He went down to the crossroads, fell down on his knees, asked the Lord for mercy -- and somehow got it. In this biopic documentary, Eric Clapton -- his place in the pantheon of guitar god-dom guaranteed -- is a tragic genius denounced by his own mother and nurturing a desperate crush on his best friend's wife, which kept his guitar wailing and weeping. Here's a 60s-70s blues-rock maverick who sold his soul to heroin, cocaine, cognac, whatever, and when he emerged from the pit and things began to feel wonderful tonight, he lost his son in a terrible, terrible accident. That a new documentary about his life to date is allowed to end happily is proof that rock'n'roll (and life itself) can cheat the claws of fate and go on for longer than 12 bars.
How many musicians has Clapton inspired? In Thailand alone, every one of them who came of age before, god help us, Maroon 5. And they make up the bulk of the intended audience of Lili Fini Zanuck's Eric Clapton: Life In 12 Bars -- them and the children of the 1970s who heard Clapton on grimy cassettes bought on Silom footpaths and witnessed the blasting transformation of Mississippi slave music into a strand of white counterculture. If you're a fan, it's likely you've heard all the rock lore and fabled traumas in Clapton's life -- his orphaned childhood, the "Clapton Is God" graffiti, The Yardbirds and Cream, the Patti Boyd drama, the horrid addictions, the loss of his four-year-old son when he fell from the 49th floor of a New York apartment building -- and yet you'll still want to see them retold on screen with tons of footage to go with this (overlong) 135-minute film.
Typically for biographical documentaries, Life In 12 Bars is a confirmation of myth: the narrative of cursed glory and musical salvation of the 70s, strewn with spectacular rises and self-inflicted dooms. The film is told mostly by Clapton's voice, giving context to the events unfolding, and alternates with interviews with musicians, friends and managers. The chronology is pretty straightforward, starting with Clapton's childhood in Surrey and proceeding along his career as a clean-shaven blues virtuoso playing with John Mayall, The Yardbirds, Cream, his sonic psychedelia of the 1970s, his foray as Derek and the Dominos, the fabled recording of Layla, the unplugged period, and then Tears In Heaven, his appearance gradually becoming more scruffy along the way. As Clapton rises and falls and rises, we look for our favourites in the roll call of the 1960s and 70s iconoclasts in the footage: The Beatles, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker, Jimi Hendrix, B.B. King, Aretha Franklin, Duane Allman (a gem!), Steve Winwood -- the whole lot.
I thought we would see more concert footage -- though we can see hours of that on YouTube anyway -- and I wanted to know more about his musical thinking and development, as well as his popularisation of black music in the West. Life In 12 Bars spends a lot of time underlining the misfortunes in Clapton's life in a bid to connect them to his musical enterprise and self-destructive impulses, and while we know that great pain can contribute to great art, saying it repeatedly also feels like fake psychology -- if not an unnecessary apologia. Two incidents are highlighted: his mother's brutal rejection of Clapton when he was a child and his protracted, agonising love affair with Patti Boyd, at the time George Harrison's wife. That said, the strangest omission is the song Wonderful Tonight, not featured in the film at all.
Both events are emphasised as the unsalvageable traumas that pushed Clapton into drugs and alcohol -- and into a stint of right-wing rants on stage that nearly destroyed his reputation as a champion of black music. No doubt these heartbreaks weighed down on him, and we can never discount their lasting impact. But really, the "explanation" -- you could say a reflection -- of his dark period of addiction also feels superfluous. After all, it's the 70s! Who'd care if a famous guitarist took drugs and seduced his best friend's wife? It sounds like the 2010s' sensibility to be pious about this, to try to justify unpleasant behaviour when in fact, as immoral as it may sound, those things felt natural in the 70s if you were on the forefront of the cultural revolution -- if you set fire on that Fender with your fingers and blasted away the packed Royal Albert Hall with your solos. The most important thing is, Clapton made it out not just alive but healthy, musically and all.
Heavy on the early decades, the film rushes through the 90s, with its emotional centre on the death of Clapton's son. The child was lost but the father was saved, like he was before, by music -- by Tears In Heaven in this particular case, perhaps Clapton's most popular track even for those who've never heard of Sunshine Of Your Love or Layla. Guitar gods may be a thing of the past, and Life In 12 Bars is a tribute that will feel special mostly for fans, but Clapton emerges here as a person who has gone through hell and back -- unlike, say, Amy Winehouse in the more heartbreaking doc Amy, who booked a one-way ticket -- and his storm-tossed journey, which is also a journey of music of the past 50 years, still rings with pathos and relevance.
