Eric
Patrick Clapton was born on March 30, 1945, in his grandparent's house
at 1, The Green, Ripley,
Surrey,
England. He was the illegitimate son of Patricia Molly Clapton and Edward
Fryer, a Canadian
soldier
stationed in England. When Fryer returned to his wife in Canada, Pat left
Eric in the custody of his
grandparents,
Rose and Jack Clapp. (The surname Clapton is from Rose's first husband,
Reginald Cecil
Clapton.)
Pat moved to Germany where she eventually married another Canadian soldier,
Frank
McDonald.
Young
Ricky was a quiet and polite child, an above average student with an aptitude
for art. He was
raised
believing that his grandparents were his parents, to shield him the stigma
that illegitimacy carried
with
it. The truth was eventually revealed to him by his grandmother. Later,
when Eric would visit his
mother,
they would pretend to be brother and sister.
After
hearing Buddy Holly and Elvis on the radio, he asked for a guitar. His
grandmother bought Eric his
first
guitar, a 14# Spanish Hoya accoustic from Bell's Music Shop in Kingston,
as a present on his 13th
birthday.
He quickly traced American pop back to its roots, and began to listen to
Big Bill Broonzy,
Jimmy
Reed, Muddy Waters, and other blues artists.
Despite
his unspectacular performance on the GCSEs, Eric he was admitted at age
16 to the Kingston
College
of Art, based on the strength of his art portfolio. He chose to study stained
glass design, but
ended
up spending much of the next year playing guitar. After completing an extremely
small number of
pieces
during his year there, Eric failed out of Kingston. He found a job working
on a building site, and
started
to explore the West End jazz clubs. That year, Eric bought his second guitar,
a 100# electric
double-cutaway
Kay, and started playing in folk pubs and clubs at night.
Clapton
earned his nickname, "Slowhand", as well as his reputation as one of Britain's
premier guitarists,
while
slinging blues riffs for the Yardbirds in London clubs in the mid '60s.
During his brief stints as lead
guitarist
with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Cream and Blind Faith, his reputation
only grew, and "Eric
Clapton
is God" became a staple of London graffiti. After one solo album in 1970
and one album as the
front
man of Derek And The Dominos, Clapton went solo for good.
Over
the two decades since, EC's music has always retained a blues foundation,
depite excursions into
styles
as diverse as reggae, such as his #1 single of Bob Marley's "I Shot The
Sheriff" in 1974, and pop,
including
two '80s albums produced with Phil Collins. Recently, the blues have returned
to the fore with
Clapton's
last two releases, the Grammy-winning Unplugged, and his collection of
blues covers, From
The
Cradle.