It's been 39 years since Eric Clapton and his pioneering power-trio Cream recorded "Sitting on Top of the World," a 1920s blues chestnut by Sam Chatmon. But it's only been in this decade that the song's title has really started to ring true for this legendary English musician and three-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee. Since marrying Melia McEnery, 30, an American graphic artist, in early 2002, Clapton, 61, has become the father of three girls: Julie Rose, 5; Ella Mae, 4; and Sophie, 2.
He has also become calm, happy and settled after years of serial womanizing and potentially fatal drug and alcohol abuse. "I've finally landed on my feet in a situation where there is no greener grass," Clapton affirmed in a late-2005 interview. "I always found myself on the lookout for something else.
Wherever I was, the better party was always down the road; I didn't know what was going on, but I knew it wasn't this. "I finally found the party - I'm actually at the party - so even at its most quiet and dire moments, it's still the best place to be." More recently, the guitarist and singer realized a long-held musical dream by recording "The Road to Escondido," his first album with J.
J. Cale. Released last year, "Escondido" represents the long overdue culmination of a mutual admiration society between these two veteran musicians.
Its roots date back to 1970, when Clapton scored a Top 20 hit with his reverent version of Cale's "After Midnight." But the two only performed together twice before joining forces to make "Escondido" in 2005. "The object of most of my work has been to raise it above my standard.
And so, you know, I never think I'll be as good as the people I look up to. J.J.
is pretty close to the ideal focus for that," Clapton noted. Clapton's current world tour, which finds him playing new and old songs and revisiting the classic 1970 album he made as a member of Derek The Dominos, has been hailed as one of his best ever. And his profile, on records and DVDs, seems higher than ever.
Last year, Clapton performed on new albums by Jerry Lee Lewis, Sam Moore, Tony Joe White, Robert Randolph and Japan's Hiroshi Fujiwara. He was also featured on reissues and compilation releases by Buddy Guy, Chuck Berry, John Lee Hooker, George Harrison, John Mayall and Blind Faith (the rock supergroup that teamed him with Steve Winwood, Ginger Baker and Rick Grech for one album and an ill-fated tour in 1969). On his current tour, Clapton is accompanied by an all-star sextet featuring young Allman Brothers guitar ace Derek Trucks, bassist Willie Weeks and drummer Steve Jordan.
Asked what qualities he seeks in his bandmates, Clapton said: "What I need to find in a player is humility above all, the ability to listen. All the great players I've ever been with, and have wanted to play with for any length of time, have had that. "I think it's acquired, I think it's a learned quality.
I think it's quite possible to go through life just thinking that you're the only person there. I'm constantly shocked by how many people don't really study music, who are in the (music) business. I think we all ought to be musicologists, to a certain extent, just to know the history of the music.
" Clapton made his recording debut with The Yardbirds in early 1964, after playing in the obscure British R B bands The Roosters and Casey Jones The Engineers. Dismayed by The Yardbirds' decision to pursue a more pop-oriented direction, he quit in 1965 and joined John Mayall's Bluesbreakers. It was then that his impassioned guitar work - which he modeled after the work of such icons as B.
B. King and Buddy Guy - led his rabid fans to paint graffiti all over London proclaiming "Clapton is God." International stardom came after he co-founded Cream in 1966, a band whose extended improvisations and bold approach to fusing blues and rock set a new standard.
Yet, while he has been one of the most popular, acclaimed and prolific musicians in contemporary music for the past 40 years, Clapton is perhaps his own toughest critic. "It's never good enough for me," he said of his music. "I don't think I've ever walked away from anything and said: 'That's as good as it can be.
' I much prefer listening to (my) work in retrospect, 10 years later. ..
. "When I'm making a record, we're trying to preserve the perspective of the piece - that's the most important prerogative. On stage I have a much more open approach to it; it can go anywhere and I think it needs to go anywhere.
When the audience is sitting in front of you, it doesn't show any respect to them to confine it like the record. And that's the point, on stage, where we become musicians, when we learn to play off the songs and off each other.
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