Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars

Some of this documentary was good; the Blind Faith, Cream, and the Derek and the Dominos areas were quite good. However, Can someone please tell me how George Harrison was his only 'best' musician friend during the late '60's and early '70's? It is a glaring omission that Pete Townshend was not interviewed, or even shown in this film.Eric's comeback occurred at the Rainbow Concert, in January of 1973, after two years of inactivity, and was organized by, yes, you guessed it, Pete Townshend. Oh, and also, Pete was with Eric the first time that he saw Jimi Hendrix perform on stage. It's completely ridiculous that the producers of this film left Pete out of it, especially since he's alive, and could have easily have been interviewed.

In the words of the former England football team manager, Sven-Goran Eriksson. 'First half good, second half, not so good.'

I liked the insight to Clapton's early life. Finding out that his mother was actually his grandmother and the woman who he thought was his sister was his mother who had abandoned him and gone to Canada.

The young Clapton was good at art, loved blues music and had an inferiority complex at school. There is film footage of his family and various still of Clapton's artwork.

When Clapton decides to enter the music industry, he has skill as a guitarist, horned after listening to all those blues records and copying their style. Clapton though was not a good bandmate, leaving The Yardbirds at short notice because they were heading in a commercial direction.

The second half was more problematic. It zig zags the chronology, going back to the issues of mistrust with his real mother and grandparents.

The film is hazy as to when Clapton became clean or did he just relapse too often? I recollect that Clapton said he had cleaned up in the mid to late 1980s from drugs and booze. Here it seems he was was still on the booze in the early 1990s and certainly admits to recording albums where he remembers being drunk as we see the later 80s albums in this montage. Did he lie back then? If he lied then, he might be lying now.

Clapton deals with his notorious racist outburst in 1976 in a concert in Birmingham. Up to this point of the documentary, Clapton cited his influences of the blues and friendship with black US musicians. He was a supporter of the civil rights movement. Clapton also admired music and literature from the east. He was a fan of the musician Bismillah Khan. A Persian poem inspired the song Layla. Ahmet Ertegun, the Turkish born head of Atlantic Records was a big champion of Clapton.

Yet under the influence of booze and drugs, this racial outburst shocked his fans. In retrospect Clapton is rightly embarrassed with his outburst. He states that he comes across as a semi-racist. Only semi? I think it was a full on racist rant.

Maybe the booze lowered his inhibitions and made him say things that were swirling around his mind at the time. Birmingham in the mid 1970s would look very different to an English lad born in Ripley in Surrey. Racism is complex, Clapton admits to having black girlfriends but he knows that he will never be able to live down his words.

I was also horrified with his casual attitude to sex in an era of Aids. He had flings with several women and they became pregnant, Clapton does not seem to believe in using a condom. His interest in engaging with married women did not stop with Pattie Boyd.

I found the latter half of the documentary to be self serving. Yet at times it does have flashes of brilliance as well. It helps that Clapton was cooperative with this film, he allowed access to his private documents.

Looking at the reviews, it is clear that the documentary has skimped other people who should have had a part in this story such as Pete Townshend who helped Clapton become clean.

An unflinching near self-portrait of the artist Eric Clapton as a young and indeed mature alcoholic, who took years to come to terms with his addictions to both heroin and alcohol, in the end spurred onto beat them by a tragic domestic accident and at last finding love, happiness and a new family in his later years.

Clapton has provided director Lili Fini Zanuck with a good deal of sometimes unflattering private video footage, none more so than we see him snorting cocaine on-camera in the 70s as well as film of his obviously unhappy childhood and saddest of all, intimate father-son scenes of him with his young boy Conor who tragically fell to his death accidentally in New York aged only four. In addition, much screen-time is given over to his awkward, to say the least, courtship of best friend George Harrison's then wife Pattie Boyd, which extended, painful process inspired arguably his greatest work, the searing "Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs" double album, although even after he won her, sadly the relationship didn't survive, mainly due to his alcoholism.

There's much fine music here in clips featuring his days with the Yardbirds, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Cream, Derek and the Dominos and his long solo career plus rare video and audio footage no doubt from Clapton's own personal collection, including a taped conversation between him and friendly guitar rival Jimi Hendrix and commentary, some of it naturally archival, from key collaborators down the years such as Duane Allman, Steve Winwood and Bobby Whitlock amongst many others, although the highest credit is given to the late, great B.B. King film of whom both introduces and closes the film.

Clapton comes across as an often shy, troubled and difficult man as he would no doubt be the first to admit but he's also candid, modest and above all honest about himself. There's none of the usual for this type of film, adulatory talking-heads over-the-top praise for either his music or musicianship which I certainly appreciated.

The film depicts his troubled childhood emanating from his early abandonment by his young-at-the-time mother as the main reason for his future insecurity and eventual self-hating. Later, it too quickly skips over the years from the mid 70's to the 90's (ironically, a time of great commercial success for him) in a matter of seconds, omitting in the process references to the career-boosting importance of events like his 1973 comeback concert at the Rainbow organised by Pete Townshend as well as his time with Delaney and Bonnie's band, or even his 80s hook-up with Phil Collins, although perhaps in so doing the director was demonstrating just how much of an empty void this time represented in his life as he struggled with the bottle.

It takes a long, long time for him to come out the other end of his own dark tunnel, but come out he did, as demonstrated both inside his career by the multiple Grammy success of his "Unplugged" album, and outside it, with the refuge for addicts he funded in Antigua from the sale of his vast guitar collection and lastly with the cosy domestic images of the at-last happy family man at play with his wife and young daughters.

Yes, this filmed life of one as long and full as Clapton's makes omissions, with no mention of his work with say J.J. Cale or his belated return collaborations with his Cream band-mates (of whom he's now the last survivor), or Winwood. Nevertheless, with much fine music, although it was surprising not to hear on the soundtrack such key songs from his career as "Sunshine Of Your Love", "Let It Rain" or "I Shot The Sheriff", fascinating private film and soberingly honest commentary from the man himself, this was a revealing and compelling insight into a great musician's often uphill struggle throughout most of his life with his own lack of self-confidence and inadequacy even after achieving great fame and success.

Told with refreshing and revealing candour, this is one of the better rock-docs you'll see.

A look at his early life, the sins of his Mother, and the pain it caused leading to his obsession with the blues and subsequent drug and alcohol addictions.

Very beautifully and interestingly done.

The filmmakers were obviously granted access to so much of his life in his effort to provide a testimony to his substance abuse and recovery in an effort to help others suffering the same problems.

Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars (2017)

**** (out of 4)

This documentary, clocking in over two hours, features Eric Clapton discussing his life and career as we get clips from various concerts and television specials. Throughout the running time we learn about how his career took shape, his friendship with George Harrison and the love affair that shaped some of his greatest songs.

If you're a fan of Clapton then I'm sure you're going to already know a lot of the stories told here but the documentary is extremely well-made and there's no question that you can get some added joy out of hearing Clapton discuss these events. This includes the various high points of his life but also the low ones including the death of Jimi Hendrix as well as his son, which also led to one of his most loved songs.

There's no doubt that getting the interview footage with Clapton was a major plus but the greatest aspect of this documentary is that it has a lot of really great video footage. This includes a lot of early concert footage from Clapton's time with Cream as well as some earlier projects that Clapton worked on. There's no doubt that the brilliance of Clapton as a guitarist gets to shine here and if you're not a fan then you will be after watching this.

ERIC CLAPTON: LIFE IN 12 BARS takes a look at a brilliant but troubled man and I thought it was extremely fair handled and entertaining.