Year: 2018
Director: Lili Fini Zanuck
This seems to be the season for guitar greats to release documentaries of their life stories. Following on from the recent Jeff Beck release, it’s now the turn of Eric Clapton to step into the confessional. This film covers the numerous highs and lows of his personal and professional life, and as we all know, the highs were very high (Cream, Derek and The Dominoes) and the lows were very low (drink, drugs, loss of his young son). Clapton is nothing if not resilient though, and he unfailingly gets himself up off the canvas, admittedly sometimes quicker than others, and picks up the pieces of his career. This is a far more personal film than the Beck effort, as Clapton speaks frankly and sometimes movingly about his life, augmented with recollections and anecdotes from friends and family, aspects that were sadly missing from the Beck film. Of course, everything that you’d expect from his musical career is covered too, from his early days on the British blues scene into the Cream and Derek eras and on to his long solo career, illustrated with interviews and performance footage with colleagues and collaborators. These stories though are pretty well known by now, and it’s the more private stuff that is more interesting here, covering his descent into and recovery from his personal demons. There’s also an extra feature of a captivating twenty odd minute interview with Clapton and the film’s director conducted by Jools Holland, which is well worth your time. Overall, a very interesting and watchable film about one of life’s survivors and one of the most talented guitarists Britain has ever produced..
Might appeal to people who enjoyed:
Rockumentaries, the Jeff Beck DVD.
ip33 says
Does it contain his current thoughts on Enoch and ‘sending them back”? And yes i know some of his best friends are black. Which makes what he said even more unfathomable.
Rufus T Firefly says
Wasn’t he out of his mind on brandy and/or heroin at the time? I said all sorts of stupid things 40 years ago. Thankfully they weren’t on the record. And I’m not famous. Time to park this particular EC canard, I think.
ip33 says
I don’t think it’s a ‘canard’ he said it, and as far as i know he hasn’t apologised or explained them. (That I’m of course willing to put right on) I just wondered if commented on them in the documentary? It would odd if he wasn’t asked about them.
Twang says
He has apologised, at length and in public. Let it go, eh?
https://www.thedailybeast.com/eric-clapton-apologizes-for-racist-past-i-sabotaged-everything
Mike_H says
Enough of that particular gripe.
Personally I’m no great fan of Eric’s but I recognise the fact that people do and say incredibly stupid things sometimes, especially under the influence of drink and drugs.
He has apologised and said he is ashamed of what he said. It was a very long time ago. He has not re-offended. Time to move on.
ip33 says
That’s fair enough if he has apologised and realised that what he said was odious and incredibly wrong. It’s a shame that its taken until recently to do it. I’m sure it’s affected many people’s view of him.
retropath2 says
He does talk a fair bit about this in the film, and with some degree of horror and regret: it is as much a film about addiction as it is about being a blues guitarist, with far more (and interesting) attention to the Mayall/Cream years than to later.
Twang says
One of the many things I admire about him is his modesty and willingness to recognise his failings. Especially given his extraordinary gifts where he could easily be an egocentric dickhead.
The Good Doctor says
I’ve never actually read the transcript before – it’s so extreme it does read like the sort of pissed-up rant you’d hear from a bloke outside a pub who is being restrained by his mates, just unfortunate that Clapton was on stage in front of a mic in that state. Fair play if he’s addressed it and explained what was going on in his head. Of much greater concern is that the current President of the USA would probably agree with every word of his rant.
dai says
Does alcohol cause racism? Genuine question. Blurting things out in that way may be due to alcohol/drugs, but holding those views may not.
Mavis Diles says
Reading that link above he actually says he was a semi-racist, so he did hold those views alongside conflicting others. He clearly is say that this is who he used to be.
I’m not a fan, at least partly because until now he’s failed to explain it. But fair enough, he has now.
retropath2 says
Interesting question and my handle on it might be that alcohol brought out the views he was “brought up on”, lurking down in his psyche despite his life experience, and enthusiasms, showing and giving him sufficient knowledge to rationalise away such dogmatic propaganda. The industrial quantities of brandy he was then hoovering up was enough to pull up a stone best left unturned. . Enoch Powell was thus of great appeal to the drunken.
