formation of the Rock Against Racism movement
in the UK. How has he explained this over the
years? Has he apologized? It's been messy. For
a long time he just blamed the drink and drugs.
He said he was deliberately oblivious to racial
conflict. But later in life he did express deep
shame. He called his past self semi -racist and
admitted he had a habit of sabotaging everything
he got involved with. He called his comments
chauvinistic and fascistic. But these kinds of
controversies aren't just ancient history from
the 70s. We saw some of this resurface pretty
recently during the COVID -19 pandemic. We certainly
did. Clapton took a very strong and very public
anti -lockdown stance. He collaborated with Van
Morrison on a song called Stand and Deliver,
which was extremely critical of the government
restrictions. And he was also very vocal about
his skepticism of the vaccines. He was. He claimed
he had severe side effects after taking the AstraZeneca
vaccine. Now, some context here is important.
Clapton already suffers from a condition called
peripheral neuropathy, which is nerve damage
that causes severe pain in the hands and feet.
He felt the vaccine made that condition much
worse. But he went further than just sharing
his personal medical experience, didn't he? Yes.
He released another protest song called This
Has Got to Stop with an animated video that criticized
what he saw as the erosion of civil liberties.
And then he made a public declaration that he
would refuse to play at any venue that Which
alienated a lot of his fans all over again. It
did. It alienated many fans who saw him as moving
into conspiracy theory territory and being irresponsible
during a public health crisis. It really complicates
the legacy, doesn't it? You have the man who
auctions his guitars for a rehab center, the
healer who wrote Tears in Heaven, and you have
the provocateur shouting on stage in Birmingham
and aligning with the anti -vax movement. It
absolutely does. And when we try to assess his
legacy, we really do have to look at the musician
versus the myth. The myth is huge. Clapton is
God, the original guitar hero. You can make a
strong case for that. The Guardian newspaper
once credited him with literally creating the
cult of the guitar hero. Before Clapton, guitarists
in England were like Hank Marvin of the shadows,
very clean, very polite in the background. Clapton
made the guitar visceral, loud, aggressive, and
front and center. But not everyone agrees he's
the greatest. There are dissenting voices. Oh,
for sure. There's a famous and very harsh assessment
from the veteran music critic Robert Criscow.
He called Clapton a promiscuous sideman and said
that for an artist of his stature, his discography
is remarkably undistinguished. Promiscuous sideman,
that is a burn. But then you look at who he influenced.
Eddie Van Halen, Brian May, Slash. The list is
endless. You cannot deny the influence. And the
collaborations speak for themselves. I mean,
he played the iconic guitar solo on The Beatles
while my guitar gently weeps as a favor to George
Harrison. A Beatle asking you to play on their
record. That's the ultimate validation. It is.
And he made a Grammy -winning album with B .B.
King, Riding with the King. He championed and
worked with one of his own heroes, J .J. Cale.
The greatest of the greats wanted to play with
him. And all that success has certainly paid
off. We touched on the gear, but the man likes
his cars, too. Oh, he loves his Ferraris. He's
a massive collector. He even had Ferrari build
him a one -of -a -kind custom model, the SP -12EC.
The EC stands for Eric Clapton. It cost him almost
$5 million. That must be nice. Okay, so we've
covered the blues, purism, supergroups, the unimaginable
tragedies, the addiction, the racism, the redemption,
the controversies, and the Ferraris. What is
the synthesis here? How do we hold all of these
conflicting pieces in our heads at once? I think
Clapton represents the ultimate dichotomy of
that classic rock star era. On one hand... You
have a man who could channel the deepest, most
universal human emotions, grief, longing, love,
despair, through six strings, better than almost
anyone who has ever lived. He gave us a new vocabulary
for the electric guitar. But on the other hand...
On the other hand, you have a man who often struggled
mightily to navigate his own life and his own
flaws. He was, as he put it himself, often deliberately
oblivious. He could be self -destructive, hurtful,
and deeply offensive. It really brings up that
eternal, difficult question. Can you separate
the art from the artist? Can the man who wrote
the gentle, healing, universal notes of tears
in heaven be reconciled with the man shouting
racist bile on that stage in Birmingham? I don't
think they can be fully reconciled, honestly.
I think they just have to coexist. And as a listener,
you have to sort of hold both ideas at the same
time. You have to accept the music for its undeniable
power and beauty, while also acknowledging the
profound flaws of the vessel it came through.
That is a lot to chew on. So here's a final thought
for you. The next time you hear the opening riff
of Lila, I want you to listen to it differently.
Don't just hear the classic rock anthem that's
on every movie soundtrack. Hear the context.
Hear the context, hear the desperation, hear
the unrequited love for his best friend's wife,
hear the ghost of Dwayne Allman's slide guitar,
and remember the chaotic, brilliant, and deeply
troubled life that fueled every single note of
it. It definitely adds a whole new layer to the
track when you know the story. That's all for
this deep dive. Thanks for listening and keep
exploring. See you next time.