You were at school and you were pimply and no one wanted to know you. You get into a group and you've got thousands of chicks there.
– Eric Clapton
When all the original blues guys are gone, you start to realize that someone has to tend to the tradition. I recognize that I have some responsibility to keep the music alive, and it's a pretty honorable position to be in.
– Eric Clapton
Very much like that, and very much a loner, do you know and I didn't fit really into sport or all kind of group activities as a kid, I couldn't find a niche. And music was not really part of the kind of village curriculum it would, you know.
– Eric Clapton
Music became a healer for me.
– Eric Clapton
It was stumbling on to really the bible of the blues, you know, and a very powerful drug to be introduced to us and I absorbed it totally, and it changed my complete outlook on music.
– Eric Clapton
I think everybody has their own way of looking at their lives as some kind of pilgrimage. Some people will see their role as a pilgrim in terms of setting up a fine family, or establishing a business inheritance. Everyone's got their own definition.
– Eric Clapton
I sought my father in the world of the black musician, because it contained wisdom, experience, sadness and loneliness. I was not ever interested in the music of boys. From my youngest years, I was interested in the music of men.
– Eric Clapton
I just like the company of beautiful women. I have a weakness in that department. And I suppose because I am fairly well off and a famous musician, I'm up for grabs. And that makes me an eligible bachelor in the press.
– Eric Clapton
From the beginning, I knew intuitively that if nothing else, music was safe, and that nobody could tell me anything about it. Music didn't need a middleman, whereas all the other things in school needed some kind of explanation.
– Eric Clapton
But I did go to music really early on, even when I was 4 or 5, I was responding to music probably in ways other kids were not.
– Eric Clapton
Although they can do it all the time, you know, they're far better than me, on a musically, on a theoretical music level. You know, they're out of my league.