WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.620 Imagine you're walking down a really damp street 00:00:02.620 --> 00:00:06.139 in Islington, North London. It's 1967. You turn 00:00:06.139 --> 00:00:09.500 a corner and right there on a brick wall, spray 00:00:09.500 --> 00:00:12.599 painted in these giant jagged letters, are three 00:00:12.599 --> 00:00:15.199 words. Three words that would basically define 00:00:15.199 --> 00:00:18.079 and honestly haunt a man for the rest of his 00:00:18.079 --> 00:00:21.719 life. Clapton is God. Yeah, it's such an iconic 00:00:21.719 --> 00:00:23.480 image. But you know what I really love about 00:00:23.480 --> 00:00:26.480 that specific photograph is this tiny, almost 00:00:26.480 --> 00:00:29.260 gritty little detail. Right below those huge 00:00:29.260 --> 00:00:31.079 words of divine reverence, there is literally 00:00:31.079 --> 00:00:34.119 a dog urinating on the wall. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's 00:00:34.119 --> 00:00:36.700 just the absolute perfect visual representation 00:00:36.700 --> 00:00:38.840 of the tension we're looking at today. You've 00:00:38.840 --> 00:00:41.420 got this desperate, godlike reference from the 00:00:41.420 --> 00:00:44.119 fans just smashed right up against the messy, 00:00:44.500 --> 00:00:46.640 grounded, and often, you know, deeply flawed 00:00:46.640 --> 00:00:49.219 reality of an actual human And that tension is 00:00:49.219 --> 00:00:51.460 exactly why we're here. Welcome to the Deep Dive. 00:00:51.600 --> 00:00:53.820 Today we were tearing into a massive stack of 00:00:53.820 --> 00:00:55.960 sources. We've got biographical records, historical 00:00:55.960 --> 00:00:58.420 archives, musical analyses. And the mission today 00:00:58.420 --> 00:01:01.039 is to map out the chaotic evolution of the modern 00:01:01.039 --> 00:01:03.740 guitar hero. We are looking at Eric Clapton. 00:01:03.960 --> 00:01:05.359 Yeah. And if you think we're just going to sit 00:01:05.359 --> 00:01:08.180 here and list off his greatest riffs, definitely 00:01:08.180 --> 00:01:10.700 think again. Exactly. We really want to figure 00:01:10.700 --> 00:01:14.260 out how a kid who was, you know, obsessively 00:01:14.260 --> 00:01:17.700 mimicking blues records in his bedroom somehow 00:01:17.700 --> 00:01:20.939 accidentally created a global cult of personality. 00:01:20.909 --> 00:01:24.469 and more importantly, how he barely survived 00:01:24.469 --> 00:01:27.670 the exact fame that he engineered. because to 00:01:27.670 --> 00:01:30.090 understand the colossal impact he had on music, 00:01:30.689 --> 00:01:32.609 you really can't separate the guitar from the 00:01:32.609 --> 00:01:34.989 psychology of the man holding it. And when you 00:01:34.989 --> 00:01:37.269 look at his origins, that psychology is, well, 00:01:37.409 --> 00:01:39.670 it's entirely rooted in a profound, just earth 00:01:39.670 --> 00:01:41.590 -shattering sense of displacement. Right, because 00:01:41.590 --> 00:01:43.930 his fundamental drive makes zero sense until 00:01:43.930 --> 00:01:45.790 you actually look at his childhood. So he was 00:01:45.790 --> 00:01:49.269 born in Surrey, England in 1945, but his family 00:01:49.269 --> 00:01:52.989 dynamic was basically... A literal fiction. Yeah, 00:01:53.250 --> 00:01:55.010 total cover -up. Right. For his entire early 00:01:55.010 --> 00:01:57.250 life, he was raised to believe that his grandparents 00:01:57.250 --> 00:01:59.769 were his parents, and the woman he thought was 00:01:59.769 --> 00:02:01.769 his older sister, that was actually his mother. 00:02:02.890 --> 00:02:05.510 It's just wild to think about. It is. She had 00:02:05.510 --> 00:02:07.909 him when she was 16, and the family covered it 00:02:07.909 --> 00:02:10.770 up to avoid, you know, the social stigma of that 00:02:10.770 --> 00:02:12.949 era, and she eventually just moved away to Germany. 00:02:14.270 --> 00:02:16.550 Just put yourself in his shoes for a second. 00:02:17.310 --> 00:02:19.729 Imagine the foundational shock of discovering 00:02:19.729 --> 00:02:22.370 that your core identity, your literal place in 00:02:22.370 --> 00:02:25.150 your own house, is just a constructed illusion. 00:02:25.610 --> 00:02:28.509 It creates this immense, inescapable isolation. 00:02:29.189 --> 00:02:30.930 You just can't trust the narrative you've been 00:02:30.930 --> 00:02:33.069 handed. Yeah, who do you even trust at that point? 