10 minutes ago/ Sad news about 77-year-old artist Eric Clapton, he has been confirmed as...

10 minutes ago/ Sad news about 77-year-old artist Eric Clapton, he has been confirmed as...

#ericclapton

Eric Patrick Clapton CBE (born 30 March 1945) is an English rock and blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. He is regarded as one of the most successful and influential guitarists in rock music. Clapton ranked second in Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time"[3] and fourth in Gibson's "Top 50 Guitarists of All Time".[4] He was also named number five in Time magazine's list of "The 10 Best Electric Guitar Players" in 2009.[5]

After playing in a number of different local bands, Clapton joined the Yardbirds in 1963, replacing founding guitarist Top Topham. Dissatisfied with the change of the Yardbirds sound from blues rock to a more radio-friendly pop rock sound, Clapton left in 1965 to play with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. On leaving Mayall in 1966, after one album, he formed the power trio Cream with drummer Ginger Baker and bassist Jack Bruce, in which Clapton played sustained blues improvisations and "arty, blues-based psychedelic pop".[6] After Cream broke up in November 1968, he formed the blues rock band Blind Faith with Baker, Steve Winwood, and Ric Grech, recording one album and performing on one tour before they broke up. Clapton embarked on a solo career in 1970.

Alongside his solo career, he also performed with Delaney & Bonnie and Derek and the Dominos, with whom he recorded "Layla", one of his signature songs. He continued to record a number of successful solo albums and songs over the next several decades, including a 1974 cover of Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff" (which helped reggae reach a mass market),[7] the country-infused Slowhand album (1977) and the pop rock of 1986's August. Following the death of his son Conor in 1991, Clapton's grief was expressed in the song "Tears in Heaven", which appeared on his Unplugged album, and in 1996 he had another top-40 hit with the R&B crossover "Change the World". In 1998, he released the Grammy award-winning "My Father's Eyes". Since 1999, he has recorded a number of traditional blues and blues rock albums and hosted the periodic Crossroads Guitar Festival. His most recent studio album is Happy Xmas (2018).

Clapton has received 18 Grammy Awards as well as the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music.[8][9] In 2004, he was awarded a CBE for services to music.[10] He has received four Ivor Novello Awards from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors, including the Lifetime Achievement Award. He is the only three-time inductee to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist and separately as a member of the Yardbirds and of Cream. In his solo career, Clapton has sold more than 280 million records worldwide, making him one of the best-selling musicians of all time.[11] In 1998, Clapton, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, founded the Crossroads Centre on Antigua, a medical facility for recovering substance abusers.

Clapton was born on 30 March 1945 in Ripley, Surrey, England, to 16-year-old Patricia Molly Clapton (7 January 1929 – March 1999) and Edward Walter Fryer (21 March 1920 – 15 May 1985), a 25-year-old soldier from Montreal, Quebec.[13] Fryer was drafted to war before Clapton's birth and then returned to Canada. Clapton grew up believing that his grandmother, Rose, and her second husband, Jack Clapp, Patricia's stepfather, were his parents, and that his mother was actually his older sister. The similarity in surnames gave rise to the erroneous belief that Clapton's real surname is Clapp (Reginald Cecil Clapton was the name of Rose's first husband, Eric Clapton's maternal grandfather).[14] Years later, his mother married another Canadian soldier and moved to Germany,[15] leaving Eric with his grandparents in Surrey.[16]

Clapton received an acoustic Hoyer guitar, made in Germany, for his thirteenth birthday, but the inexpensive steel-stringed instrument was difficult to play and he briefly lost interest.[16] Two years later he picked it up again and started playing consistently.[16] Clapton was influenced by blues music from an early age, and practised long hours to learn the chords of blues music by playing along to the records.[17] He preserved his practice sessions using his portable Grundig reel-to-reel tape recorder, listening to them over and over until satisfied.[17][18]

In 1961, after leaving Hollyfield School in Surbiton, Clapton studied at the Kingston College of Art but was expelled at the end of the academic year because his focus had remained on music rather than art. His guitar playing was sufficiently advanced that, by the age of 16, he was getting noticed.[18] Around this time, he began busking around Kingston, Richmond, and the West End.[19] In 1962, Clapton started performing as a duo with fellow blues enthusiast Dave Brock in pubs around Surrey.[18] When he was 17 years old,