This is a thorough, balanced and informative biography of Clapton - much better than any autobiography of a rock musician could be. ( )

Starting out, in prologue, is a lunch with George Harrison and Clapton.. George is quite upset to detect beef broth in his mushroom soup and Eric is too broke to pay for his own. No one recognizes them, at first. George is first, most obvious, and his chameleon comrade is introduced as “the world’s greatest white guitarist...Bert Weedon.”

It’s the end of the 60’s, the Beatles and Cream. It’s the start of his not-so-secret touring with Delaney & Bonnie. He’s already “God” and wanting to be just an Apostle. He is content, playing guitar, playing rascal, and racing wind-up fruit backstage.

And on it goes. The ever increasing talent, the stage and studio sets, the sexual and band promiscuity, the hijinx, drugs, and notoriety. The Blues Breakers with John Mayall,The Yardbirds, jamming with Hendrix and numerous other greats, then Cream. Essentially his break out band, yet even as their wealth grew, they still showed up for concerts, en masse, in a Ford Mercury station wagon driven by their tour manager.

The backstory to their hits, the backstage meet-ups, the backstabbing life of rock ‘n roll, and the always back to grandma Rose. Charming and disarming. A young lad doing what he loves, sometimes with an attitude, but mostly with a zeal to just make the best music his guitar allows. And he did.

America, in 1968, was in turmoil as they were back touring. Martin Luther King and Ted Kennedy had just both been assassinated, civil riots were rampant, and long hair garnered one a slew of derogatory names and potentially physical harassment.

But nothing was as challenging as his heroin addiction. After the break up of Derek and the Dominoes and another rebuff from Pattie Boyd, he allowed the “dragon” to chase him off into its cave and control him. Along with him, he brought his old flame, Alice Ormsby-Gore, and they wallowed away at Hurtwood Edge. Many a friend tried to help, but a virtual moat was dug and no bridge over erected.

Via Dr. Meg Patterson, a Scottish neurosurgeon who came up with Neuroelectric Therapy, an acupuncture procedure that recreates the pleasant calm of heroin, allowing withdrawal to evolve easier, he recoups his life. While recovering from recovering, he works on a farm, enjoys visits from friends (primarily, Pete Townshend) and hits local pubs, becoming the alcoholic that afflicts him longer than the heroin.

As with his norm, a Jekyll and Hyde personality evolved as the drinking took further root. Sexual escapades almost as abundant as bottles lay littered in his wake. He and Patti held on to their thermostatic marriage, even when he fathered two children outside it. Granted, she was only aware of the one, but such was the life she was accustomed to, including with George, that she continued to take him back into her life when he was at his worst. But eventually, she would also rehab her addiction and leave him for good.

Finally clean, he slowly gains back a life, but now one where he actually participates in it. Trying to be a responsible adult, a caring friend, and a father to his son, Connor. There came the loss of comrade-in-guitar, Stevie-Ray Vaugh after a concert together, another woman he professed to love to Mick Jagger, and a breaking straw with the accidental death of his angelic son, Connor. He stayed sober. A tribute to his son.

Through his countless liaisons, guitar and band-mate riffs, epileptic seizures, ulcers, drinking and drugging, he managed to come out in the end a well-balanced family man who just happens to still be in the top guitar slayers of all time. Sharing the stage, or cozy room gathering, with nearly every living guitar legend, his many bands as vital now as their prime, he is, in his own realm, a God.

Tho it jumps around history and repeats a bit too much, it still reads informative with a big dose of backstage gossip.

Thank you Goodreads and the Hachette Book Group for the opportunity to peek into one of my (still) all-time favorite musicians. ( )