Imprint
- W&N
- W&N
- W&N
Rock & Pop music, Individual composers & musicians, specific bands &, Biography: arts & entertainment
From the bestselling author of SHOUT!, comes the definitive biography of Eric Clapton, a rock legend whose life story is as remarkable as his music.
Eric Clapton is acknowledged to be rock's greatest virtuoso, the unrivalled master of its most essential tool, the solid-body electric guitar.
Clapton transfigured three of the 1960s' most iconic bands - the Yardbirds, Cream and Blind Faith - walking away from each when it failed to measure up to his exacting standards. He was the only outsider be an honorary member of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and the studio musician of choice for solo superstars from Bob Dylan to Aretha Franklin. No life has been more rock 'n' roll than Clapton's in his epic consumption of drugs and alcohol, his insatiable appetite for expensive cars, clothes and women - most famously revealed when he fell in love with Pattie Boyd, the wife of his best friend, George Harrison, and the inspiration for 'Layla'.
With the benefit of unrestricted access to family members, close friends and fellow musicians, and his encyclopedic knowledge of Sixties music and culture, Philip Norman has created the definitive portrait of this brilliant insecure, often pain-racked man.
More books by Philip Norman
Praise for Slowhand: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton
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Slowhand reads like a textbook account of all the pathologies of the rock-star life: promiscuity, infidelity, heroin addiction, alcoholism - SUNDAY TIMES
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It has taken a biographer as perceptive and clear-sighted as Philip Norman to do Clapton justice ... Despite everything, you end up liking Clapton, and feeling as if you know and understand him. It is proof that Norman's biography has done its work - THE TIMES
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As usual, the masterful biographer Philip Norman has unearthed countless fascinating details - DAILY MAIL
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On a mission to expose the music of the US south to a new audience in as pure a form as possible, [Clapton] captured the raw emotion of the sound he loved enough to transfix his young listeners. A generation was discovering an alien language with which they instinctively felt at home. That cultural leap - which began with conversations in record shops, coffee bars and art schools, and eventually swept the world - is one of the key stories of the last century and is always worth re-examining, as Philip Norman does in this biography of one of the movement's pioneers - THE GUARDIAN
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Solid and sad - DAILY TELEGRAPH Music Books of the Year
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Lucid - FINANCIAL TIMES
Philip Norman
Philip Norman is an English novelist, biographer, journalist and playwright. At the end of the 1960s, as a correspondent for The Sunday Times, he was assigned to investigate and report on the breakup of Beatles' own business, Apple Corps. Norman is the author of SHOUT! and biographies of John Lennon, Buddy Holly, The Rolling Stones, Elton John, Paul McCartney and Eric Clapton.
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