00:02:33.210 --> 00:02:35.810 Exactly. So where does a teenager channel that 00:02:35.810 --> 00:02:38.310 kind of betrayal and loneliness? He found the 00:02:38.310 --> 00:02:41.210 blues. He actually got a cheap acoustic guitar 00:02:41.210 --> 00:02:44.759 when he was 13, but he found it... too physically 00:02:44.759 --> 00:02:47.159 painful to play, so he put it down. The strings 00:02:47.159 --> 00:02:49.080 on those cheap acoustics are brutal. Oh, the 00:02:49.080 --> 00:02:51.960 worst. But the itch was still there. So a couple 00:02:51.960 --> 00:02:53.960 of years later, he picks it back up, and he just 00:02:53.960 --> 00:02:56.759 becomes a ghost. He totally isolates himself 00:02:56.759 --> 00:02:59.520 with this portable, grunting, reel -to -reel 00:02:59.520 --> 00:03:02.280 tape recorder. And he wasn't just casually listening 00:03:02.280 --> 00:03:05.099 to American blues records. He was dissecting 00:03:05.099 --> 00:03:07.780 them. Like, he would play the tapes, slow them 00:03:07.780 --> 00:03:10.659 down, record himself trying to match the notes, 00:03:10.979 --> 00:03:13.770 and listen back over and over until he perfectly 00:03:13.770 --> 00:03:16.349 replicated what guys like Muddy Waters and Freddie 00:03:16.349 --> 00:03:18.069 King were doing. It was almost like a religious 00:03:18.069 --> 00:03:20.449 devotion. I mean, he actually got expelled from 00:03:20.449 --> 00:03:22.590 the Kingston College of Art because he was completely 00:03:22.590 --> 00:03:25.509 ignoring his art studies just to play the guitar. 00:03:25.629 --> 00:03:29.409 Wow. Yeah. And that relentless, almost stubborn 00:03:29.409 --> 00:03:32.310 purism that becomes the defining engine of his 00:03:32.310 --> 00:03:36.629 entire early career. By 1963, he joins a rhythm 00:03:36.629 --> 00:03:39.430 and blues band called the Yardbirds. This is 00:03:39.430 --> 00:03:41.530 where he gets that famous nickname, Slowhand. 00:03:41.740 --> 00:03:44.139 Which is such a great piece of rock mythology. 00:03:44.319 --> 00:03:46.379 But wait, let's explain how he actually got that 00:03:46.379 --> 00:03:47.939 name. A lot of people think it means he played 00:03:47.939 --> 00:03:50.340 slowly, and it wasn't about that at all. Not 00:03:50.340 --> 00:03:53.539 at all. Right, so when he played live, he was 00:03:53.539 --> 00:03:55.780 constantly trying to force his guitar to sound 00:03:55.780 --> 00:03:59.400 like a human voice. He wanted to mimic that agonizing, 00:03:59.400 --> 00:04:01.960 crying whale of the American blues singers he 00:04:01.960 --> 00:04:05.159 idolized, and to do that, he was bending the 00:04:05.159 --> 00:04:07.580 steel strings so fiercely that they would constantly 00:04:07.580 --> 00:04:10.740 just snap right there on stage. Yeah, and back 00:04:10.740 --> 00:04:12.479 then, you know, in the English club circuit, 00:04:12.680 --> 00:04:14.400 you didn't have a guitar tech waiting in the 00:04:14.400 --> 00:04:17.180 wings to hand you a fresh, perfectly tuned instrument. 00:04:17.699 --> 00:04:20.139 When a string broke... Clapton just refused to 00:04:20.139 --> 00:04:22.279 walk off stage. He'd just stand there. He would 00:04:22.279 --> 00:04:23.600 stand right there in front of the microphone 00:04:23.600 --> 00:04:26.100 and painstakingly change the string himself. 00:04:26.839 --> 00:04:28.740 So the English crowds, who were just waiting 00:04:28.740 --> 00:04:32.240 in the silence, would start this rhythmic slow 00:04:32.240 --> 00:04:35.000 hand clap just to pass the time. And the band's 00:04:35.000 --> 00:04:36.439 manager thought it was hilarious, so he dubbed 00:04:36.439 --> 00:04:39.180 him slow hand. I love that so much. It just shows 00:04:39.180 --> 00:04:42.079 this uncompromising refusal to break the spell 00:04:42.079 --> 00:04:44.060 of the performance, even when the gear completely 00:04:44.060 --> 00:04:46.759 fails. But OK, let's unpack this. Because that 00:04:46.759 --> 00:04:49.500 exact same uncompromising purism is what causes 00:04:49.500 --> 00:04:51.819 him to completely blow up his own career, just 00:04:51.819 --> 00:04:53.560 as it was taking off. Oh, yeah, he sabotages 00:04:53.560 --> 00:04:56.199 it. Big time. So the yard birds start gaining 00:04:56.199 --> 00:04:58.740 massive traction. They record a song called For 00:04:58.740 --> 00:05:01.009 Your Love. which was written by Graham Goldman. 00:05:01.769 --> 00:05:04.870 And it was a clear, very deliberate pivot by 00:05:04.870 --> 00:05:08.170 the band to capture a more commercial, pop -oriented 00:05:08.170 --> 00:05:11.089 audience. And Clapton absolutely despised it. 00:05:11.410 --> 00:05:13.709 He viewed it as a total betrayal of the blues. 00:05:14.149 --> 00:05:16.509 So to put this in perspective for you, imagine 00:05:16.509 --> 00:05:19.250 a tech startup founder, right? They've been grinding 00:05:19.250 --> 00:05:22.050 in a garage for years, building this highly specialized 00:05:22.050 --> 00:05:25.250 product that they deeply believe in. Then, literally 00:05:25.250 --> 00:05:27.769 the day before the company goes public with a 00:05:27.769 --> 00:05:30.850 billion dollar IPO, the board tells the founder 00:05:30.850 --> 00:05:32.829 they're changing the core mission to make it 00:05:32.829 --> 00:05:34.910 more mainstream. Most people would just take 00:05:34.910 --> 00:05:37.170 the money. Exactly. Most people take the money. 