This may be very interesting.

Eric Clapton Documentary 'A Life in 12 Bars' in the Works

"Despite the fact that his path is strewn with tragedies, addiction and loss, he never fails to regain his bearings," director says of guitarist


A career-spanning documentary about Eric Clapton, dubbed 'A Life in 12 Bars,' is currently in the works. Dave Hogan/Getty

By Daniel Kreps
2 days ago

A career-spanning documentary about Eric Clapton, called A Life in 12 Bars, is currently in the works.

Lili Fini Zanuck will direct the film, with Searching for Sugar Man producer John Battsek on board as producer, Variety reports. The Clapton documentary team also includes editor Chris King, who worked on Asif Kapadia's Amy and Senna.

"Clapton's music is the foundation of our film. His commitment to the blues, its traditions and originators, is absolute from his earliest days," Zanuck said in a statement. "He was also forever restless in his search of a suitable vehicle to shape and grow his artistic voice, often bewildering fans and the media with sudden changes in musical direction, bands, songs, guitar style, tone and physical appearance."

The documentary, which will debut footage to potential buyers at the European Film Market, had unprecedented access to "extensive personal archive of classic performance clips, on- and off-stage footage, iconic photos, concert posters, handwritten letters, drawings and personal diary entries," producers said.

A Life in 12 Bars will chart Clapton's rise from Bluesbreaker to guitar god to three-time Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee and his many projects in between. The film also provides an introspective look into personal turmoil Clapton faced, including his drug addictions and the 1991 death of his son.

"It is indeed a melancholic victory lap, full of nostalgic myth, but always musically potent, always looking to the future,” Zanuck added. “Despite the fact that his path is strewn with tragedies, addiction and loss, he never fails to regain his bearings and continue to serve what he holds dearest: his music."
No release date for the documentary has been announced.

[www.rollingstone.com]

Interesting, the Wheres Eric website has mentioned ongoing work on an Anthology film type project for a number of years by film maker Larry Yellon.
This may be the same, not sure.

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jlowe
Interesting, the Wheres Eric website has mentioned ongoing work on an Anthology film type project for a number of years by film maker Larry Yellon.
This may be the same, not sure.

I'm hoping it is

Would love to see a well done doc about the guy. He's certainly lived many lives. For a good 10 year period there (mid-late 60s to mid 70s) almost every year was a completely different Eric. Not that he's a Keith Richards, but its truly amazing he's lasted this long, and still playing with such proficiency.

Mars bars?

Yesterdays show at MSG review

[www.nydailynews.com]

I love Eric like i love Keith, but he really needs to call it a day now.
Seen him twice recently and he is just too old and too tired to give a great performance. I'd like to remember the great man like this.

[www.youtube.com]

[www.youtube.com]

5.10 in. best soulful solo ever
[www.youtube.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-09-08 23:11 by stone4ever.

LEGEND!

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Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

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stone4ever
I love Eric like i love Keith, but he really needs to call it a day now.
Seen him twice recently and he is just too old and too tired to give a great performance. I'd like to remember the great man like this.

[www.youtube.com]

[www.youtube.com]

5.10 in. best soulful solo ever
[www.youtube.com]

Well its weird. Cause as you linked, he was still pretty damn good with Winwood and that wasn't that long ago. Hitting 70 though I think it is time to hang it up. Since the 90s he's always been borderline boring, and I mean that nicely, which has only become more evident as he ages. Still a beast when he wants to be.

That trailer looks awesome. It is amazing how much he's done. And then how much he went through. Overcoming drugs, overcoming alcohol, then your son dies?! Its insane and its miraculous he's come out rather normal after all that and all these years of music. He's kinda the only one that survived it all. Sure Keith and the Stones have too, but Clapton was at that same level as a Jimi Hendrix and has managed to stick around. Truly up there with the legends of that time, unquestionably.

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RollingFreak

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stone4ever
I love Eric like i love Keith, but he really needs to call it a day now.
Seen him twice recently and he is just too old and too tired to give a great performance. I'd like to remember the great man like this.

[www.youtube.com]

[www.youtube.com]

5.10 in. best soulful solo ever
[www.youtube.com]

Well its weird. Cause as you linked, he was still pretty damn good with Winwood and that wasn't that long ago. Hitting 70 though I think it is time to hang it up. Since the 90s he's always been borderline boring, and I mean that nicely, which has only become more evident as he ages. Still a beast when he wants to be.

That trailer looks awesome. It is amazing how much he's done. And then how much he went through. Overcoming drugs, overcoming alcohol, then your son dies?! Its insane and its miraculous he's come out rather normal after all that and all these years of music. He's kinda the only one that survived it all. Sure Keith and the Stones have too, but Clapton was at that same level as a Jimi Hendrix and has managed to stick around. Truly up there with the legends of that time, unquestionably.

Time flies by because believe it or not it was 9 or 10 years ago that Clapton played with Winwood. He would have been 62 then. There is a big difference between playing live at 62 years of age compared to his 72 years today. He has had a tough life and its catching up with him, but he had a second life, a second chance. Settled and married with two lovely grown up daughters now.

Yes he was consistently and arguably the best guitarist after Hendrix.
I just love the man, he comes a close second to the Stones for me.
I know many see him as boring but that's just because they don't realize where that guitar comes from in Eric, its all from the heart, the man is just gold.

