For a great look at the life of a great musician, I highly recommend Eric Clapton's autobiography. You get an incredible look at the incredible music scene that he was closely linked to during the 60's and 70's. There are lots of little tidbits of information dropped here and there that are very interesting to hear about.
For instance, did you know that Eric, George Harrison, and George's the wife(and later Clapton's) were sitting around, one spring morning with the sun coming up, outside of Clapton's home in England. They were playing acoustic guitars, and that morning, George came up with the "Dee-Da-Dee-Dee...Little darling" line and the beginning of Here Comes The Sun! I never knew that!
Lots of other great information, along with Eric's addiction problems, and how it all played out until now.
Make it a companion for the 'Crossroads' DVD set from Chicago 2007, and you will get a great snapshot of one of the most well respected, incredible musicians of our time.
Jimmy Mac
Even better get the Audiobook, it's 10 CD's and although it's not read by Clapton, it's read by someone with a good British accent that after a while you swear it's Clatpon himself reading to you.
Very entertaining specially for my 1 hr commute. Also, since I have it on my Ipod, sometimes when he refers to a particular song, I pause, and go to the song in question, listen to it, then resume the book. (I have it set as a podcast so it keeps the bookmarks yet it still mp3 files).
Last of all, I'm gonna see him in concert a week from tomorrow here in Massachussetts!!!! Crappy seats, but I plan to see the whole thing thru binoculars so I can see how he plays.
If you want to see some great blues musicians, including EC himself, get the Crossroads DVD from Chicago last year. It's pretty fabulous to watch...and when you see B.B. King praising EC as a person, you get a sense of what he is really about.
Another great supplement to the EC book......
The Tom Dowd documentary DVD: 'The Language of Music'
Tom Dowd was the engineering/producer guru at Atlantic records and Clapton is one of the many musicians who appear in the documentary and credit Dowd with much of their sucess in recording music. You can pick up a used copy via Amazon.com for less than $15. A very enjoyable DVD. ;)
PS... Les Paul makes an appearance in the Tom Dowd documentary. He's got a great documentary DVD too called 'Chasing Music', also available at Amazon used for less than $15.
Of special interest to BR users: Les Paul invented multi-track recording. Tom Down was one of the most prolific early inovators of multi-track recording.
Les Paul special was on my local PBS station last night. I had seen it last year but actually got a chance to sit down and enjoy it this time. It was touching to see Eddie Van Halen plant a kiss on Les at a show after thanking him for making multitracking possible.
Trivia: They talked about how Les and Mary recorded all over the house, in bathrooms and in hotels purposely to get the right reverb before studio reverb existed.
More Trivia: Keith Richards supposedly brought the first Les Paul to England.
les paul when mastering would send the signal to his car radio to judge the final mix, if it sounded ok on that the record was pressed.