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Wednesday, October 04, 2006
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 WHEREUPON WE DISCOVER THAT ERIC CLAPTON IS AN IDIOT
There are few things as deeply moving as watching Eric Clapton play the guitar. The man plays in a way that can bring tears to the eyes of a grown man. Watching him play is like seeing Ray Charles sing - and I've had the good fortune to see both, Clapton in 1985 and Charles in 1992.
Unfortunately, there is a drawback to being the best in the world at anything. Specifically, you excel in one area at the expense of all others.This is why great atheltes are usually horrible people. They devote so much time to reaching a certain level of performance that they never learn to be proper human beings. Ronald Reagan spent so much time and energy getting the most votes in human history that he neglected his family and they turned out to be half-witted monsters.
Eric Clapton isn't very different. Give the man a guitar, and you'll swear that you hear the voice of angels coming from the strings. Take that Stratocaster away, and you'll swear that you're locked in room with a retarded person, and no escape is possible.
To be fair, Clapton has had something of a bizzare life. His father - whom he never met - was a Canadian soldier, and his mother was sixten at the time of his conception. His father also died three miles from my place about a year before Clapton could find him. He was raised thinking that hs mother was his sister, and his grandparents were his parents.He learned the truth at age nine.
He was also an exceptionally gifted guitarist, perhaps the very best ever. Before he was out of his teens, the walls of London were spraypainted with the slogan, "Clapton is God." This will go a long way in fucking with your priorities, as you might imagine.
That was during his tenure with the Yardbirds, a band he quit because they became too commercially successful.He then joined John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, with whom he recorded one of the very finest blues-rock albums ever.
From there, he joined Cream, a band that sold more records in their twenty-four months of existence than the Bible had sold copies of in the previous twenty-four years. And Eric Clapton was not yet twenty-four years old.
During this peroid, Clapton became best friends with George Harrison of the Beatles. And he promptly feel in love with Harrison's wife, Pattie Boyd. Although they had a brief affair, Clapton's love for Boyd was unrequited. E.C did what any sensible person in his position would do: he became a heroin addict and recorded Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs.
When you've had a life like mine - falling in love with women who are smart enough to not want a fucking thing to do with you, and getting disemboweled by the ones who do - you grow an appreciation for Layla awfully quick. It might very well be the perfect record for losers like me. You can actually hear the almost physical pain in the vocal of the title track.
Of course, the majesty of Layla didn't do much to change the fact that Clapton was a reclusive junkie. Kicking heroin is a tricky thing to do. Clapton, like several others, kicked in the oldest - and most reliable way known to man - by becoming an alcoholic.
It just so happens that Pattie Boyd Harrison much preferred the alcoholic Clapton to the junkie, and married him in 1979. At which time he proceeded to rape her a bunch and do other various tasteless things that alcoholics that aren't me are given to do. but he was still a beautiful guitarist, so all was forgiven. Sure, rape is pretty bad, but the opening guital line to "Wonderful Tonight" is fucking brilliant, so what are you going to do?
But like most people who give up their addictions to drugs, Clapton became addicted to talking about what a fuck up he was. And he revealed that he might actually be retarded.
 If there are worse people than ex-addicts, I'd like to meet them. They seem to replace one addiction with another - but when they quit doing fun shit (like my adventure eating Dr. Reverend's magic mushrooms and Percocet last night), - they become rehab junkies. And no one is more of a moralistic asshole than someone who's been through rehab a bunch of times.
Thus it is with Eric Clapton. Jesus, the man even opened up his own rehab clinic ... in fucking Antingua. To paraphase the great Sam Kinison, if you can beg, borrow or steal enough coin to rehab in Antingua, you quite simply don't have a problem yet. By the way, did I mention that the Clapton rehab buff and shine costs $17,500 U.S? And Slowhand don't give a fuck about your H.M.O, either. That'll be Visa or Mastercard, if you please.
It's probably cheaper to stay high. Of course, it's easy for me to say that, seeing as I'm housesitting for Dr. Reverend and eating his magic mushrooms and percocet, and all.
But Clapton is one of those guys who gets clean and scrubs his own catalogue down.For years, he's refused to play "Cocaine" from 1977's Slowhand.
"I thought that it might be giving the wrong message to people who were in the same boat as me," Clapton recently told The Associated Press.
"But further investigation proved ... the song, if anything, if it's not even ambivalent, it's an anti-drug song. And so I thought that might be a better way to do it, to approach it from a more positive point of view. And carry on performing it as not a pro-drug song, but just as a reality check about what it does."
Oh, shut the fuck up, Eric! "Cocaine," while a pretty cool song, is just that ... a song. Anyone who makes life decisions based on Eric Clapton songs pretty much deserves to have their hearts explode. Besides, cocaine is famously expensive. You have little choice but to go triple platinum before you can even afford it.
The best part is that Clapton didn't even write "Cocaine" in the first fucking place. J.J Cale did. If Clapton blames himself for folks getting hooked on rails because of that tune, he may as well feel guilty for cop killings for his cover of Bob Marley's "I Shot the Sheriff."
Eric Clapton is like most celebrities - he's determined to have all of life's fun and then take it away from you. I'll tell you a sercret, when you have enough money to afford the clean shit, coke can be as rather pleaseant drug. And non-addictive. Anyone who says the coke is addictive is a retard and knows nothing of science, like I do.
So you teenagers out there really shouldn't worry about what Eric Clapton thinks. You just come to your Uncle skippy, he'll walk you through all of that nonsense. Y'know, if he isn't hallucinating, and stuff.
PermalinkLabels: Celebrity Skin
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