Eric Clapton

Before there was grunge’s raw authenticity, before there was the pop-metal excess of the 1980s, before an entire generation of British kids discovered Robert Johnson and Muddy Waters through one young man’s obsession — there was Slowhand.

When Eric Clapton emerged in the mid-1960s with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, London walls carried graffiti reading “Clapton is God” — an unsolicited verdict from the streets that has never entirely gone away. The teenager from Surrey who fell headlong in love with American blues and dedicated his life to mastering it didn’t just play guitar; he served as the bridge by which the Delta crossed the Atlantic and electrified the world. Patient where others were flashy, emotional where others were technical, devoted to feel over flash, Clapton became the measuring stick by which rock guitar was judged for an entire decade — and the standard he set has never really been surpassed.

The Guitar Landscape Before Clapton (1965)#

To truly understand Clapton’s impact, you have to understand what British rock looked like before he arrived. In the early 1960s, the dominant figures in British guitar were Hank Marvin of The Shadows — clean, melodic, surf-influenced — and a handful of American rock and roll transplants.

The blues existed in Britain largely as an underground cult, known to a handful of obsessives who imported records from Chicago and swapped them like contraband. The Beatles and the Rolling Stones had cracked open American music for British audiences, but nobody had yet fully committed to the blues as a serious, technically demanding pursuit.

Clapton arrived as something singular: a British guitarist who didn’t just borrow from the blues but lived inside it, who studied the techniques of B.B. King, Freddie King, and Robert Johnson with an almost scholarly intensity, and who had the natural gift to translate that study into something that sounded alive and aching rather than imitative. When his tone rang out on the Bluesbreakers’ “Beano” album in 1966, it was unlike anything British ears had heard from a British player — a sound that was simultaneously reverent and completely his own. Like the bluesmen he worshipped, Clapton made the guitar speak in a voice that went straight past the brain and into the chest.

Career Highlights and Impact#

The Stories You May Not Have Heard Before#

Behind the blues icon was a self-deprecating, often quietly funny man with a remarkable gift for candor about his own failures and obsessions. Here are some of the best tales from Eric’s long, strange journey.

The Kid Who Stole His Gran’s Guitar#

Clapton grew up believing his grandparents were his parents — a family secret that wasn’t revealed to him until he was nine. His grandmother bought him his first guitar, a cheap acoustic, which he found so impossibly hard to play that he shoved it under the bed and ignored it for months. He eventually pulled it out again after hearing a Muddy Waters record — and from that moment, virtually nothing else existed. He later admitted he would sneak the guitar out of the house to practice in secret, terrified someone would take it away.

The Beano Album and the Graffiti He Didn’t Write#

“Clapton is God” began appearing on London Underground walls and tube stations around 1967, apparently starting with a single piece of graffiti in Islington. Eric has said repeatedly that he found it mortifying rather than flattering — that he was a student of the blues who felt he was still learning, and being called God was both embarrassing and a burden he didn’t want. “I just wanted to play like B.B. King,” he once said. “That’s still all I want.”

Falling in Love with His Best Friend’s Wife — and Writing Her a Song#

The most famous romantic obsession in rock history: Clapton fell desperately in love with Pattie Boyd, who was married to his close friend George Harrison. Rather than suppress it, he wrote her the song “Layla” — one of the most desperate, beautiful guitar-driven love songs ever recorded — and then, years later, actually married her. He has described the whole period with a mixture of pride and bewilderment. “I’m not sure I’d recommend it as a strategy,” he said in one interview.

The Guitar He Auctioned for Charity — and Then Couldn’t Stop Auctioning#

In 1999, Clapton auctioned off 100 of his guitars to fund the Crossroads Centre. The auction raised nearly $5 million. He admitted afterward that he had expected to feel relief — instead, he immediately started acquiring new guitars. “I just can’t help it,” he told an interviewer. “They follow me home.” He has since auctioned several more collections for charity, and the guitars keep coming back.

The Session He Almost Missed Because of a Video Game#

Multiple collaborators and band members have recalled Clapton’s periodic obsessions with hobbies that consumed him as completely as the guitar once did — fishing, cricket, and at one point, a particular video game that he reportedly played for hours between takes during a recording session. The producer finally had to ask someone to remove it from the studio. Clapton is said to have been genuinely annoyed.

Quotes from other Musicians#

He’s the best guitarist in England. And it’s strange because he’s a white cat playing the blues. But he does it. He plays it like he really means it — and you know he’s not just trying to copy anything.”
– Jimi Hendrix

“Eric Clapton is my favorite guitarist. Always has been, always will be. He can take the blues somewhere nobody else can take it. He feels it.”
– B.B. King

“Eric defined the template. Before him, nobody really knew what a rock guitarist was supposed to sound like. After him, everybody did. He set the bar for all of us.”
– Jimi Page (Led Zeppelin)

“Clapton has always been the one for me. He goes straight for the throat. No messing about. When he plays a note, you feel it.”
– Keith Richards (the Rolling Stones)

Eric Clapton was my hero growing up. He’s the reason I became a guitarist. He’s the one who showed me that the blues could be a lifelong journey, not just a starting point.”
– Eddie Van Halen

4 great songs to get started with#

The Bottom Line#

Eric Clapton has been playing the guitar professionally for over sixty years. He has survived addiction, personal tragedy, the deaths of friends and collaborators, and the particular cruelty of being called God when you are twenty-one and still trying to learn.

What he has left behind is a body of work that spans more styles, moods, and emotional registers than almost any other guitarist in rock history — and at its core, it is always the same thing: a man and a guitar, trying to say something true. He started as a student of the blues, and sixty years later, he is still a student of the blues. The graffiti on those London walls may have been wrong about the theology, but it wasn’t wrong about the guitar.

Additional Information#

Born	March 30 1945
Born in	Ripley, Surrey, England
Real Name	Eric Patrick Clapton
Acts best known for	The Yardbirds, John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers, Cream, Plastic Ono Band, Blind Faith, Delaney & Bonnie, Derek and the Dominos, solo artist
Website	http://ericclapton.com/