00:05:37.870 --> 00:05:40.750 But Clapton walked away. On the exact day For 00:05:40.750 --> 00:05:42.990 Your Love was released to the public, the song 00:05:42.990 --> 00:05:45.230 that would become their first massive smash hit, 00:05:45.790 --> 00:05:48.420 he quit the band. What's fascinating here is 00:05:48.420 --> 00:05:51.079 that he walked away from guaranteed stardom because 00:05:51.079 --> 00:05:54.620 the art felt compromised. But the irony is that 00:05:54.620 --> 00:05:57.660 this stubborn pursuit of pure blues over commercial 00:05:57.660 --> 00:06:00.680 pop is exactly what catapulted him to the status 00:06:00.680 --> 00:06:03.639 of a deity. Because he leaves the Yardbirds and 00:06:03.639 --> 00:06:06.360 he joins John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers. And 00:06:06.360 --> 00:06:08.600 it was during his time sweating it out in these 00:06:08.600 --> 00:06:11.500 tiny London clubs with the Bluesbreakers that 00:06:11.720 --> 00:06:14.720 his playing reached such a virtuosic level that 00:06:14.720 --> 00:06:16.879 someone felt compelled to spray paint Clapton 00:06:16.879 --> 00:06:20.120 as God in Islington. He elevated the instrument 00:06:20.120 --> 00:06:22.259 entirely. He did. He was taking the electric 00:06:22.259 --> 00:06:24.860 guitar, which was largely seen as just a rhythm 00:06:24.860 --> 00:06:27.620 instrument or background accompaniment, and he 00:06:27.620 --> 00:06:31.240 turned it into a lead expressive voice that commanded 00:06:31.240 --> 00:06:33.459 the whole room. I mean, Clapton himself even 00:06:33.459 --> 00:06:35.139 said later that he never actually accepted that 00:06:35.139 --> 00:06:37.240 he was the greatest, but he accepted the graffiti 00:06:37.240 --> 00:06:39.810 as an ideal. But I want to pull back the curtain 00:06:39.810 --> 00:06:42.449 on that whole god mythos for a second, because 00:06:42.449 --> 00:06:45.430 how does someone actually execute that vision? 00:06:45.850 --> 00:06:47.670 We really have to look at the physical tools, 00:06:47.870 --> 00:06:50.889 the actual mechanics he used, to completely mutate 00:06:50.889 --> 00:06:53.810 how rock music sounded. Yeah, the studio techniques. 00:06:54.079 --> 00:06:56.800 Exactly. Let's talk about how he recorded his 00:06:56.800 --> 00:06:59.439 guitar. Because Pink Floyd's Roger Waters pointed 00:06:59.439 --> 00:07:01.579 out that before Clapton, guitar recording in 00:07:01.579 --> 00:07:04.000 England was very clinical. You had clean players 00:07:04.000 --> 00:07:06.819 like Hank Marvin of the Shadows, and the engineers 00:07:06.819 --> 00:07:09.360 would literally just stick a microphone... two 00:07:09.360 --> 00:07:11.120 inches away from the front of the amplifier, 00:07:11.459 --> 00:07:13.800 and that was it. Clapton gets into the studio, 00:07:13.879 --> 00:07:16.199 and he hates it. Yeah, he completely rebels against 00:07:16.199 --> 00:07:19.100 it. He demands the engineers move the microphones 00:07:19.100 --> 00:07:21.560 10 feet back into the room. Which completely 00:07:21.560 --> 00:07:23.339 baffled the engineers at the time. They thought 00:07:23.339 --> 00:07:25.480 he was crazy. Right, and as a listener, you might 00:07:25.480 --> 00:07:28.060 be thinking, wait, moving the mic 10 feet away, 00:07:28.439 --> 00:07:30.480 wouldn't that just make the guitar sound quiet 00:07:30.480 --> 00:07:32.860 and sort of washed out? Why on earth did that 00:07:32.860 --> 00:07:35.259 actually work? Because of the physics of sound. 00:07:35.720 --> 00:07:38.480 By pulling that mic back, Clapton wasn't just 00:07:38.480 --> 00:07:40.759 capturing the isolated vibration of the speaker 00:07:40.759 --> 00:07:43.720 cone, he was capturing the actual displacement 00:07:43.720 --> 00:07:46.339 of air in the room. Oh, that makes sense. Yeah, 00:07:46.339 --> 00:07:48.560 when you crank an amplifier, it pushes physical 00:07:48.560 --> 00:07:50.519 waves of air outward, bouncing off the walls 00:07:50.519 --> 00:07:53.160 and the floor. By miking the room, he captured 00:07:53.160 --> 00:07:56.220 the atmosphere of a live club. Suddenly, on the 00:07:56.220 --> 00:07:58.240 record, the guitar didn't just sound loud, it 00:07:58.240 --> 00:08:00.350 sounded massive. had this physical weight that 00:08:00.350 --> 00:08:02.189 you would literally feel in your chest. He was 00:08:02.189 --> 00:08:04.709 literally changing the spatial geometry of rock 00:08:04.709 --> 00:08:07.889 recording. And he was doing the exact same thing 00:08:07.889 --> 00:08:10.470 to the physical hardware of the guitar itself. 00:08:10.569 --> 00:08:13.649 All right. Which brings us to the legendary woman 00:08:13.649 --> 00:08:16.329 tone. Oh, right. So this happens a bit later. 