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crafty_tera's review against another edition
5.0
I won this book in a goodreads giveaway. I let my husband read it first since he has been an Eric Clapton fan for a long time. He found the book well written and said that it was one of the best, if not the best, book he had read on Clapton. He recommends to anyone interested in the subject.
frogcatcher3's review against another edition
4.0
Very interesting look into the life of Eric Clapton. I was disappointed though in the lack of info on his later works. It seemed as though the author got bored and just skimmed over or skipped everything after Unplugged.
After reading Norman's biographies on John Lennon and Paul McCartney I expected a more in depth dive into all things Clapton. This was a great biography but I still finished it wanting more.
After reading Norman's biographies on John Lennon and Paul McCartney I expected a more in depth dive into all things Clapton. This was a great biography but I still finished it wanting more.
thesgtrekkiereads's review against another edition
4.0
Great amazing musician
Bit of an a-hole though..
Quite a thorough compilation of his life
2019 reading challenge - Your favourite prompt from a past POPSUGAR Reading Challenge - 2015 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge - A Book with a Love Triangle
Bit of an a-hole though..
Quite a thorough compilation of his life
2019 reading challenge - Your favourite prompt from a past POPSUGAR Reading Challenge - 2015 POPSUGAR Reading Challenge - A Book with a Love Triangle
cherylanntownsend's review against another edition
5.0
Starting out, in prologue, is a lunch with George Harrison and Clapton.. George is quite upset to detect beef broth in his mushroom soup and Eric is too broke to pay for his own. No one recognizes them, at first. George is first, most obvious, and his chameleon comrade is introduced as “the world’s greatest white guitarist...Bert Weedon.”
It’s the end of the 60’s, the Beatles and Cream. It’s the start of his not-so-secret touring with Delaney & Bonnie. He’s already “God” and wanting to be just an Apostle. He is content, playing guitar, playing rascal, and racing wind-up fruit backstage.
And on it goes. The ever increasing talent, the stage and studio sets, the sexual and band promiscuity, the hijinx, drugs, and notoriety. The Blues Breakers with John Mayall,The Yardbirds, jamming with Hendrix and numerous other greats, then Cream. Essentially his break out band, yet even as their wealth grew, they still showed up for concerts, en masse, in a Ford Mercury station wagon driven by their tour manager.
The backstory to their hits, the backstage meet-ups, the backstabbing life of rock ‘n roll, and the always back to grandma Rose. Charming and disarming. A young lad doing what he loves, sometimes with an attitude, but mostly with a zeal to just make the best music his guitar allows. And he did.
America, in 1968, was in turmoil as they were back touring. Martin Luther King and Ted Kennedy had just both been assassinated, civil riots were rampant, and long hair garnered one a slew of derogatory names and potentially physical harassment.
But nothing was as challenging as his heroin addiction. After the break up of Derek and the Dominoes and another rebuff from Pattie Boyd, he allowed the “dragon” to chase him off into its cave and control him. Along with him, he brought his old flame, Alice Ormsby-Gore, and they wallowed away at Hurtwood Edge. Many a friend tried to help, but a virtual moat was dug and no bridge over erected.
Via Dr. Meg Patterson, a Scottish neurosurgeon who came up with Neuroelectric Therapy, an acupuncture procedure that recreates the pleasant calm of heroin, allowing withdrawal to evolve easier, he recoups his life. While recovering from recovering, he works on a farm, enjoys visits from friends (primarily, Pete Townshend) and hits local pubs, becoming the alcoholic that afflicts him longer than the heroin.
As with his norm, a Jekyll and Hyde personality evolved as the drinking took further root. Sexual escapades almost as abundant as bottles lay littered in his wake. He and Patti held on to their thermostatic marriage, even when he fathered two children outside it. Granted, she was only aware of the one, but such was the life she was accustomed to, including with George, that she continued to take him back into her life when he was at his worst. But eventually, she would also rehab her addiction and leave him for good.
Finally clean, he slowly gains back a life, but now one where he actually participates in it. Trying to be a responsible adult, a caring friend, and a father to his son, Connor. There came the loss of comrade-in-guitar, Stevie-Ray Vaugh after a concert together, another woman he professed to love to Mick Jagger, and a breaking straw with the accidental death of his angelic son, Connor. He stayed sober. A tribute to his son.
Through his countless liaisons, guitar and band-mate riffs, epileptic seizures, ulcers, drinking and drugging, he managed to come out in the end a well-balanced family man who just happens to still be in the top guitar slayers of all time. Sharing the stage, or cozy room gathering, with nearly every living guitar legend, his many bands as vital now as their prime, he is, in his own realm, a God.
Tho it jumps around history and repeats a bit too much, it still reads informative with a big dose of backstage gossip.
Thank you Goodreads and the Hachette Book Group for the opportunity to peek into one of my (still) all-time favorite musicians.
It’s the end of the 60’s, the Beatles and Cream. It’s the start of his not-so-secret touring with Delaney & Bonnie. He’s already “God” and wanting to be just an Apostle. He is content, playing guitar, playing rascal, and racing wind-up fruit backstage.
