auntieannie

Well I came away from the book both more impressed and disappointed with Eric Clapton. As far as I can tell, he wrote the book himself -- no credits appear for a co-writer. Perhaps it was therapy for him to do while on tour and no longer living the drugging, drinking life. He doesn't really talk about that -- how hard it must be. He starts off in a working class family in a small village in England in the 40's. He's raised by his grandparents, because his mother was a teenager who got involved with a soldier. She turns Eric over to her parents to raise as theirs and takes off for a number of years. Once a teenager, he goes to art school and that gets him involved in the worlds of fashion, art, and ultimately music, although he has no formal music training and receives no real encouragement in school. This is one of the impressive areas -- how much he learns on his own, and I guess is a reflection of his innate ability and talent to some degree as well. The book then gives a chapter to each of his bands, which goes through quickly in his teens and twenties: the Yardbirds, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, Cream, Derek and the Dominoes, etc. It's hard to take it all in, that one person went through all of this, along with all the incidental sitting in with other bands, etc. Especially considering all the drinking and drugs and women that he goes through at the same time. You certainly get the sense of how he lives a rarefied life, with almost everyone looking up to him and deferring to him, and how this affects him. But it's also hard to understand why he has such a messed relationship with Pattie Boyd -- I never really understand why he was so attracted to her in the first place, and how poorly he treats her once he gets her. So it's also hard to understand the real nature and depth of his relationship with Melia when it comes much later. What's different of course is that they actually share activities, but it's still hard to understand how someone so much younger than him could be so self-possessed to keep her head around him. So, he does not try to make his life look more attractive than it is (at least that was not the effect on me). On the one hand, I feel I know a lot more about him, and on the other hand, he seems more mysterious. So it was a frustrating book in some ways, but I was definitely engaged in it, wanted to see what would happen, and read it quickly.