00:08:16.550 --> 00:08:18.750 During his time in the super group Cream, which 00:08:18.750 --> 00:08:21.329 he formed with Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce, he 00:08:21.329 --> 00:08:25.470 was playing a 1964 Gibson SG. It was this guitar 00:08:25.470 --> 00:08:28.149 famously painted in these wild psychedelic colors 00:08:28.149 --> 00:08:31.149 known as The Fool. Such a famous guitar. Yeah, 00:08:31.230 --> 00:08:33.230 and he runs it through these massive Marshall 00:08:33.230 --> 00:08:35.690 amplifiers to get the sound that historians describe 00:08:35.690 --> 00:08:39.210 as thick piercing, heavily overdriven, yet incredibly 00:08:39.210 --> 00:08:42.470 smooth. And the mechanism behind that sound is 00:08:42.470 --> 00:08:44.950 brilliant in its counterintuitiveness. If you 00:08:44.950 --> 00:08:47.429 want a piercing, loud rock sound, conventional 00:08:47.429 --> 00:08:49.509 wisdom says you just turn all the knobs on your 00:08:49.509 --> 00:08:52.710 guitar up to 10. But Clapton did the exact opposite. 00:08:52.850 --> 00:08:55.370 He would take the tone control knobs on the Gibson 00:08:55.370 --> 00:08:58.330 SG and roll them all the way down to zero. Which 00:08:58.330 --> 00:09:00.970 normally makes a guitar sound incredibly muffled, 00:09:01.129 --> 00:09:02.929 right? Like you've thrown a thick blanket over 00:09:02.929 --> 00:09:04.830 the amplifier. Exactly. It cuts all the treble, 00:09:04.909 --> 00:09:07.649 all the high end frequencies. But then he would 00:09:07.649 --> 00:09:10.259 take the volume on the massive martial amplifier 00:09:10.259 --> 00:09:13.019 and crank it to its absolute maximum. Oh wow. 00:09:13.259 --> 00:09:15.799 So you have this deeply muffled bass heavy signal 00:09:15.799 --> 00:09:18.860 from the guitar just slamming into an amplifier 00:09:18.860 --> 00:09:20.720 that is distorting because it's being pushed 00:09:20.720 --> 00:09:23.500 to its absolute physical limit. The result is 00:09:23.500 --> 00:09:26.399 this compressed sustain heavy whale that sounds 00:09:26.399 --> 00:09:28.960 almost like a cello on fire. That was the woman 00:09:28.960 --> 00:09:31.740 tone. It's pure sonic alchemy. But my absolute 00:09:31.740 --> 00:09:33.779 favorite story about his gear, the one that I 00:09:33.779 --> 00:09:36.220 think completely demystifies the whole God complex 00:09:36.220 --> 00:09:38.179 and shows you the obsessive craftsman underneath, 00:09:38.580 --> 00:09:41.480 is the creation of his most famous guitar, Blacky. 00:09:41.720 --> 00:09:44.340 Oh, definitely. So in 1970, Clapton is on tour 00:09:44.340 --> 00:09:46.539 in Nashville, Tennessee. He wanders into a guitar 00:09:46.539 --> 00:09:49.759 shop and he finds this rack of vintage Fender 00:09:49.759 --> 00:09:52.519 Stratocasters. And they're selling for a fraction 00:09:52.519 --> 00:09:54.360 of what they were actually worth. So he buys 00:09:54.360 --> 00:09:57.059 six of them right on the spot. Just buy six guitars. 00:09:57.220 --> 00:09:59.220 Just buy six of them. And he gives three away 00:09:59.220 --> 00:10:02.200 as gifts to his friends. George Harrison, Steve 00:10:02.200 --> 00:10:04.820 Winwood, and Pete Townsend. Which is just an 00:10:04.820 --> 00:10:07.860 insane flex of generosity, but it's what he does 00:10:07.860 --> 00:10:10.139 with the three he kept that I really love. He 00:10:10.139 --> 00:10:12.620 takes these three vintage Stratocasters back 00:10:12.620 --> 00:10:15.460 to his workshop in England. And he doesn't just 00:10:15.460 --> 00:10:18.080 pick his favorite one to play, he completely 00:10:18.080 --> 00:10:20.360 strips them down to their bare components. He 00:10:20.360 --> 00:10:22.570 takes them totally apart. Yeah. He evaluates 00:10:22.570 --> 00:10:24.889 the maple neck of one, the older body of another, 00:10:25.149 --> 00:10:28.389 the specific magnetic pickups of the third, and 00:10:28.389 --> 00:10:31.590 he physically bolts the best pieces of all three 00:10:31.590 --> 00:10:34.350 together to build this ultimate mongrel guitar. 00:10:34.490 --> 00:10:37.049 It's amazing. It's exactly like a grease monkey 00:10:37.049 --> 00:10:39.830 mechanic going into a junkyard, cannibalizing 00:10:39.830 --> 00:10:42.870 the transmission from a Mustang, the engine block 00:10:42.870 --> 00:10:46.029 from a Chevy, and the chassis of a Dodge to build 00:10:46.029 --> 00:10:49.500 the ultimate unbeatable hot rod. There was no 00:10:49.500 --> 00:10:52.320 divine magic dropping from the sky here. It was 00:10:52.320 --> 00:10:55.779 brilliant, calculated, obsessive craftsmanship. 00:10:56.120 --> 00:10:59.759 But that word, obsessive, that is the exact hinge 00:10:59.759 --> 00:11:02.559 on which his entire life swings. Because the 00:11:02.559 --> 00:11:04.840 sources make a very clear psychological connection 00:11:04.840 --> 00:11:07.659 here. The man who obsessively dismantles guitars 00:11:07.659 --> 00:11:10.080 to find the perfect combination of wood and wire. 00:11:10.440 --> 00:11:13.600 is the exact same man who becomes dangerously 00:11:13.600 --> 00:11:16.179 obsessive in his personal life. His romantic 00:11:16.179 --> 00:11:18.899 fixations birthed his most enduring music, but 00:11:18.899 --> 00:11:21.399 they also triggered his absolute darkest psychological 00:11:21.399 --> 00:11:23.139 dissents. Yeah, we really have to transition 00:11:23.139 --> 00:11:25.299 from the wood shop to the deeply complicated 00:11:25.299 --> 00:11:27.500 personal reality here because Clapton developed 00:11:27.500 --> 00:11:30.259 a profound agonizing infatuation with a woman 00:11:30.259 --> 00:11:33.360 named Patti Boyd and the central glaring issue. 