Eric Clapton has admitted he "sabotaged" every musical pursuit he ever started.
The 72-year-old music legend teamed up with filmmaker and long-time friend Lili Fini Zanuck for new movie ‘Eric Clapton: Life In 12 Bar Blues’, which documents the rocker’s spiralling addiction to drugs and alcohol, finding out the woman he believed was his mother was actually his sister, being rejected by his real parent, and the tragic loss of his four-year-old son Connor, who fell to his death after falling out of a window in a New York City apartment.
A continuous theme to the ‘Layla’ hitmaker’s personality, which director Zanuck chose to pinpoint, was how Clapton would just start getting onto a good thing with each of his groups, including The Yardbirds, Cream and Derek And The Dominos, and then he’d move on to the next thing.
The ‘Tears in Heaven’ songwriter – who has a net worth of around $250 million – has also admitted to never being concerned with how much he’d earned or spent over the years, despite the movie showing a young Clapton making his first ever purchase, his impressive Hurtwood Edge mansion in Surrey, England.
Speaking at a Q&A conducted by former Squeeze star Jools Holland at the UK premiere of the movie held at London’s BFI Southbank on Wednesday (10.01.18), the ‘Wonderful Tonight’ star explained: "About the time [Derek And] The Dominos broke up [1971]. That thing of calling my band The Dominos was me trying to back out of everything. I still don’t know how much money I’ve got or how much I’ve spent. I deliberately avoid knowing, because I’m a working class boy. It seemed like my life, from the minute I started to listen to blues music … it was all about obscurity and mythology. I sabotaged everything I got involved with that started to look like it was going to be a success."
Zanuck suggested that Clapton moved on swiftly because he didn’t want to become a "sell-out".
She said: "It was also anytime it appeared to be a sell-out. Like when The Yardbirds wanted a pop hit.
"Eric was about being true to the music that he wanted to play. A lot of the time these exoduses weren’t to sabotage anything. He didn’t want a hit."
Agreeing, Clapton concluded that he wasn’t "comfortable" with popularity.
He said: "I see. [laughter] Yes, it is based on a loyalty to the music I was listening to. I wasn’t that interested in phenomenal success unless it was really worthy. Ray Charles, for example, was a huge success and was comfortable with it, and I don’t really understand how that can be.
‘Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bar Blues’ hits cinemas on Friday (12.01.18).
Eric Clapton says he sabotaged most
