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Collecting Eric Clapton Eric Clapton has had a long career as a blues-rock guitarist
and has lived a hard life, full of addictions and tragedies. His work offers the collector many opportunities,
and in many different directions. As
recently as 1997, for example, he made a pseudonymous appearance on an album by TDF, Retail Therapy, a techno-rock album on which he is
credited only as “X-Sample.” Clapton was born on March 30, 1945, in his grandparents’
home. He was the illegitimate offspring of
Patricia Molly Clapton and a Canadian soldier named Edward Fryer, and was raised by his
grandparents, who passed him off as their child and his mother’s younger brother. He did not learn the truth until he was 9. As a boy, Clapton was excited by American blues and R&B
music, and he was further inspired by the sight of Jerry Lee Lewis performing “Great
Balls of Fire” on British TV. Although
an art student (as so many British rockers of the 1960s were) with an intended career in
stained-glass design, Clapton gave it up to play guitar at 17. Working daytime jobs as a manual laborer, he began
playing in local blues bands at night. 1963 was the year in which Clapton’s career began to
take off. In January he joined the
London-based R&B band, The Roosters, with whom he played for nearly eight months. In
August he played for two weeks (only seven actual gigs) with Casey Jones & The
Engineers, a “Merseybeat” band. In
October he replaced lead guitarist Tony “Top” Topham in The Yardbirds. The Yardbirds (who took their name from the American southern
black slang for chickens, which had led 25 years earlier to jazz-great Charlie Parker’s
nickname, “Yardbird,” subsequently shortened to just “Bird”) had just
succeeded the Rolling Stones with a residency at the Crawdaddy Club, and had a record
contract. This was with the Columbia label,
which released two albums in Britain featuring Clapton, Five Live Yardbirds
in 1964 and Sonny Boy Williamson and the Yardbirds
in 1965. Mercury issued the second album in
the U.S.; Epic released the first album and an additional album on which Clapton plays, For Your Love, in the U.S. There is little memorabilia from Clapton’s pre-Yardbirds
stints, and not a lot from the Yardbirds either, but collectors will want the band’s
early TV appearances, which include Ready Steady Go
for April 22, 1964. In March, 1965, Clapton left the Yardbirds, whom he felt were
abandoning the blues for commercial viability. He
would be replaced by Jimmy Page. In April Clapton joined John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers,
a blues-purist’s group. Unfortunately,
there is relatively little recorded documentation of this group with Clapton because Decca
had just dropped the band. Two singles were
recorded, “I’m Your Witchdoctor” b/w “Telephone Blues” for
Immediate, and “Lonely Years” b/w “Bernard Jenkins” for Purdah,
released in 1965 and 1966, respectively. In 1966 Decca reconsidered and recorded Bluesbreakers, with Clapton. Celebrated as the first classic British blues
album, it elevated Clapton to stardom. But
Clapton had already taken a sojourn in Greece with something called the Greek Loon Band in
the late summer of 1965, and his return to Mayall’s band lasted only through June of
1966, when he was sacked. Clapton immediately formed Cream with Ginger Baker and Jack
Bruce – the first of the “power trios” which would inspire generations of
rockers to come. Cream offers many
opportunities for collectors. Any items from
Cream’s appearance on October 1, 1966, at the Regent Polytechnic are hot, since Jimi
Hendrix joined the band that night for a version of “Killing Floor.” Video collectors will want copies of the band’s
appearances on Ready Steady Go on November 4,
1966, Simon Dee Show on April 6, 1967, Our World
on June 25, 1967, Twice a Fortnight on November
26, 1967, and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour on May 20, 1968. Cream released only four albums – Fresh Cream in 1966, Disraeli Gears in 1967, Wheels of Fire in 1968 and Goodbye in 1969.
Wheels of Fire was a double-album,
one LP recorded in the studio and one recorded live at the Fillmore West. Both LPs were also released as separate albums as
well. And there have been a number of
compilations, Best-Ofs, and live albums released after the fact. Cream’s final performance was a farewell extravaganza at
the Royal Albert Hall on November 26, 1968. Soon
thereafter Clapton and Cream drummer Ginger Baker formed rock’s first “supergroup,”
Blind Faith, with Steve Winwood (formerly in Traffic) and Ric Grech (formerly in Family). This band released only one album, Blind Faith, which went to No. 1 on both sides of
the Atlantic, and after one tour of the U.S. the band split up. The album exists in variantly-packaged editions. The gatefold
sleeve originally featured (on the British edition) a nude photo of Baker’s
11-year-old daughter (from the waist up), holding a model airplane. It’s a charming picture, but it ran afoul of
American sensibilities. The American edition
was redesigned to use a band photo on the cover. The
group’s first appearance was in Hyde Park on June 7, 1969, in a free concert before
an estimated 100,000 people. The entire
concert was filmed in color by Mike Mansfield, but most of it has never been shown,
apparently because it was considered a lackluster performance. The most important collectible, however, was Blind Faith’s
first recording, an instrumental promotional single, pressed in an edition of only 500
copies, which was included in a package from Island Records to inform clients of their
change of address. This never had a general
release, but in 1992 Westwood One included it on a radio-only CD called Eric Clapton
Rarities on Compact Disc, Vol. II, itself a now-sought-after collectible. Unfortunately, at this point in his career Claption had
become addicted to heroin, and he would begin the first of a series of reclusive “retirements”
in which he attempted to cope with the problem – eventually kicking the habit with
the help of electro-accupuncture, on the advice of Pete Townshend. Later he would endure the tragedy of losing a band
in a helicopter crash, and losing his son (who fell from a Manhattan window to his death),
and he would fight alcoholism. But people still scribble “Clapton is God” on walls. |
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