00:11:33.740 --> 00:11:35.500 Patti Boyd was married to his incredibly close 00:11:35.500 --> 00:11:37.500 friend, George Harrison. Yeah, that's a problem. 00:11:37.639 --> 00:11:40.399 It was an unrequited, consuming obsession. And 00:11:40.399 --> 00:11:42.340 during the height of this agony, a friend of 00:11:42.340 --> 00:11:45.840 his, Ian Dallas, gave Clapton a copy of a classic 00:11:45.840 --> 00:11:48.539 Persian poem called The Story of Laila and Majnun. 00:11:49.240 --> 00:11:52.340 It's this devastating historical tale about a 00:11:52.340 --> 00:11:54.480 young man who falls so deeply in love with a 00:11:54.480 --> 00:11:57.539 beautiful, unavailable woman that he literally 00:11:57.539 --> 00:11:59.580 loses his mind because he cannot possess her. 00:11:59.690 --> 00:12:02.870 And for Clapton, reading that wasn't just, you 00:12:02.870 --> 00:12:04.929 know, an appreciation of 12th century literature. 00:12:05.070 --> 00:12:07.629 It was a mirror held right up to his own torment. 00:12:08.110 --> 00:12:10.950 He saw his exact emotional state staring back 00:12:10.950 --> 00:12:14.450 at him. And true to form, he channeled that agony 00:12:14.450 --> 00:12:17.210 into the music. He forms a brand new band called 00:12:17.210 --> 00:12:19.629 Derek and the Dominos. And notice the name there. 00:12:19.740 --> 00:12:22.580 He deliberately chose a pseudonym, Derek, because 00:12:22.580 --> 00:12:24.679 he was just suffocating under the clapped -in 00:12:24.679 --> 00:12:27.059 -his -god mythology. He wanted to hide. Exactly. 00:12:27.059 --> 00:12:29.139 He wanted to disappear into an ensemble. He just 00:12:29.139 --> 00:12:30.879 wanted to be a guy in a band playing music. But 00:12:30.879 --> 00:12:32.960 the music they made was anything but anonymous. 00:12:33.139 --> 00:12:35.200 The entire outpuna of Derek and the Dominoes 00:12:35.200 --> 00:12:38.259 was driven by this singular, painful infatuation 00:12:38.259 --> 00:12:40.820 with Patti Boyd, which culminated in the album 00:12:40.820 --> 00:12:43.320 Lila and other assorted love songs. Right. And 00:12:43.320 --> 00:12:45.399 those recording sessions down in Miami, they 00:12:45.399 --> 00:12:48.960 are legendary. It was this rapid fire, almost 00:12:49.039 --> 00:12:53.159 creative explosion heavily fueled by his collaboration 00:12:53.159 --> 00:12:56.519 with the slide guitar genius Dwayne Allman. When 00:12:56.519 --> 00:12:58.759 you listen to the title track, Layla, you hear 00:12:58.759 --> 00:13:01.960 that screaming aggressive opening riff followed 00:13:01.960 --> 00:13:05.240 by that haunting melancholic piano exit. You 00:13:05.240 --> 00:13:07.279 are listening to the exact audio translation 00:13:07.279 --> 00:13:11.220 of pure desperate unresolved longing. If we connect 00:13:11.220 --> 00:13:14.000 this to the bigger picture, the tragic irony 00:13:14.000 --> 00:13:16.220 of Derek and the Dominoes is just incredibly 00:13:16.220 --> 00:13:18.860 heavy. Clapton formed the band to escape the 00:13:18.860 --> 00:13:20.960 toxic cult of stardom, right? To find a safe 00:13:20.960 --> 00:13:23.539 haven. Yet the band was almost immediately swallowed 00:13:23.539 --> 00:13:26.059 by unimaginable darkness. It really was. Shortly 00:13:26.059 --> 00:13:28.139 after those Miami sessions, Dwayne Ullman was 00:13:28.139 --> 00:13:30.360 killed in a motorcycle crash at just 24 years 00:13:30.360 --> 00:13:32.879 old. The drummer, Jim Gordon, the man who actually 00:13:32.879 --> 00:13:34.899 composed and played that Fanna's piano coda on 00:13:34.899 --> 00:13:37.480 Layla, was later diagnosed with severe schizophrenia 00:13:37.480 --> 00:13:39.950 and tragically murdered his own mother. It's 00:13:39.950 --> 00:13:42.269 chilling how much tragedy surrounded that one 00:13:42.269 --> 00:13:45.269 record. And Clapton himself did not escape the 00:13:45.269 --> 00:13:47.909 darkness. When the Layla album was initially 00:13:47.909 --> 00:13:50.629 released, it was met with really lukewarm reviews. 00:13:50.870 --> 00:13:53.009 The public just didn't immediately get it. No, 00:13:53.090 --> 00:13:55.169 they didn't. So you have a man who is entirely 00:13:55.169 --> 00:13:58.169 heartbroken over a woman he can't have, he's 00:13:58.169 --> 00:14:00.509 disillusioned with the music industry, and he's 00:14:00.509 --> 00:14:02.909 watching his bandmates suffer. What does he do? 00:14:03.149 --> 00:14:06.769 He completely withdraws. He retreats to his massive 00:14:06.769 --> 00:14:10.009 estate in Surrey and spirals into a devastating 00:14:10.009 --> 00:14:13.149 three -year heroin addiction. He essentially 00:14:13.149 --> 00:14:16.549 vanished from the world. It took years and intense 00:14:16.549 --> 00:14:19.029 interventions from peers like Pete Townsend just 00:14:19.029 --> 00:14:21.590 to drag him out of that self -inflicted isolation. 