The music of Eric Clapton is like the wallpaper of the lives of many of us baby boomers. He's just out with an autobiography, curiously timed to appear just weeks after the publication of his ex-wife Pattie Boyd's book. Looks like somebody really wanted rebuttal time?
A review, written by Stephen King, appeared in this past weekend's New York Times. An interesting review--King is a baby boomer too, of course. I like his Harry Potter metaphor: Eric Clapton as The Boy Who Lived, while many of his 70s rock compadres did not.
The most harrowing and touching episode in Clapton’s early recovery deals with the death of his 4-year-old son, Conor, who fell out a window while playing hide-and-seek with his nanny and dropped 49 stories. The job of identifying the body fell to Clapton. I cannot comprehend how one stays sober under such circumstances, especially one in the early years of recovery, but somehow Clapton did.
Later, after telling his story at an A.A. meeting, he was accosted by a woman who said he had taken away her last excuse to drink. “I’ve always had this little corner of my mind which held the excuse that, if anything were to happen to my kids, then I’d be justified in getting drunk. You’ve shown me that’s not true.”
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