A Memoir Written in a Slowhand

Clapton: The name itself has become a description of a genre, a style, a sound. Eric's memoirs, simply titled Clapton: An Autobiography gives the word another definition: a life. I was expecting to breeze through this book in a few hours as I have so many other celebrity memoirs, closing the cover with a few previously unknown tidbits of gossip and a slight insight into the author, but usually nothing more and in some cases, a lot less. Eric's book carries with it a personal depth that I had not anticipated and a richness and texture of prose that was wholly unexpected. Clapton reads like Tolkien, a Lord of the Rings excursion through the hardscrabble landscape of Rock and Roll, filled with giants and monsters playing to the hopes and fears of mere mortals.
The book begins at the beginning. Eric's birth into the secret of illegitimacy, a shrouded stigma that was not revealed to him until he was nine years old. This revelation was revealed when Eric's mother came for a visit with her new family. No one spoke of the apparent awkwardness of the situation until young Eric blurted out one night, "Can I call you Mummy now?" After an embarrassingly long pause, his mother replied, "I think it's best, after all they have done for you, that you go on calling your grandparents Mum and Dad." Eric's feelings of rejection and separation widened.
Another telling incident that sheds light on Clapton's relations with others occurred during school when he found a booklet of hand drawn doggerel: crude pornographic drawings and comments. Not understanding their portent, he tried to impress a young girl in his class by uttering a phrase he had learned from it. A whipping by the headmaster over this corruption created an association between sex and punishment, shame and embarrassment, a feelings that colored his sexual life for years.
As I read further into his life, I was struck by the incongruities between my perceptions of the legendary performer and the solitary individual that was writing this book. The recounting of his personal dealings with others was staid and hollow, as if someone describing a color that they had never seen before. It was a yearning to be accepted into the crush of humanity, yet cringing from its onslaught of emotions at the same time. This is a recurring tragic drama played throughout the book, as it had in his life: Eric following up each perceived rejection or slight with a further withdrawal and a constructed isolation. Eric became, in most instances, the vigilant observer, able to change the course of events, but ever watching from afar.
Time after time this scenario is played out. Eric, upon seeing that the conflicting emotions he felt and the direction that the Yardbirds were taking would come to an impasse, left things go until he was given an open invitation to leave the band on the cusp of their commercial success. He watched as Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker tore apart the harmony of Cream without intervening. He stayed silent while the foundation of Blind Faith crumbled around him. This was not an excuse used by Clapton to absolve himself of any guilt in the deterioration of these groups. He owns up to the fact that his failure to act and react caused the eventuality of collapse.
This habitual predisposition to construct a self fulfilled failure can be illustrated best with Eric's first true love, Pattie, who just happened to be George Harrison's wife. A story by the classical Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi's moved Eric so dramatically, as if it had been written from his own heart. The tale illustrated the plight of a young man falling in love with the most beautiful woman and then going quite mad when he found that his love would remain unrequited. This tale, bearing in Eric's eyes the similarities between himself and the unavailable object of his affection, was called The Story of Layli and Majnun. The story became the impetus for Layla, an unabashed cry aimed at ensnaring Pattie's affections.
Eric's writing style is fantastically vivid and eloquent, detailing the progress of his life in minutiae. The most mundane occurrences are brought to life through very intricate and descriptive prose. When he speaks of his dealings with the iconic names that dot the era's history, it is addressed as an everyday event, approachable and played down, bringing a lot of the mythical aura that surrounds that scene into the realm of accessibility.
The warmest bits, however, are not about the people that have come in and out of his life, so much as the music that developed within him at an early age. The depth and emotion that you can feel as you read his descriptions of the sounds and influence of Big Bill Broonzy or the technical craft it takes to play a complicated guitar piece like Hey, Hey, how you split the major and minor notes to create a blue note. The longing that can be heard in the descriptions of the Delta Blues and the soul that's needed to make the chord progressions walk through the hearts of the audience. The core of Eric Clapton lies within the backbeat of blues, the one constant in his life that never ceased to give of itself without expectations.
There are those that may be put off by the cadence of the book. It is very English in it's structure and progression. There are many references that will go wholly above those who are not familiar with British colloquialisms, places and products, but I feel it is an unapologetic approach to writing in a manner that is true to the author. The text is rich in its description and the tome serves as a Who's Who of rock and roll. Clapton shows what a small world the scene was at that time. The book strolls through all of the triumphs, tragedies, controversies and convolutions of Eric's life. With the ever-present thrum of the blues driving it forward, the book quite possibly divulges more than it was intended to do.