00:14:21.899 --> 00:14:24.860 By the early 1980s, he had managed to kick the 00:14:24.860 --> 00:14:27.240 heroin, but he had entirely swapped it for severe 00:14:27.240 --> 00:14:29.320 alcoholism. Which is a very common transfer of 00:14:29.320 --> 00:14:31.580 addiction, right? Exactly. The underlying pain 00:14:31.580 --> 00:14:33.519 hadn't been resolved, medication just changed. 00:14:34.139 --> 00:14:37.580 Finally, in 1982, he hit his breaking point and 00:14:37.580 --> 00:14:39.879 checked into the Hazelden Treatment Center. But 00:14:39.879 --> 00:14:42.639 the grip of the alcohol was so terrifyingly strong 00:14:42.639 --> 00:14:45.259 that on the flight to the rehab clinic, he drank 00:14:45.259 --> 00:14:48.539 heavily the entire way. and not to party, but 00:14:48.539 --> 00:14:51.120 out of the sheer panicked fear that he would 00:14:51.120 --> 00:14:53.299 never be allowed to consume alcohol ever again. 00:14:54.039 --> 00:14:55.940 He later wrote that he was in such bad shape, 00:14:56.200 --> 00:14:57.820 he had to be practically carried through the 00:14:57.820 --> 00:15:00.000 doors of the clinic. But he did it. He fought 00:15:00.000 --> 00:15:02.879 his way to a fragile sobriety, and thank God 00:15:02.879 --> 00:15:05.100 he did, because the ultimate test of that sobriety 00:15:05.100 --> 00:15:08.419 was looming on the horizon. In March of 1991, 00:15:08.860 --> 00:15:11.240 Clapton suffered an external tragedy that is 00:15:11.240 --> 00:15:14.379 honestly just difficult to fathom. His four -year 00:15:14.379 --> 00:15:17.139 -old son, Connor, died after tragically falling 00:15:17.139 --> 00:15:19.860 from a 53rd floor apartment window in New York 00:15:19.860 --> 00:15:22.519 City. Just unthinkable. Clapton wasn't even in 00:15:22.519 --> 00:15:24.820 the apartment. He was at a hotel nearby getting 00:15:24.820 --> 00:15:26.799 ready to walk over and pick his son up for a 00:15:26.799 --> 00:15:29.360 trip to the zoo. The psychological shock of that 00:15:29.360 --> 00:15:32.860 moment is absolute. Clapton later described his 00:15:32.860 --> 00:15:34.980 arrival at the scene saying he felt like he went 00:15:34.980 --> 00:15:37.320 off the edge of the world. He said he felt like 00:15:37.320 --> 00:15:39.399 he had literally walked into someone else's life. 00:15:39.600 --> 00:15:41.940 It's the kind of world -shattering grief that 00:15:41.940 --> 00:15:44.320 would understandably drive anyone back to the 00:15:44.320 --> 00:15:46.779 bottle or the needle. But he didn't. Here's where 00:15:46.779 --> 00:15:49.159 it gets really interesting. Because instead of 00:15:49.159 --> 00:15:52.220 relapsing, Clapton picked up his guitar. He said 00:15:52.220 --> 00:15:54.419 later that he subconsciously used music as a 00:15:54.419 --> 00:15:56.960 healing agent. He collaborated with the songwriter 00:15:56.960 --> 00:15:59.519 Will Jennings and channeled all of that raw, 00:15:59.700 --> 00:16:02.279 suffocating grief into the song Tears in Heaven. 00:16:03.039 --> 00:16:06.220 And then he did something incredibly brave. He 00:16:06.220 --> 00:16:10.490 performed it. The 1992 MTV Unplugged Performance. 00:16:10.850 --> 00:16:13.759 Yes. Think about the courage that takes. You 00:16:13.759 --> 00:16:16.740 are a man known for hiding behind walls of blistering 00:16:16.740 --> 00:16:19.440 Marshall amplifiers, and you walk out onto a 00:16:19.440 --> 00:16:21.659 stage under the hot television lights armed with 00:16:21.659 --> 00:16:24.179 nothing but a quiet acoustic guitar, and you 00:16:24.179 --> 00:16:26.519 bear your most devastating personal trauma to 00:16:26.519 --> 00:16:28.820 millions of strangers. It was a total watershed 00:16:28.820 --> 00:16:31.500 moment. That unplugged album resonated on a global 00:16:31.500 --> 00:16:33.879 scale. It went diamond. It sold over 10 million 00:16:33.879 --> 00:16:37.179 copies in the U .S. alone, won six Grammys, and 00:16:37.179 --> 00:16:39.159 completely redefined him for a new generation. 00:16:39.179 --> 00:16:41.840 It really did. But more importantly, The tragedy 00:16:41.840 --> 00:16:44.840 fundamentally cemented his commitment to sobriety 00:16:44.840 --> 00:16:47.179 and to helping others survive their own demons. 00:16:48.340 --> 00:16:51.240 In 1998, he founded the Crossroads Center in 00:16:51.240 --> 00:16:53.679 Antigua, which is a dedicated medical facility 00:16:53.679 --> 00:16:56.019 for addiction recovery. And to keep the doors 00:16:56.019 --> 00:16:58.940 open and fund the treatment programs, he organized 00:16:58.940 --> 00:17:01.840 the massive Crossroads guitar festivals. He even 00:17:01.840 --> 00:17:04.500 auctioned off his most prized personal possessions. 