Subject: Re: L'autobio d'EC by Sally on 2007/9/24 20:51:01
Info from Slowhand Digest.
Eric Clapton – The Autobiography Ep 1/6, Friday 5 October,9.15-9.30pm BBC RADIO 2
Tonight's opener – Motherless Child – charts Clapton's early life. Born in 1945, he grew up in Ripley, Surrey, and, until he was nine years old, believed his grandparents, Rose and Jack Clapp, with whom he lived, to be his parents.
Eric was the illegitimate son of a Canadian airman, and his mother, Patricia, had left him with her parents when Eric was only two. A distant figure in his life, Clapton's uneasy relationship with Patricia and his sense of abandonment were to affect his later relationships with women and contribute to an eventual downward spiral of despair and addiction. As a teenager, Eric was awkward with girls, and music became a solace and a healer for him. His early hero was Chuck Berry, and he was greatly influenced by Elvis and jazz artists including the Dorsey Brothers and Benny Goodman. The purchase of his first guitar, a Hoyer, cost his grandparents £2 and was a difficult instrument for a novice to master. But Eric knew he'd found his calling, giving him a personal freedom and a way out of Ripley.
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