Eric Clapton

Eric Patrick Clapton was born on March 30th, 1945 at his grandparents home in Surrey, England. His mother was only 16 when she had him, so his grandparents took over as surrogates.

In 1958 Rock n' Roll EXPLODED into the mainstream, young Eric asked for a guitar for his 13th birthday, Finding the inexpensive German-made Hoyer difficult to play - it had steel strings - he put it aside. Two years later he picked it up again and began playing non-stop, so much so he got kicked out of school for failing every class. In 1962 he bought a Gibson ES-335, and in '63 he joined his first band, The Roosters. In October 1963, Keith Relf and Paul Samwell-Smith recruited him to become a member of The Yardbirds because Clapton was the most talked about guitar player on the R&B pub circuit. When The Yardbirds began moving towards a more commercial sound with “For Your Love”, he quit. His path in music was the blues. In July 1966, Eric teamed up with Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker to form Cream. Clapton was unique because he did not simply replicate the blues riffs he heard on records. He incorporated the emotion of the original performances into his own style of playing, thus expanding the vocabulary of blues guitar. Due to the massive egos of the members of the band cream broke up in 1968.

In the many years since then Eric has been in many bands and now plays solo, He is married and now lives happily with his wife and 3 daughters.