Listen to Eric Clapton on Batanga

Clapton was born in Ripley, Surrey, England, the son of 16 year old Patricia Molly Clapton and Edward Walter Fryer, a 24-year-old soldier from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Fryer shipped off to war prior to Clapton's birth and then returned to Canada. Clapton grew up with his grandmother, Rose, and her second husband Jack, believing they were his parents and that his mother was his older sister. Their surname was Clapp, which has given rise to the widespread but erroneous belief that Clapton's real surname is Clapp. Years later, his mother married another Canadian soldier, moved to Canada and left Eric with his grandparents. When Clapton was nine years old, he discovered the true situation when his mother and six year old half-brother, Brian, returned to England for a visit. The experience became a defining moment in his life. He stopped applying himself at school and became moody and distant from his family.

Clapton grew up quiet, shy, lonely and, in his words, a "nasty kid", who was very serious about his musical goals. However he is also known to have had a sense of humour. He spent his secondary school years at the local St Bede's secondary modern school near Ripley in Send. At age 13 he attended the Surbiton County Grammar School for Boys in distant Surbiton. Clapton received an acoustic Spanish Hoya guitar for his 13th birthday, but found learning the instrument very difficult and nearly gave up. Despite his frustrations, he was influenced by the blues from an early age and practiced long hours to learn chords and copy the music of blues artists that he listened to on his Grundig Cub tape recorder.

After leaving the grammar school in 1961, Clapton studied at the Kingston College of Art but was dismissed at the end of the academic year because his focus remained on music rather than art. When he was 17 years old, Clapton joined his first band, an early British R&B group called The Roosters. He stayed with this band from January through August 1963.

In 1963 Clapton joined The Yardbirds, a blues-influenced rock and roll band, and stayed with them until March 1965. Synthesizing influences from Chicago blues and leading blues guitarists such as Buddy Guy, Freddie King and B. B. King, Clapton forged a distinctive style and rapidly became one of the most talked-about guitarists in the British music scene. The band initially played Chess/Checker/Vee-Jay blues numbers and began to attract a large cult following when they took over the Rolling Stones' residency at the Crawdaddy Club in Richmond. A joint LP, recorded in December 1963, was issued belatedly in 1965. In March 1965, just as Clapton left the band, the Yardbirds had their first major hit, "For Your Love", on which Clapton played guitar.

Clapton joined John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers in April 1965 only to quit a few months later. In the summer of 1965 he left for Greece with a band called The Glands which included his old friend Ben Palmer on piano. In November 1965 he rejoined John Mayall. It was during his second Bluesbreakerś stint that his passionate playing established Clapton's name as the best blues guitarist on the club circuit. Although Clapton gained world fame for his playing on the immensely influential album Blues Breakers, this album was not released until Clapton had left The Bluesbreakers for good.

Clapton left the Bluesbreakers in July 1966 and formed Cream, one of the earliest supergroups. Cream was also one of the earliest "power trios", with Jack Bruce on bass and Ginger Baker on drums. Before the formation of Cream, Clapton was all but unknown in the United States. During his time with Cream, Clapton began to develop as a singer, songwriter and guitarist.

In early 1967, Clapton's status as Britain's top guitarist was rivaled by the emergence of Jimi Hendrix, an acid rock-infused guitarist who used wailing feedback and effects pedals to create new sounds for the instrument. Hendrix's arrival had an immediate and major effect on the next phase of Clapton's career, although Clapton continued to be recognized in UK music polls as the premier guitarist.

It was with Cream that Clapton first visited the US. They went to New York in March 1967 for a nine show stand at the RKO Theater. Cream's repertoire varied from soulful pop ("I Feel Free") to lengthy blues-based instrumental jams ("Spoonful") and featured Clapton's searing guitar lines, Bruce's soaring vocals and prominent, fluid bass playing. Baker's powerful, polyrhythmic jazz-influenced drumming backed up Clapton and Bruce, securing Cream as a power trio.

In twenty-eight months, Cream had become a commercial success, selling millions of records and playing throughout the US and Europe. They redefined the instrumentalist's role in rock and were one of the first blues-rock bands to emphasize musical virtuosity and lengthy jazz-style improvisation sessions. Their US hit singles include "Sunshine of Your Love" (#5, 1968), "White Room" (#6, 1968) and "Crossroads" (#28, 1969). Although Cream was hailed as one of the greatest groups of its day, and the adulation of Clapton as a guitar hero reached new heights, the supergroup was destined to be short-lived. Cream's farewell album, Goodbye, was released shortly after Cream disbanded in 1968.

Clapton's close friendship with George Harrison had brought him into contact with Harrison's wife Pattie Boyd, with whom he became deeply infatuated. When she spurned his advances, Clapton's unrequited affections prompted most of the material for the Dominos' album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. This album contained the hit single love song "Layla", inspired by the classical Persian poet Nezami Ganjavi's The Story of Layla and Majnun.

Clapton's career successes in the 1970s were in stark contrast to his personal life, which was troubled by romantic longings and drug and alcohol addiction. In addition to his (temporarily) unrequited and intense attraction to Pattie Boyd, he withdrew from recording and touring to isolation in his Surrey, England residence. There he nursed his heroin addiction, resulting in a career hiatus interrupted only by the Concert for Bangladesh in August 1971. In January 1973, The Who's Pete Townshend organized a comeback concert for Clapton at London's RainbowTheatre aptly titled the "RainbowConcert" to help Clapton kick his addiction.

In 1974, now partnered with Pattie and no longer using heroin, Clapton put together a more low-key touring band that included Radle, Miami guitarist George Terry, keyboardist Dick Sims, drummer Jamie Oldaker and vocalists Yvonne Elliman and Marcy Levy (better known as Marcella Detroit of 1980s pop duo Shakespear's Sister). With this band Clapton recorded 461 Ocean Boulevard (1974), an album with an emphasis on more compact songs and fewer guitar solos; the cover-version of "I Shot The Sheriff" was Clapton's first #1 hit and was important in bringing reggae and the music of Bob Marleyto a wider audience. The 1975 album There's One in Every Crowd continued the trend of 461. The band toured the world and subsequently released the 1975 live LP, E.C. Was Here. Highlights of the era include No Reason to Cry, whose collaborators included Bob Dylan and The Band, and Slowhand, which featured "Wonderful Tonight", another song inspired by Pattie Boyd, and a second J.J. Cale cover, "Cocaine."

Clapton and Boyd divorced in 1989 following his affair with Italian model Lory Del Santo, who gave birth to their son Conor in August 1986. On March 20 1991, Conor, who was four years of age, died when he fell from the 53rd-story window of his mother's friend's New York City apartment, landing on the roof of an adjacent four-story building. Clapton's grief was expressed in the song "Tears in Heaven" and "Circus", which was co-written by Will Jennings. He received a total of six Grammies that year for the single "Tears in Heaven" and the Unplugged album.

While Unplugged featured Clapton playing acoustic guitar, his 1994 album From the Cradle contained new versions of old blues standards highlighted by his electric guitar playing. The album showed that Clapton could still effectively play blues along the more mainstream music featured in his other records.