Also there was immense “casual” racism when I was young. At school virtually all jokes were based on an -ism of one sort of another and descriptions of people of other colour were routinely offensive by todays standard, but carrying then as much intended invective as saying bloke for man.
Tiggerlion says
Having re-read the text, that’s a pretty dark upbringing.
Up to the age of eighteen, living in the industrial North, I only ever met two black people. The Catholic schools I went to were condescending, to put it mildly. Black people were poor, starving and riddled with disease. They needed our help, not least in converting to Christianity. Thank goodness my parents were liberals (one Tory, one Labour) and showed equal respect to everyone.
dai says
There was one black kid in our school in the Welsh valleys. He was mercilessly persecuted. I feel guilt that I was too much of a coward to stand up for him.
Twang says
There was one black kid in my school and he was head boy and very popular. He was a monster at rugby which probably helped. There was a lot of casual racism though – jokes etc – though until later in the decade I don’t think anyone even thought about how wrong it was.
ip33 says
I’m not unforgiving, I just wanted to know if it was referenced in the documentary. Bowie was another fucked up individual in the 70s and said some stupid things but in his case it was more I think the imagery of Nazism that appealed to his cocaine addled brain.
He started to disavow this in the 70s and did call the Thin White Duke an Ogre later on.
No excuses for either of them but perhaps Clapton could and should tackled this problem a lot sooner. It would have been to his benefit.
ip33 says
This was a reply to a post by @Twang which seems to have disappeared. Sorry if it’s confusing!
Twang says
Yes I deleted it as it was drifting into whataboutery which drives me nuts when other people do it. But I think your post messages sense anyway IP.
deramdaze says
Got it Sky-plussed and plan to watch it soon.
The accompanying “Clapton at the BBC” programme on BBC Four had “incredible” footage of him with Delanie and Bonnie in ’69.
Anyone see the Ron Geesin doc. on Sky Arts last night?
Well worth seeing, but focussed far too much on “Atom Heart Mother,” and didn’t mention either his ’67 L.P. (a considerable achievement, not too many mavericks were afforded an L.P. all to themselves in ’67) or “Music for the Body.”
Serious omissions.
Tahir W says
Eric is indeed a very talented guitarist, but apart from that, very limited. Which is why he was great in bands but has always been mediocre as a solo artist. He became the proverbial modest man with much to be modest about.
Twang says
He’s won 17 Grammys. Not all solo, but a lot of them.
Moose the Mooche says
Milli Vanilli won Grammys…
ip33 says
Were they real Grammys or just stand-ins?
Moose the Mooche says
Not going gack in the gox!
TrypF says
The racist incident aside, what comes across from this doc (and his autobiography) is his unpleasant attitude to the women in his life. Each in turn were treated like doormats, expected to wait on him because his supposed ‘difficulties’ gave him free rein to act like a pig towards them. At least one (Alice Orsmsby-Gore, dropped for Pattie Harrison) didn’t survive their lifestyle. Pattie’s book is badly written, but is shocking about his treatment of her nonetheless. He’s not alone in this, of course (hello Rod, Mick et al) but this ‘great love song-smith’ mantle of his doesn’t wash at all for me.
Vince Black says
I watched the doc. Unless I dropped off, there didn’t appear to be any mention of Delaney & Bonnie
retropath2 says
There wasn’t. (Unless i dropped off too) It went straight from John Mayall –> Cream –> Blind Faith
–> Derek & the Dominoes –> solo, increasingly and significantly little as each act unfolded. The entire solo career was more or less written off by Jamie Oldaker, the other 461 Ocean Boulevard guitarist as “too drunk to play”. O, and a quick blast of Unplugged for Tears in Heaven when his son died. The Phil Collins years, JJ Cale, etc etc, nowt.
