Quotes from Eric Clapton

Music became a healer for me, and I learned to listen with all my being. I found that it could wipe away all the emotions of fear and confusion relating to my family.

Watching him, I understood for the first time how you could really live music, how you could listen to it completely and make it come alive, so that it was part of your life.

All I am certain of right now is that I don't want to go anywhere, and that's not bad for someone who always used to run.

Let it grow, let it grow, Let it blossom let it flow. In the sun, the rain, the snow, Love is lovely, let it grow.

In terms of scale or stature, I believe that if Robert Johnson was reincarnated, he is probably BB King. Maybe it would be worth investigating the appropriate dates to see if this is even a remote possibility.

The music scene as I look at it today is a little different from when I was growing up. The percentages are roughly the same - 95 percent rubbish, 5 percent pure.

An obsession is where something will not leave your mind

They sent me three songs written by a Texas songwriter they represented named Jerry Lynn Williams—"Forever Man," "Something's Happening," and "See What Love Can Do"—and they were good. I loved the way he sang, and I sent back a message to say I would do it, on the condition that they produced the songs and provided the musicians. I think it was, professionally, the first time I'd ever had to back down.

They were full of pictures of Lori with famous men—footballers, actors, politicians, musicians, anyone with any kind of notoriety. I noticed that she struck the same pose in every photograph, wearing the sort of smile that wasn't really a smile at all. I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach.

During the pause while I was changing my string, the frenzied audience would often break into a slow handclap, inspiring Giorgio to dream up the nickname of "Slow hand" Clapton.

One of the songs I wrote while living there was called "Tearing Us Apart," which was about "the committee," the group of Pattie's friends whom I now blamed for coming between us.

Musically I was fed up with the virtuoso thing. Our gigs had become nothing more than an excuse for us to show off as individuals, and any sense of unity we might have had when we started seemed to have gone out the window.

We just got together onstage and played and then went our separate ways. In the end this was the undoing of the music. I think if we had been able to listen to each other, and care for one another more, then Cream might have had a chance of further life, but at that point it was beyond our grasp as individuals. We were immature and incapable of putting aside our differences. Maybe, too, a little rest now and then might have helped.

also coveted Pattie because she belonged to a powerful man who seemed to have everything I wanted—amazing cars, an incredible career, and a beautiful wife.

The contrast between the empty hotel room and the roaring crowd in the auditorium can cause a lot of emotional confusion, too, but for the moment, that world could wait; I was safe with my loved ones again.

When things began to go badly wrong between me and Alice, I had a terrible fear that getting attached to an upper-class girl like her was part of a childhood resentment, connected to my feelings about my mother, to bring down women, and that deep inside I was thinking, "Here's an Ormsby-Gore, and I'm going to make her suffer.

There were too many Cream and Traffic fans around for that, and the truth is we didn't really know or care which we were. Looking back, I realize that from the start I knew that this was not what I really wanted to do, but I was lazy. Instead of putting more time and effort into making the band into what I thought it ought to be, I opted instead for the laid-back approach, which was just to look for something else that already had an identity.

For me, going on after Delaney & Bonnie was really, really tough because I thought they were miles better than us. Their

Let It Grow," and it was several years before I realized that I had totally ripped off "Stairway to Heaven," the famous Zeppelin anthem, a cruel justice seeing as how I'd always been such a severe critic of theirs.

When we arrived in Toronto it was raining, and we were standing around waiting for the luggage when a huge limo rolled up, and John and Yoko jumped into it and drove away, leaving the rest of us standing there without a clue as to what to do next. "Well, that's nice," I thought. In the end we got in the van with the luggage, which I deemed a bit sad, as I felt we deserved a little more respect than that.

Though I didn't meet Bob Marley till much later, he did call me up when the single came out and seemed pretty happy with it. I tried to ask him what the song was all about, but couldn't understand much of his reply. I was just relieved that he liked what we had done.

Delaney turned me on to so many things. He played me the music of J. J. Cale, which was to become an enormous influence.

There seems to be a silent acknowledgment among most players that we have a certain responsibility as teachers or healers, and although we all have different ways of honoring this commitment, it is certainly something we are all aware of.

A post-psychedelia drunkenness seemed to sweep over everybody in the entertainment business during the early seventies.