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source: Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars

Why are we hearing from Jimmy's baby mama when she was only with Eric for the very early days? Surely to not have mentioned Jimmy Page as his bass playing replacement in the Yardbirds but have the same girlfriend give a long interview was by design, its fine but set the tempo of making Eric the LEGEND who stands alone & its HIS movie so thats cool but the racism stuff & drug use is all forgivable if he had real humility( helping people get sober is so awesome of me...eek) but hes one of many artists who were inspired by real Blues & went on to become their own originators of unique sound. Clapton was a blues purist in the 60s & i agree but that doesnt make him the MOST important or influential. Hes has a some legendary songs & I love his playing & loved the idea that the guitarists had a nice rivalry but I always heard Townshend praise Eric as a friend and a hero & even Pete praise Jimmy. LOTS of omissions... LOL But we gotta learn theres NO real rock & roll fraternity where the men of Axes all hang out and golf or even jam. They all seem so competitive. The fans who love these artists enough to get ripped off by scalpers deserve MORE gratitude for TOLERANCE! Perhaps he doesnt want other guitarists of their own generation to seem on his level. Theres room for so many artists. In fact more than ever now. This was great for hero worship but is as good a linear life bio as any other artist. Even if i find myself not loving him too much. He has my respect for the music...which is the legacy that lasts beyong all the decades past. Layla will be around long after Eric leaves us. Very long.....like the run time. Winning Grammys for a song about your kid dying is also sad. Glad hes hard so many do overs! He does seem happy and thats good. BB the KING sure gave him props!! So there! Oxox

It was a golden opportunity to make a feature length film about one of music's leading guitarists - Eric Clapton. Clapton isn't usually known for being very forthcoming about his personal life so I was a bit taken aback by this documentary. However, the musician gave his blessing and collaborated fully with the filming. The results could have been better. First of all, Eric Clapton the person is presented in a truthful and honest light in my opinion. His struggles with alcohol and narcotics are quite graphically detailed as there is footage of him indulging this and that. We witness one man's journey as both musician and as an individual in many ways. How he learns his craft, finding success in different bands, experiencing a few personal tragedies and coping with the fact that his own mother didn't love him. I thoroughly enjoyed the first 90 minutes and I wouldn't want anything changed about it. The archive footage of Clapton throughout the early years, is something to marvel at. I had never seen any of it before.Discussions that relate to The Yardbirds, Jimi Hendrix, Duane Allman, Cream, Derek and the Dominoes, made for fascinating viewing. However, the last 30 years of Eric Clapton's life and career were far too rushed and I felt very disappointed by this. It was as though someone thought: Ok I'm getting restless feet now, let's get the rest of our film over with. Such a pity.

Ok, So trying to fit in Eric Clapton's life in 2hrs has to squeeze the story down but the omissions (as mentioned in other reviews) are suprising as are the errors (George Harrison is credited as Paul McCartney in one voice over is one example...Surely Eric must have seen at least a rough cut of the film!)... Also Eric comes across badly...He goes for what he wants Sod everyone else...Which at least makes an honest film not a puff piece. In all a decent Doc but could have been so much better but if it makes anyone discover The Yardbirds, John Mayall, Cream...etc then it's job is done...I saw it on BBC2 and I hope he had a sales boost after the showing like these docs usually give there subjects.

Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars (2017) **** (out of 4) This documentary, clocking in over two hours, features Eric Clapton discussing his life and career as we get clips from various concerts and television specials. Throughout the running time we learn about how his career took shape, his friendship with George Harrison and the love affair that shaped some of his greatest songs. If you're a fan of Clapton then I'm sure you're going to already know a lot of the stories told here but the documentary is extremely well-made and there's no question that you can get some added joy out of hearing Clapton discuss these events. This includes the various high points of his life but also the low ones including the death of Jimi Hendrix as well as his son, which also led to one of his most loved songs. There's no doubt that getting the interview footage with Clapton was a major plus but the greatest aspect of this documentary is that it has a lot of really great video footage. This includes a lot of early concert footage from Clapton's time with Cream as well as some earlier projects that Clapton worked on. There's no doubt that the brilliance of Clapton as a guitarist gets to shine here and if you're not a fan then you will be after watching this. ERIC CLAPTON: LIFE IN 12 BARS takes a look at a brilliant but troubled man and I thought it was extremely fair handled and entertaining.

In the words of the former England football team manager, Sven-Goran Eriksson. 'First half good, second half, not so good.' I liked the insight to Clapton's early life. Finding out that his mother was actually his grandmother and the woman who he thought was his sister was his mother who had abandoned him and gone to Canada. The young Clapton was good at art, loved blues music and had an inferiority complex at school. There is film footage of his family and various still of Clapton's artwork. When Clapton decides to enter the music industry, he has skill as a guitarist, horned after listening to all those blues records and copying their style. Clapton though was not a good bandmate, leaving The Yardbirds at short notice because they were heading in a commercial direction. The second half was more problematic. It zig zags the chronology, going back to the issues of mistrust with his real mother and grandparents. The film is hazy as to when Clapton became clean or did he just relapse too often? I recollect that Clapton said he had cleaned up in the mid to late 1980s from drugs and booze. Here it seems he was was still on the booze in the early 1990s and certainly admits to recording albums where he remembers being drunk as we see the later 80s albums in this montage. Did he lie back then? If he lied then, he might be lying now. Clapton deals with his notorious racist outburst in 1976 in a concert in Birmingham. Up to this point of the documentary, Clapton cited his influences of the blues and friendship with black US musicians. He was a supporter of the civil rights movement. Clapton also admired music and literature from the east. He was a fan of the musician Bismillah Khan. A Persian poem inspired the song Layla. Ahmet Ertegun, the Turkish born head of Atlantic Records was a big champion of Clapton. Yet under the influence of booze and drugs, this racial outburst shocked his fans. In retrospect Clapton is rightly embarrassed with his outburst. He states that he comes across as a semi-racist. Only semi? I think it was a full on racist rant. Maybe the booze lowered his inhibitions and made him say things that were swirling around his mind at the time. Birmingham in the mid 1970s would look very different to an English lad born in Ripley in Surrey. Racism is complex, Clapton admits to having black girlfriends but he knows that he will never be able to live down his words. I was also horrified with his casual attitude to sex in an era of Aids. He had flings with several women and they became pregnant, Clapton does not seem to believe in using a condom. His interest in engaging with married women did not stop with Pattie Boyd. I found the latter half of the documentary to be self serving. Yet at times it does have flashes of brilliance as well. It helps that Clapton was cooperative with this film, he allowed access to his private documents. Looking at the reviews, it is clear that the documentary has skimped other people who should have had a part in this story such as Pete Townshend who helped Clapton become clean.

No clue how this gets such a low rating. Great job documenting the life of legend Clapton. Learned this if his childhood that I was not aware of. Loved it!

Don't mind the low rating so far, this is an excellent documentary on one of the greatest living musicians ever! With insight and empathy, it shows Clapton's life and the factors that made him who he is, with all pros and cons. Very informative, revealing and very moving also. Worth watching, definitely!

What begins as an exhaustive chronicle of one of the most famous and influential musicians of our time descends into soporific soap opera after about forty-five minutes. Ignoring and/or underplaying numerous milestones and other touchpoints in Slowhand's life and career (his close affiliation with Delaney & Bonnie, the Rainbow Concert organized by Pete townshend), Zanuck calls into question her own knowledge of EC's career -or lack thereof- as well as the laissez fair attitude toward the film held by the man once called 'God."