00:17:04.619 --> 00:17:07.299 Like Blacky. Exactly. That Blacky Stratocaster 00:17:07.299 --> 00:17:09.339 we talked about earlier. The hot rod he built 00:17:09.339 --> 00:17:11.599 himself. He auctioned off for nearly a million 00:17:11.599 --> 00:17:14.339 dollars and every single cent went to the rehab 00:17:14.339 --> 00:17:16.869 center. It is this beautiful arc of redemption. 00:17:17.210 --> 00:17:19.849 You see a man transforming unimaginable pain 00:17:19.849 --> 00:17:22.470 into universal empathy, which is why this next 00:17:22.470 --> 00:17:24.970 part of the deep dive is so difficult to reconcile. 00:17:25.170 --> 00:17:26.789 You'd think that kind of empathy would mellow 00:17:26.789 --> 00:17:29.269 him into this unifying elder statesman of rock. 00:17:29.849 --> 00:17:32.049 But the same uncompromising defiance that drove 00:17:32.049 --> 00:17:34.170 him to quit his first band has also made him 00:17:34.170 --> 00:17:36.509 one of the most polarizing, controversial figures 00:17:36.509 --> 00:17:39.910 in modern music. And right here, it is our job 00:17:39.910 --> 00:17:42.299 to look at the historical record. exactly as 00:17:42.299 --> 00:17:44.619 it is laid out on the sources. We're doing this 00:17:44.619 --> 00:17:46.599 without endorsing or condemning the behavior. 00:17:47.240 --> 00:17:50.019 We are simply mapping out the facts to understand 00:17:50.019 --> 00:17:53.039 how a single human being can hold such extreme 00:17:53.039 --> 00:17:55.799 conflicting views. Right, absolutely. And the 00:17:55.799 --> 00:17:58.059 first massive fracture in his public persona 00:17:58.059 --> 00:18:01.299 happens in August of 1976 during a concert in 00:18:01.299 --> 00:18:04.680 Birmingham, England. An intoxicated Clapton launched 00:18:04.680 --> 00:18:07.460 into an aggressive onstage rant about immigration. 00:18:08.140 --> 00:18:10.240 He explicitly voiced his support for the right 00:18:10.240 --> 00:18:12.960 -wing British politician Enoch Powell. He used 00:18:12.960 --> 00:18:16.180 severe, highly offensive racial slurs, told the 00:18:16.180 --> 00:18:17.920 audience to keep Britain white, and said that 00:18:17.920 --> 00:18:20.079 immigrants should be deported. It was a cultural 00:18:20.079 --> 00:18:22.259 earthquake. This wasn't just a bad night. His 00:18:22.259 --> 00:18:24.240 comments directly sparked the creation of the 00:18:24.240 --> 00:18:26.400 Massive Rock Against Racism movement in the UK. 00:18:26.740 --> 00:18:29.859 Right. Now, decades later, in a 2018 interview, 00:18:30.339 --> 00:18:32.680 Clapton did publicly apologize for the incident. 00:18:33.200 --> 00:18:36.660 He called his own past comments fascistic and 00:18:36.660 --> 00:18:39.539 chauvinistic. He attributed the outburst to the 00:18:39.539 --> 00:18:42.519 depths of his addiction and a subconscious destructive 00:18:42.519 --> 00:18:46.019 desire to sabotage his own career. He even pointed 00:18:46.019 --> 00:18:48.960 out the glaring hypocrisy of his actions, noting 00:18:48.960 --> 00:18:51.720 that it made zero sense, because his entire career 00:18:51.720 --> 00:18:54.740 was built on championing black music, his absolute 00:18:54.740 --> 00:18:57.220 heroes were black bluesmen, and he had dated 00:18:57.220 --> 00:18:59.750 a black woman. The contradictions are staggering. 00:19:00.230 --> 00:19:02.190 And the controversies didn't stay in the 70s. 00:19:02.329 --> 00:19:04.069 We see him jump into the political fray again 00:19:04.069 --> 00:19:06.890 in 2004, publicly opposing the Labor Party's 00:19:06.890 --> 00:19:09.670 ban on fox hunting, arguing against state interference 00:19:09.670 --> 00:19:12.150 in private country pursuits. But the contradictions 00:19:12.150 --> 00:19:14.329 became intensely pronounced on a global scale 00:19:14.329 --> 00:19:17.259 during the COVID -19 pandemic. Clapton became 00:19:17.259 --> 00:19:19.779 a highly vocal, aggressive critic of lockdowns 00:19:19.779 --> 00:19:22.299 and vaccine mandates. He teamed up with Van Morrison 00:19:22.299 --> 00:19:24.880 to release protest songs like, Stand and Deliver, 00:19:24.960 --> 00:19:26.680 and he put out his own track, This Has Gotta 00:19:26.680 --> 00:19:29.000 Stop, framing public health measures as an attack 00:19:29.000 --> 00:19:31.289 on civil liberties. And here is where you have 00:19:31.289 --> 00:19:33.549 to look closely at the mechanisms behind his 00:19:33.549 --> 00:19:36.670 outrage. Because he actually took these public 00:19:36.670 --> 00:19:39.430 stances against the mandates after he received 00:19:39.430 --> 00:19:41.990 both doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine. Right, 00:19:41.990 --> 00:19:44.170 he'd already taken it. He claimed he had severe 00:19:44.170 --> 00:19:46.549 debilitating reactions to the injections. He 00:19:46.549 --> 00:19:48.549 blamed the vaccine for drastically worsening 00:19:48.549 --> 00:19:50.769 his peripheral neuropathy. For those who don't 00:19:50.769 --> 00:19:52.509 know, peripheral neuropathy is a condition that 00:19:52.509 --> 00:19:55.089 causes severe nerve damage, resulting in pain, 00:19:55.470 --> 00:19:57.950 numbness, and weakness in the extremities. Which 00:19:57.950 --> 00:20:00.910 is devastating for a guitar. Imagine being a 00:20:00.910 --> 00:20:03.829 virtuoso whose entire identity and livelihood 00:20:03.829 --> 00:20:06.549 live in his fingertips and you start losing feeling 00:20:06.549 --> 00:20:09.190 in your hands. He actually first reported having 00:20:09.190 --> 00:20:13.019 this condition years earlier back in 2013. But 00:20:13.019 --> 00:20:15.539 he firmly blamed the vaccine for aggravating 00:20:15.539 --> 00:20:17.740 it to the point where he feared he might never 00:20:17.740 --> 00:20:20.240 play again. And the political whiplash continues. 