JOURNEYMAN: ERIC CLAPTON

For over five decades, Eric Clapton has been one of rock’s premier guitarists — and since the early 1980s, famed music photographer Gene Shaw has been capturing great moments from Slowhand’s electrifying career, on stage and off.

We all know him and admire his music; it has measured the milestones of our lives. Eric Patrick Clapton (born 30th March 1945) is an English musician, singer, and songwriter. He is the only three-time inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame: once as a solo artist and separately as a member of the Yardbirds and as a member of Cream. Clapton has been referred to as one of the most important and influential guitarists of all time. In the mid-1960s Clapton left the Yardbirds to play blues with John Mayall & the Bluesbreakers. Immediately after leaving Mayall, Clapton joined Cream, a power trio with drummer Ginger Baker and bassist Jack Bruce in which Clapton played sustained blues improvisations and arty, blues-based psychedelic pop. For most of the 1970s, Clapton’s output bore the influence of the mellow style of JJ Cale and the reggae of Bob Marley. His version of Marley’s “I Shot then Sheriff” helped reggae reach the mass market. Two of his most phenomenally famous recordings were “Layla,” recorded by Derek and the Dominos, another band he formed, and Robert Johnson’s “Crossroads,” recorded by Cream. Following the death of this son Conor in 1991, Clapton’s grief was expressed in another internationally bestselling song, “Tears in Heaven”. Clapton has been the recipient of SEVENTEEN Grammy Awards and the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music. In 2004, he was awarded a CBE at Buckingham Palace for services to music. In 1998, Clapton, a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, founded the Crossroads Center on Antigua, a medical facility for recovering substance abusers. The rights to Clapton’s official memoirs, written by Christopher Simon Sykes and published in 2007, were sold at the 2005 Frankfurt Book Fair for USD $4million — and became a chart-topping bestseller everywhere it was published. JOURNEYMAN: ERIC CLAPTON by Gene Shaw, which features more than 125 of Shaw’s rare color and black-and-white photographs and his unique,i nsider’s recollections provide a fan’s perspective of many legendary musical events. Clapton’s performance at the ARMS benefit, his show with Elton John at Shea Stadium, his early ’90s stint at the Royal Albert Hall, and his current Crossroads Guitar Festivals are all highlighted. This beautiful, highly visual hardcover volume also includes an Introduction by Rolling Stone writer Anthony DeCurtis and a Foreword by John “Crash” Matos, artist and designer of some of Clapton’s signature guitars. Gene Shaw studied photography with Jan Kather at Elmira College. He toured with the Psychedelic Furs in the 1980s, and he has been the house photographer for many clubs and concert halls, including The Ritz, Tattoo, and Irving Plaza. For more than three decades, he has traveled all over the world photographing Clapton, and his pictures have appeared in Vogue, Rolling Stone, Time, People, and elsewhere.