Tragedies, addictions and aging set pilgrim in progress
Excess and success leave Slowhand searching for more
Eric Clapton’s long and storied career as a blues guitarist and pop legend has been spotted with tragedy and pain. During more than 30 years in public life, the "guitar god" (as he is often referred to) has displayed masterful musical proficiency, struggled with heroin addiction, and experienced the tragic deaths of friends, family and lovers.
But a lifetime of such excess and success has "Slowhand" searching for more. Now 53, Clapton has a less self-absorbed outlook on life. He recently told a reporter from The Times of London that his music had ceased to be his top priority. "I had come think that music was my saviour, but it doesn’t quite work that way for me…. I am saying that if my identity is entirely bound up with my musical ambitions and abilities, then if they start to fall away, so does my identity. That cannot be. That is not acceptable any more."
According to Times reporter Alan Franks, Clapton’s main preoccupation these days is helping other drug addicts and alcoholics, often putting in long days as anonymously as possible. "It is now much more vital to me than sitting in my bedroom and playing," he says.
Tragedy strikes
Clearly Clapton is a man on a journey–a journey that’s taken on some spiritual connotations with the recent release of Pilgrim, his first album of original material in a decade. It includes the hit single, "His Father’s Eyes," which the guitarist wrote about his five-year-old son Conor, who died in a 1991 fall from the 53rd floor of his mother’s apartment block in New York. Devastated, Clapton gave voice to his grief in the 1992 hit, "Tears in Heaven."
This was not the only tragedy close to Clapton. In 1990 a helicopter crash claimed the lives of his agent, a bodyguard, his tour manager and a close friend, blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughn, with whom he had just finished performing at an open-air concert. Then three years ago, one of his former girlfriends died a squalid junkie death not long after she had been through rehab with his assistance.
But Conor’s death in particular was devastatingly painful. "It was a tremendous vacuum," he told Franks. "I had developed a set of faculties that were left frayed by his death." And his ability to cope with tragedy was hindered by the fact that he had no blood family of his own to rely on.
His father was a Canadian soldier stationed in England who returned home to his wife after the war. Clapton was brought up by his grandparents, and for awhile lived under the illusion that his mother was an older sister. She later married a soldier, also Canadian, and moved abroad. His grandmother died three years ago.
He never did meet his real father, although he knew his name and that he was musically and artistically gifted. It took the news media to follow things up, and shortly after "My Father’s Eyes" was released an Ottawa newspaper reported that Clapton’s Montreal-born father had died of leukemia in a North York hospital in 1985. The story also mentioned that Clapton had some half-brothers and sisters, and it was later revealed that his half-brother is a heroin junkie in Vancouver.
Cleaned house
According to Franks, Clapton has put riotous living and extraneous pursuits behind him. "Everything has been pared down and focused. He has cleaned house, literally. Out has gone his collection of paintings because he has had enough of the ‘snobbish and hypocritical’ art establishment." And his music too is pared down, "spare and unadorned." If it weren’t for these kinds of changes, says Franks, Clapton "would probably have lived out the next episode of blues biography and gone the way of Jimi Hendrix, Rory Gallagher, Phil Lynott and countless more."
What are we to make of all this? Clearly Clapton’s pilgrimage demonstrates that the age-old questions–"Who am I? Why am I on this earth?"–are alive and well. Not only did he tell Franks that his personal identity was ultimately of more importance than his music, but he went on to say that "it may not be fully revealed to me yet, but I feel I am here for a reason."
This rock musician’s story provokes many unanswerable questions. Does it really take tragedy to make some of us realize how valuable life is? Are examples of excess necessary to teach more wholesome balance? Is this simply the natural maturing of an aging baby-boomer? Does God have a special purpose for Eric Clapton’s life?
The "tremendous vacuum" he describes echoes the human soul’s cry for God. And perhaps the lyrics of "My Father’s Eyes" contain truths deeper than even Clapton recognizes. "I’m like the bridge that was washed away; /My foundations were made of clay. /As my soul slides down to die. /How could I lose him? /What did I try? /Bit by bit, I’ve realized /That he was here with me; /I’ve looked into my father’s eyes."
Deepest yearnings
Clapton’s very public search for peace gives voice to the deepest yearnings of the heart and displays a sense of spirituality. But there is nothing explicitly Christian about it and one detects no inclination that institutional religion is anywhere in the picture.
Still, the compulsion to do good, the invocation of father imagery and the awareness that relational aspects of life are more important than achievement are spiritual stepping stones that may well prove to be instructive to many. He is very much a pilgrim in progress.
Doug
Koop
Editor
