Eric Clapton Song Quotes

It’s one of those songs— like Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven”— that everyone knows all the words to without ever having chosen to learn them.

Here's a note to the parents of addicted children: choose your music carefully. Avoid Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World", from the Polaroid or Kodak or whichever commercial, and the songs "Turn Around" and "Sunrise, Sunset" and - there are thousands more. Avoid Cyndi Lauper's "Time After Time," and this one, Eric Clapton's song about his son. Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" sneaked up on me one time. The music doesn't have to be sentimental. Springsteen can be dangerous. John and Yoko. Bjork. Dylan. I become overwhelmed when I hear Nirvana. I want to scream like Kurt Cobain. I want to scream at him. Music isn't all that does it. There are millions of treacherous moments. Driving along Highway 1, I will see a peeling wave. Or I will reach the fork where two roads meet near Rancho Nicasio, where we veered to the left in carpool. A shooting star on a still night at the crest of Olema Hill. With friends, I hear a good joke - one that Nic would appreciate. The kids do something funny or endearing. A story. A worn sweater. A movie. Feeling wind and looking up, riding my bike. A million moments.

The concerts went off as Concert for Bangladesh on August 1 (afternoon and evening shows), with Ringo Starr double-drumming next to Jim Keltner and an all-star band, including Billy Preston, Leon Russell, Klaus Voormann, Badfinger, and Eric Clapton. Reunion rumors evaporated the minute Harrison introduced Bob Dylan, who hadn’t performed widely in America since his motorcycle accident in 1966. Except for the Woody Guthrie memorial concert with the Band in 1968, Dylan hadn’t appeared on a New York stage since 1966, and he quickly upstaged everybody by reworking five songs that signaled a larger return to form. Once again, Harrison trumped expectations by bringing in a ringer.

Guess what song they picked for their first dance.” “What song?” “‘From This Moment On’ by Shania Twain.” He frowns. “I never heard of that before.” “It’s really cheesy, but they love it, apparently. Do you realize that we don’t have a song? Like, a song that’s ours.” “Okay, then let’s pick one.” “It doesn’t work like that. You don’t just pick your song. The song picks you. Like the Sorting Hat.” Peter nods sagely. He finally finished reading all seven Harry Potter books and he’s always eager to prove that he gets my references. “Got it.” “It has to just…happen. A moment. And the song transcends the moment, you know? My mom and dad’s song was ‘Wonderful Tonight’ by Eric Clapton. They danced to it at their wedding.” “So how did it become their song, then?” “It was the first song they ever slow danced to in college. It was at a dance, not long after they first started dating. I’ve seen pictures from that night. Daddy’s wearing a suit that was too big on him and my mom’s hair is in a French twist.” “How about whatever song comes on next, that’s our song. It’ll be fate.” “We can’t just make our own fate.” “Sure we can.” Peter reaches over to turn on the radio. “Wait! Just any radio station? What if it’s not a slow song?” “Okay so we’ll put on Lite 101.” Peter hits the button. “Winnie the Pooh doesn’t know what to do, got a honey jar stuck on his nose,” a woman croons. Peter says, “What the hell?” as I say, “This can’t be our song.” “Best out of three?” he suggests.

Johnny Rotten slouches at the front of the stage, propped up on the mike stand. He's leaning so far forward he looks as if he might topple into the empty space in front of the audience. · His face is pale and his body is twisted into such an awkward ugly shape he looks deformed. He looks ordinary, about the same age as us, the kind of boy I was at comprehensive school with. He's not a flashy star like Marc Bolan or David Bowie, all dressed up in exotic costumes, he's not a virtuoso musician like Eric Clapton or Peter Green, he's not even a macho rock-and-roll pub-band singer – he's just a bloke from Finsbury Park, London, England, who’s pissed off. Johnny sneers at us in his ordinary North London accent, his voice isn't trained and tuneful, it's a whiny cynical drawl, every song delivered unemotionally. There's no fake American twang either. All the things I'm so embarrassed about, John's made into virtues. He's unapologetic about who he is and where he comes from. Proud of it even. He's not taking the world's lack of interest as confirmation that he’s wrong or worthless. I look up at him twisting and yowling and realise it's everyone else who's wrong, not him. How did he make that mental leap from musically untrained, state-school-educated, council estate boy, to standing on stage in front of a band? I think he's brave. A revolutionary. He's sending a very powerful message, the most powerful message anyone can ever transmit. Be yourself.

In the genre of “making you feel like you’re not having an awesome American high school experience,” the worst offender is actually a song: John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Jack & Diane.” It’s one of those songs—like Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven”—that everyone knows all the words to without ever having chosen to learn them.

They sent me three songs written by a Texas songwriter they represented named Jerry Lynn Williams—“Forever Man,” “Something’s Happening,” and “See What Love Can Do”—and they were good. I loved the way he sang, and I sent back a message to say I would do it, on the condition that they produced the songs and provided the musicians. I think it was, professionally, the first time I’d ever had to back down.

One of the songs I wrote while living there was called “Tearing Us Apart,” which was about “the committee,” the group of Pattie’s friends whom I now blamed for coming between us.

While I was in LA, I had been playing some of the songs on the album to various friends when I got a phone call from George. Word had got back to him that I was playing the album around town, and he was furious and gave me a huge bollocking. I remember being incredibly hurt because I thought I’d been doing a grand job of promoting their music to really discriminating people. It brought me down to earth with a bang, and it was a good lesson to learn about boundaries, and not making assumptions, but it stung like hell. For a little while I steered clear of him, but in time we became friends again, although after that, I was always a little wary of letting my guard down around him.

The only prewritten songs I had ready were “Circus” and “My Father’s Eyes,” neither of which seemed to have found their right incarnation yet. For almost a year we worked day and night, sometimes just perfecting little guitar motifs, or honing and reshaping tracks with the Pro Tools system that Simon is a master of. The result was one of my favorite albums; I poured my soul into this one, and I believe you can hear that.

Though I didn’t meet Bob Marley till much later, he did call me up when the single came out and seemed pretty happy with it. I tried to ask him what the song was all about, but couldn’t understand much of his reply. I was just relieved that he liked what we had done.

Miranda Grosvenor was a silky phantom who told men she was beautiful and blond, lived in the South, did some modeling, and looked after her fabulously wealthy father in New York City. Many men believed her; at least a few actually fell in love with her. (Says director Paul Schrader,] ‘I never found out exactly who she was.’ Nor, apparently, did Robert De Niro, who, friends say, also took Miranda Grosvenor's phone calls Nor Billy Joel, who tried out songs in progress on her answering machine and considered turning their strange relationship into a musical: Nor Peter Wolf, lead singer of the J. Geils Band. You actually started living for these phone calls, remembers Brian McNally, the noted Manhattan restaurateur. . . ‘A lot of nights she was my only friend,’ says Joel, who understood that Miranda was also phone pals with Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, and Sting. ‘As they say, she did give good phone.’” Bryan Burrough, “The Miranda Obsession,” December 1999