And on it goes. The ever increasing talent, the stage and studio sets, the sexual and band promiscuity, the hijinx, drugs, and notoriety. The Blues Breakers with John Mayall,The Yardbirds, jamming with Hendrix and numerous other greats, then Cream. Essentially his break out band, yet even as their wealth grew, they still showed up for concerts, en masse, in a Ford Mercury station wagon driven by their tour manager.
The backstory to their hits, the backstage meet-ups, the backstabbing life of rock ‘n roll, and the always back to grandma Rose. Charming and disarming. A young lad doing what he loves, sometimes with an attitude, but mostly with a zeal to just make the best music his guitar allows. And he did.
America, in 1968, was in turmoil as they were back touring. Martin Luther King and Ted Kennedy had just both been assassinated, civil riots were rampant, and long hair garnered one a slew of derogatory names and potentially physical harassment.
But nothing was as challenging as his heroin addiction. After the break up of Derek and the Dominoes and another rebuff from Pattie Boyd, he allowed the “dragon” to chase him off into its cave and control him. Along with him, he brought his old flame, Alice Ormsby-Gore, and they wallowed away at Hurtwood Edge. Many a friend tried to help, but a virtual moat was dug and no bridge over erected.
Via Dr. Meg Patterson, a Scottish neurosurgeon who came up with Neuroelectric Therapy, an acupuncture procedure that recreates the pleasant calm of heroin, allowing withdrawal to evolve easier, he recoups his life. While recovering from recovering, he works on a farm, enjoys visits from friends (primarily, Pete Townshend) and hits local pubs, becoming the alcoholic that afflicts him longer than the heroin.
As with his norm, a Jekyll and Hyde personality evolved as the drinking took further root. Sexual escapades almost as abundant as bottles lay littered in his wake. He and Patti held on to their thermostatic marriage, even when he fathered two children outside it. Granted, she was only aware of the one, but such was the life she was accustomed to, including with George, that she continued to take him back into her life when he was at his worst. But eventually, she would also rehab her addiction and leave him for good.
Finally clean, he slowly gains back a life, but now one where he actually participates in it. Trying to be a responsible adult, a caring friend, and a father to his son, Connor. There came the loss of comrade-in-guitar, Stevie-Ray Vaugh after a concert together, another woman he professed to love to Mick Jagger, and a breaking straw with the accidental death of his angelic son, Connor. He stayed sober. A tribute to his son.
Through his countless liaisons, guitar and band-mate riffs, epileptic seizures, ulcers, drinking and drugging, he managed to come out in the end a well-balanced family man who just happens to still be in the top guitar slayers of all time. Sharing the stage, or cozy room gathering, with nearly every living guitar legend, his many bands as vital now as their prime, he is, in his own realm, a God.
Tho it jumps around history and repeats a bit too much, it still reads informative with a big dose of backstage gossip.
Thank you Goodreads and the Hachette Book Group for the opportunity to peek into one of my (still) all-time favorite musicians.
kat2112's review
3.0
I'm not a fan of Eric Clapton. I'm not saying he's not a good musician and not influential, but Clapton's history of treating women like garbage doesn't endear me to him. As Philip Norman is one biographer I like to read, though, I wanted to read a neutral take on Clapton's life and see about a possible change of heart.
Six days and 400-odd pages later, I still want to kick Clapton in the privates. Yet, I also feel bad for him some respects...a bit. Norman's presentation of Clapton's story doesn't sanitize his reputation, nor does it vilify him. Slowhand spans from Clapton's illegitimate birth in Surrey on to a summarized career denouement in the early 00s. Clapton's early, slow rise to celebrity - colored by strained relationships with peers, unresolved familial strife, and drugs - through the "Tears in Heaven" climax comprise the meat of the book. Norman seems to favor gossipy history over details of Clapton's craft, however. You'll learn about a phenomenon coined the "Clapton Luck," which blesses the bio's subject every time he ends up in a sticky situation, be it a near-miss drug bust or most of his sexual liaisons that don't result in kids or crabs. In actuality, it may be more white privilege or the people around Clapton who spoiled/enabled him, but sure, let's go with luck.
Of the Norman-penned bios I've read, I wouldn't rank this one the highest. I still intend to read his Jagger book, so we'll see where that one falls in rank.
Six days and 400-odd pages later, I still want to kick Clapton in the privates. Yet, I also feel bad for him some respects...a bit. Norman's presentation of Clapton's story doesn't sanitize his reputation, nor does it vilify him. Slowhand spans from Clapton's illegitimate birth in Surrey on to a summarized career denouement in the early 00s. Clapton's early, slow rise to celebrity - colored by strained relationships with peers, unresolved familial strife, and drugs - through the "Tears in Heaven" climax comprise the meat of the book. Norman seems to favor gossipy history over details of Clapton's craft, however. You'll learn about a phenomenon coined the "Clapton Luck," which blesses the bio's subject every time he ends up in a sticky situation, be it a near-miss drug bust or most of his sexual liaisons that don't result in kids or crabs. In actuality, it may be more white privilege or the people around Clapton who spoiled/enabled him, but sure, let's go with luck.
Of the Norman-penned bios I've read, I wouldn't rank this one the highest. I still intend to read his Jagger book, so we'll see where that one falls in rank.
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