Junior Wells says
Certainly the doco was uneven in terms of which periods were covered and Retro has pretty much summed it up. Nonetheless it was still really good and Clapton’s candour, as in his book, has to be respected , I suppose. I say I suppose as he pretty much admits to being an emotionally shallow, exploitative hypocrit when it comes to relationships.
Still love his guitar playing though.
Colin H says
An extremely well-made film but I found Eric came across as fundamentally unpleasant and self-centred throughout. We all have our problems but he seems to have dealt with his by being a sh*t to other people.
Tahir W says
The admirable thing about Eric is the way he applied himself to mastering the blues early in his life. That must have taken a lot of effort and concentration to get it to the extent that he did. It’s just that he didn’t seem to get much else. He said once in an interview that the blues was his education. But he didn’t learn enough from that school, only its formal aspects. Apart from it he was just a product of his fucked-up upbringing. No real horizons beyond that.
LOUDspeaker says
More interesting than I expected documentary about a musician I don’t find overly fascinating (having said that I do very much like some of his early music). Interestingly this officially sanctioned doc pretty much gives up talking about his music after 1971. That’s almost an official admission by Clapton himself that he was creatively spent after Derek and the Dominoes and that there is little to say about his subsequent music.
Martin Hairnet says
Watched it last night and I was shocked at how bleak it all was. Lots of candour from EC, but very little light, humour or laughter on display. Some lovely, touching words from BB King towards the end on EC’s musical generosity, influence and greatness that didn’t really correlate with the story of the previous two hours.
Tahir W says
I haven’t seen this movie and it doesn’t sound like I’ll make the effort to do so. I loved Beware Mr Baker, though, and just like the latter the EC doc seems to throw up some deep psychological troubles.
Some of them, as we’ve seen, have been Eric’s clearly deeply conflicted views about the role of black people in his life (big contrast with Ginger there!). For example, EC has been very ambivalent about what Hendrix meant to him. He has been quite sentimental about Jimi in some interviews and claimed that he switched from Gibsons to the Strat in his honour. But I recall an interview many years ago in which he tended to belittle Jimi’s ability, saying that a lot of adulation of JH was due to the ‘myth’ of the massive African dick. In the same interview he compared Mike Bloomfiield favourably with Jimi. Now I love MB’s work with the Paul Butterfield outfit, East-West and all that, but he simply wasn’t in the same league as Jimi musically. Eric would have known that.
Almost Simon says
Good documentary. I’m a big Clapton fan, I know his faults. This documentary has quite a few, a bit like his autobiography its a bit too much about his own personal issues at the expense of the music. A more even balance would’ve had better but it was good to see.
Nice to see Ben Palmer interviewed – was in Claptons first band, road manager for Cream. Shame his comments haven’t been included before. Also Charlotte Martin, model who was Claptons girlfriend, later married to Jimmy Page (what is it with these rock star wives??) Never heard her input before.
The downside was the lazy spin of showing the album covers from 1974 to 1992 rather than discussing that era. They had Jamie Oldaker and George Terry from his 70s band (which I love,) but only to discuss Claptons boozing, what about the music? 18 years spun past in a few seconds.
The footage and photos of Clapton during his heroin period were intriguing, they showed the footage from the 1973 Hendrix movie, Clapton interviewed when he was on heroin, eyes darting side to side. A rival for Keef on Whistle Test in ’73 for the most out of it rock star interview.
I like it, it misses too much, as always the best way to enjoy is to take the best bits from differing documentaries, some good bits here but sadly not the final word, there’s better out there.
Junior Wells says
Excellent comments @Almost-Simon
retropath2 says
Most out of it rock star interview? I think you will find that was Paul Kossoff.
Mike_H says
Bowie 1975 with Russell Harty?
Junior Wells says
Early to mid seventies Lou Reed is always a chance.
dai says
I watched this last night on iPlayer and thought it was very good. Am not really a fan of his music apart from a couple of albums, but his story came across as almost biblical. Awful upbringing, resulting in problems with addiction and women with decades of acting like an arse, followed by unspeakable tragedy and then came a form of redemption at the end.