‘Eric Clapton: Life In 12 Bars’ Chronicles Guitarist’s Ups And Downs But Keeps Hitting All The Same Notes

English guitarist, singer and songwriter Eric Clapton is a contentious subject for many music fans. To some, he is one of the greats of classic rock, first with his ’60s group Cream, then with the one-album wonders Blind Faith and Derek and The Dominoes, and ultimately as a solo artist. To others he is a hack, playing uninspired music for aging baby boomers, watering down his professed blues roots to the consistency of skim milk. The truth is actually a little more complicated.

As a rock guitarist, Clapton’s influence can’t be overstated. Along with Jimi Hendrix, he helped codify the idea of “the guitar hero,” and his approach to guitar – not just what he played, but the equipment he used, the sounds he got – define rock lead guitar playing to this day. With Cream he laid the sonic groundwork for hard rock and heavy metal to come (ask Tony Iommi), with Derek and The Dominoes he created one of rock’s greatest albums (ask Martin Scorsese), and legitimate questions of cultural appropriation aside, his cover of “I Shot The Sheriff” introduced many Americans to Bob Marley and Jamaican reggae music (ask EPMD, whose hip hop classic “Strictly Business” sampled the Clapton version). That said, his solo albums from the ’70s on are for the most part adult contemporary lite rock, displaying little of the fire and passion of his formative work, and while his late in life re-exploration of the blues is intriguing, he usually needs a collaborator to push him outside his safety zone.

This Saturday, February 10, Showtime will premiere the documentary Eric Clapton: Life In 12 Bars. It was directed at Clapton’s personal request by Lili Fini Zanuck, an Academy Award winning producer who also directed the 1991 film Rush, which he composed music for. Like other recent documentaries, such as Amy and Oasis: Supersonic, it relies on off-camera interviews, photographs and archival footage to tell the guitarist’s life story, much of which was also covered in his 2007 autobiography, imaginatively titled Clapton: The Autobiography.

The documentary begins with Clapton filming an iPhone tribute to legendary blues guitarist B.B. King upon learning of his death. We then travel back to his “blissful childhood” in the London suburbs, which was disrupted upon his discovery that the people raising him as their son were actually his grandparents. His real mother had given birth to him at the age of 16 after a brief romance with a Canadian serviceman he would never know. It installed in him a sense of mistrust and Clapton revisits unpleasant interactions with his birth mother throughout the film, each time identifying how the offenses he endured led to his problems with intimacy and addiction.

Clapton found solace in American blues music after first hearing it on a children’s radio program, saying, “It took all the pain away.” While attending art school he fell in with other young British blues disciples, including the future members of The Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds, whom he soon joined on lead guitar. A blues purist, Clapton quit the band when he felt they went commercial and joined John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers, with whom his legend grew. “Clapton is God” graffiti appeared in London at the time, a testament to his importance in the growing British blues scene and the cult of the guitar.

Uncomfortable with adulation and ever impatient, Clapton quickly moved on, starting Cream in 1966 with bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker. With their outlandish hair, outlandish outfits, and outlandishly long live jams, Cream were the ultimate manifestation of hippie hard rock, and with success their every indulgence, musical and recreational, was encouraged. Constant touring and friction between his bandmates led to the band’s demise. To convalesce, he bought a spacious country estate near his boyhood home and fell in love with Pattie Boyd. Unfortunately she happened to be the wife of his best friend, Beatles’ guitarist George Harrison.

Clapton’s infatuation with Boyd inspired his greatest work; Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, the sole album from his band Derek and The Dominoes. Confusion over the band’s name, however, led to lackluster sales, and Boyd’s ultimate rejection of him and the death of friend Jimi Hendrix sent the guitarist into seclusion, with only copious amounts of heroin to keep him company. After three years of addiction, he followed the tried and true rock star method of kicking heroin: by becoming an alcoholic.

Clapton basically dismisses the next 15 years of his music, both albums and live performances, as being one long drinking binge. At its worst he was recorded spewing a racist tirade on stage in 1976, which is particularly galling considering how much he pilfered from black artists throughout his career. Clapton blames the incident on his drinking and the self-hatred, and though his apology seems sincere, the film glosses over it quickly, which only seems odd because they brought it up in the first place. Clapton says he didn’t truly get sober until the birth of his son Conor in 1986. Conor’s horrific death, falling out of a hotel room window from the 53^rd floor in 1991, tested both his faith and sobriety, but ultimately inspired his greatest success; the memorial song “Tears In Heaven,” and the ensuing Unplugged album. As he says, “Music saved me just as it had as a boy at 9. It took the pain away.”

His commitment to his sobriety and helping others get sober powered him through his later years, selling off his guitar collection to fund the treatment center Crossroads Centre on the island of Antigua. In 2001 he married second wife Melia, with whom he has had three daughters. The film wraps up neatly with Clapton a happy, sober, family man, basking in the praise of his blues idols, including B.B. King, who is seen praising him from the stage of his Crossroads Guitar Festival.

At two hours and fifteen minutes, Eric Clapton: Life In 12 Bars is a laborious viewing experiance, its glacial pace heightened by the film’s over-reliance on still photography. It also only partially delivers on its promise to, “contextualize Eric Clapton’s role in contemporary music and cultural history.” While the celebrity talking head is a music documentary cliché, in this case the film could have used some modern musicians discussing his lasting influence and importance, which time has somewhat obscured. They say the blues is the easiest style of music to learn but the hardest to master, given its reliance on nuance and emotion. Even when discussing moments of profound sadness and tragedy, you can’t help but feel that Eric Clapton is holding back, and the blues without emotion is just the same three notes being played over and over again.

Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars premieres on Showtime on Saturday, February 10 at 9PM ET, and will be available on demand starting on February 11, 2018.

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC.

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