00:20:20.720 --> 00:20:23.420 Most recently, in late 2023, amidst the Gaza 00:20:23.420 --> 00:20:26.579 War, he released a song featuring images of the 00:20:26.579 --> 00:20:29.140 destruction in Gaza and performed at a charity 00:20:29.140 --> 00:20:32.019 concert for Palestinian children playing a guitar 00:20:32.019 --> 00:20:34.700 painted with the Palestinian flag. So what does 00:20:34.700 --> 00:20:37.180 this all mean? How are you sitting there listening 00:20:37.180 --> 00:20:39.950 to this supposed to process all of this? How 00:20:39.950 --> 00:20:42.289 do you reconcile a figure who is so musically 00:20:42.289 --> 00:20:45.170 brilliant, who literally changed the physics 00:20:45.170 --> 00:20:48.329 of how a guitar is recorded, who is philanthropically 00:20:48.329 --> 00:20:51.029 generous enough to fund a rehab center by selling 00:20:51.029 --> 00:20:54.230 his prized possessions, yet who is so publicly 00:20:54.230 --> 00:20:57.410 incendiary and offensive in his rhetoric? This 00:20:57.410 --> 00:20:59.410 raises an important question, and I think the 00:20:59.410 --> 00:21:01.430 answer lies in the psychology of control and 00:21:01.430 --> 00:21:04.069 rebellion. The paradox of Eric Clapton isn't 00:21:04.069 --> 00:21:07.430 an accident. It's the feature. The exact same 00:21:07.430 --> 00:21:09.809 stubborn anti -establishment purism that made 00:21:09.809 --> 00:21:12.009 a 20 -year -old kid quit the yard birds because 00:21:12.009 --> 00:21:15.029 he hated commercial consensus is the exact same 00:21:15.029 --> 00:21:16.849 trait that makes an 80 -year -old man reject 00:21:16.849 --> 00:21:19.069 modern societal consensus. That makes a lot of 00:21:19.069 --> 00:21:21.390 sense. He built his fortune popularizing Black 00:21:21.390 --> 00:21:24.089 American music, yet spouted xenophobic rhetoric. 00:21:24.220 --> 00:21:26.220 He's been millions fighting the public health 00:21:26.220 --> 00:21:29.039 crisis of addiction, yet actively protested public 00:21:29.039 --> 00:21:31.240 health mandates during a global viral pandemic. 00:21:31.880 --> 00:21:34.359 He is a masterclass in extreme human contradiction. 00:21:34.640 --> 00:21:37.400 He truly is. We have covered a massive amount 00:21:37.400 --> 00:21:39.579 of ground today. We've tracked the journey of 00:21:39.579 --> 00:21:41.819 an isolated kid with a reel to reel tape machine 00:21:41.819 --> 00:21:44.759 who willed himself into a virtuoso. We watched 00:21:44.759 --> 00:21:47.660 him mutate the DNA of rock and roll with a rolled 00:21:47.660 --> 00:21:50.799 off tone knob and a junkyard Stratocaster. We 00:21:50.799 --> 00:21:53.740 saw a man survive the unimaginable grief of losing 00:21:53.740 --> 00:21:56.839 his son and we watched him become a deeply polarizing 00:21:56.839 --> 00:22:00.240 cultural lightning rod. It is a life lived entirely 00:22:00.240 --> 00:22:03.140 without a safety net broadcast on a global stage. 00:22:03.520 --> 00:22:05.680 Which brings us to the final thought I want to 00:22:05.680 --> 00:22:08.700 leave you with today. We started this deep dive 00:22:08.700 --> 00:22:12.440 talking about a brick wall in 1960s London. Eric 00:22:12.440 --> 00:22:14.599 Clapton, perhaps more than anyone else, helped 00:22:14.599 --> 00:22:17.619 invent the cult of the lead guitarist. He elevated 00:22:17.619 --> 00:22:20.339 mortal, deeply flawed musicians to the status 00:22:20.339 --> 00:22:23.180 of infallible gods. But we have to ask ourselves, 00:22:23.299 --> 00:22:25.319 does putting an artist on a pedestal fundamentally 00:22:25.319 --> 00:22:27.500 warp our relationship with the art itself? When 00:22:27.500 --> 00:22:30.099 we demand that our musicians be deities, do we 00:22:30.099 --> 00:22:32.039 ultimately set ourselves up for betrayal once 00:22:32.039 --> 00:22:34.460 they inevitably reveal themselves to be contradictory, 00:22:34.900 --> 00:22:37.440 messy, and entirely human? because a god doesn't 00:22:37.440 --> 00:22:41.420 have to grapple with addiction or grief or the 00:22:41.420 --> 00:22:44.420 very real consequences of their own words. Only 00:22:44.420 --> 00:22:46.420 a human does. Thank you for joining us on this 00:22:46.420 --> 00:22:48.740 deep dive. Keep listening closely and always 00:22:48.740 --> 00:22:50.799 keep questioning the stories behind the music.