Review: Clapton, the Autobiography
Hardcover, 343 pages
Published October 9th 2007, Broadway
It always feels a little odd to write a review of an autobiography. It’s rather like writing a review of someone’s life, and if that’s not a scary thought, you’re probably not paying attention. Sure, it’s simply the expression of one life from the viewpoint of the one who lived it, not the actual life. For something more objective, I’d look to any biography done by someone who wasn’t an absolute acolyte of the subject. When the one who tells the story is the one who was there, “objective” isn’t what you look for. When the subject is someone like Eric Clapton, it’s more a chance to ask the implied question–“What were you thinking?”
That’s what you get here, and more besides. I didn’t know, for instance, that Clapton was born out of wedlock and effectively abandoned by his mother, who went on to form another family that didn’t include him. Considering some of what happened in his future relationships with women, amateur psychologists would have a party with that snippit, and likely already have. I just know that the man has had an extremely interesting life. The term “guitar god” was practically invented for Clapton, even though there were plenty of earlier players who could lay claim to the title, and he lived the life of one, and damn near died the death of one. The story of how he pulled himself out of the downward spiral of drugs and alcohol when so many of his peers never made it is worth the price of admission alone.
Your average biography will give you Clapton the Rock Star, Clapton the Guitar God, Clapton the hard-partying celebrity. While this book doesn’t ignore those things–and how could it?–this is the book that gives you Eric Clapton the man. Which, to me, is a lot more interesting. Oh, and if you ever wanted to hear the story behind the love triangle that led to the classic song “Layla,” as told by one of the–admittedly biased–people who were there, this too is the place. That’s what an autobiography is for. It’s what happened, from the writer’s own point of view. Sometimes inadvertently saying more than it perhaps intended, but whether the case or not, all part of the same story.
To the left is the cover of my third story collection, issued in 2010, On the Banks of the River of Heaven, which is the title cut. Not only was it the third collection in ten years, but it was my first hardcover collection. As of a week or so ago, it’s out of print. If you look on Amazon it will say that it’s “Temporarily Out of Stock,” but this isn’t so. There may or may not be a few stragglers with the publisher and a few more with me, some in the used market, but basically it’s gone. We’ve talked about that whole thing where publishing short stories is like “throwing rose petals in the Grand Canyon and listening for the thud.” It was definitely true here. I can’t complain too much, as the book sold well enough to finish out its run, which is something a lot of print books never do, but in five years it never got a single Amazon review. Things like that tend to make a writer feel unwanted. Whereas on GoodReads it had sixteen ratings and a score of 4.5 out of 5.0, and anyone on GoodReads knows what a tough crowd they are. It is a good book, and I’m not going to let the fact that I wrote it stop me from saying that, but its time on the physical plane is over. It will live on, possibly forever, in ebook form.
Richard Parks 