Eric Patrick Clapton was born on March 30, 1945, in Ripley, Surrey, England, and grew up not knowing that the woman he believed to be his sister was actually his mother — a discovery that shaped a complicated inner life and a deep hunger for connection that he would eventually pour into music. Raised by his grandparents, he taught himself guitar as a teenager, drew from the American blues records he obsessively collected, and by his early twenties had become one of the most talked-about guitarists in England. He is the only artist to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame three separate times — as a member of the Yardbirds, as a member of Cream, and as a solo artist — a distinction that reflects the breadth and duration of a career unlike almost any other in rock history.
His journey began with the Yardbirds in 1963, where his blues-influenced playing built a devoted following that expressed itself in the graffiti "Clapton Is God" appearing on London walls. When the Yardbirds moved toward commercial pop, Clapton left — refusing to compromise — and joined John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, where the Beano album (1966) became a landmark of British blues and announced to the world that something extraordinary was happening in his playing. In 1966 he formed Cream with drummer Ginger Baker and bassist Jack Bruce, a power trio that became the template for heavy rock improvisation. Cream's concerts were events — extended blues-based workouts, Clapton playing with his back to the crowd, coaxing sounds from his Gibson that no one had heard before. They lasted less than three years and sold millions of records. After Cream dissolved in 1968, Clapton co-founded Blind Faith — rock's first widely recognized supergroup — with Baker, Steve Winwood, and Ric Grech. One self-titled album, a sold-out American tour, and they were gone.
The most emotionally charged chapter of Clapton's early career arrived in 1970 with Derek and the Dominos, a band formed with Bobby Whitlock, Carl Radle, and Jim Gordon from Delaney & Bonnie's road band, and crucially, Duane Allman on slide guitar. Their only album, Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, was a double record built around Clapton's consuming, unrequited love for Pattie Boyd — the wife of his close friend George Harrison. The title track alone stands as one of the most emotionally devastating songs in rock — opening with one of the most famous guitar riffs ever recorded, collapsing into a piano coda of aching beauty. The album was initially overlooked; in the decades since, it has been recognized as one of the great rock records ever made. "Layla" is the fourth best-selling song of all time by equivalent album sales. The years that followed were consumed by heroin addiction, near-disappearance, and a slow recovery aided in part by Pete Townshend of The Who, who organized the comeback concert at the Rainbow Theatre in 1973.
Clapton's solo career through the 1970s produced some of his most beloved work — 461 Ocean Boulevard (1974) included his cover of Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff," which reached number one and helped bring reggae to a mass international audience. Slowhand (1977), one of the best-selling albums of the decade, contained "Wonderful Tonight" and "Cocaine" and gave him a nickname that has followed him ever since. August (1986) and Journeyman (1989) kept him commercially vital into the next decade. Then came the worst and most transformative moment of his personal life: on March 20, 1991, his four-year-old son Conor fell from a 53rd-floor window in New York City and died. Clapton channeled his grief into the song "Tears in Heaven," co-written with Will Jennings, and performed it — and a stripped-down acoustic version of "Layla" — for MTV Unplugged in January 1992. The resulting album sold 26 million copies worldwide, making it the best-selling live album of all time. At the 1993 Grammy Awards, Clapton was nominated nine times and won six — including Album of the Year, Record of the Year, and Song of the Year, making him one of only a handful of artists ever to sweep those three categories in a single night. His career total stands at 18 Grammy Awards.
In the decades since, Clapton has pursued the blues with unwavering dedication — recording From the Cradle (1994), Riding with the King (2000) with B.B. King, Me and Mr. Johnson (2004), and a string of albums that placed his deepest musical love above commercial consideration. He has hosted the Crossroads Guitar Festival, bringing together the world's greatest guitarists. He received a CBE for services to music in 2004. Rolling Stone ranked him second on their list of the 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. Wayne Dennon photographed Eric Clapton as part of an archive built around the people who made rock and roll matter — and few people have mattered more to its history, or contributed more honestly to its emotional vocabulary, than Clapton.