Looking forward to the new Eric documentary, i remember years ago there was a great Melvin Bragg Documentary series , The South Bank Show. Eric was brilliant in it and had this fantastic blues sessions with Buddy Guy. Ronnie Wood was in a later edition of the same program and he just came across as so shallow. Same with his biography, it was just Ronnie boasting about all the famous people he came into contact with. Really Ronnie, is that it for you lol.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2017-09-09 02:29 by stone4ever.

The one time Eric gets to blow Ronnie off the stage, and boy does he deliver.
Nothing boring about this performance. Man can you imagine what the Stones would have sounded like if they chose Eric to replace Taylor instead of Ronnie.
[www.youtube.com]

Yes, Eric has certainly had a roller coaster of a life.
In addition to the 'issues' already listed, he had to deal at an early age with the realisation that his 'Mother' was actually his Granny. And his 'Sister' was his Mother...and it was uncertain who his actual Father was.
(Actually Jack Nicholson experienced the same thing, but he's a bit like Mick and has generally sailed through life).

Eric also lost quite a few friends (as did Keith of course)...victims (?) of the drug scene.

What I like about Eric is what he has achieved outside of music: setting up the Crossroads rehab facility and the many hours of his own time he has put in for Counselling work. Well deserving his CBE.

long live slowhand.

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stone4ever
The one time Eric gets to blow Ronnie off the stage, and boy does he deliver.
Nothing boring about this performance. Man can you imagine what the Stones would have sounded like if they chose Eric to replace Taylor instead of Ronnie.
[www.youtube.com]

Too many notes...

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Koen

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stone4ever
The one time Eric gets to blow Ronnie off the stage, and boy does he deliver.
Nothing boring about this performance. Man can you imagine what the Stones would have sounded like if they chose Eric to replace Taylor instead of Ronnie.
[www.youtube.com]

Too many notes...

Perhaps, but at least they're in the right key and he hits the right notes...unlike Ronnie's playing in general.

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

There's a couple posters above who think that Eric Clapton should just "hang it up" and retire, but they just don't understand.

In the 1990s, I was working alongside WWII veterans, just working class folk who didn't want to stop working. They could have. They had their houses, their pensions, their Social Security... but they didn't have their activity. So they kept on working.

It was light but steady manual labor, but they just had to do it.

One of them was born in 1918, but he took his cue from the old farmers who had lived to a ripe old age: "Just keep movin', that's all."

He kept working until age 78, until major heart surgery forced him to stop. Another of these guys wouldn't stop until diabetes made him go blind.

Have you ever seen a working class laborer stop working when they're finally forced to? They'll be used to waking up at an early pre-dawn hour, they'll have coffee and read the newspaper, then by 7 a.m. they're ready for their first beer.

Well, that's the thing also with the working class and rock and roll. Eric Clapton could have retired in 1971, with all those royalties earned since, and been living as comfortably as now and forever on, so why doesn't he?

Do you think he does it just for the applause?

Only sedentary, middle class office workers "retire".

Better learn to appreciate the dogged determination these English Post-War working class musicians give to their craft, even now, because when they're gone, we'll never see the likes of them again, and fan message boards dedicated to middle class generation X and Y bands will just be virtual ghost towns, with their album every five years mentality.

Oh, and by the way, Eric Clapton in later years is suffering from a serious nervous disease, "peripheral neuropathy": [www.washingtonpost.com]

That's fine Stonehearted and i agree with every word you said but Eric still charges a lot of money for people to see him play. To be honest i felt hard done by.
The man is a shadow of what he was even a few years ago.
Yes play on Eric, but do it for charity or something, hey just charge enough to cover your expenses, because you are not worth the money you charge today.
Basically he's overpriced.

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stone4ever
The one time Eric gets to blow Ronnie off the stage, and boy does he deliver.
Nothing boring about this performance. Man can you imagine what the Stones would have sounded like if they chose Eric to replace Taylor instead of Ronnie.
[www.youtube.com]

Yeah, would have been boring.
Jeroen

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stonehearted
There's a couple posters above who think that Eric Clapton should just "hang it up" and retire, but they just don't understand.

In the 1990s, I was working alongside WWII veterans, just working class folk who didn't want to stop working. They could have. They had their houses, their pensions, their Social Security... but they didn't have their activity. So they kept on working.

It was light but steady manual labor, but they just had to do it.

One of them was born in 1918, but he took his cue from the old farmers who had lived to a ripe old age: "Just keep movin', that's all."

He kept working until age 78, until major heart surgery forced him to stop. Another of these guys wouldn't stop until diabetes made him go blind.

Have you ever seen a working class laborer stop working when they're finally forced to? They'll be used to waking up at an early pre-dawn hour, they'll have coffee and read the newspaper, then by 7 a.m. they're ready for their first beer.

Well, that's the thing also with the working class and rock and roll. Eric Clapton could have retired in 1971, with all those royalties earned since, and been living as comfortably as now and forever on, so why doesn't he?

Do you think he does it just for the applause?

Only sedentary, middle class office workers "retire".

Better learn to appreciate the dogged determination these English Post-War working class musicians give to their craft, even now, because when they're gone, we'll never see the likes of them again, and fan message boards dedicated to middle class generation X and Y bands will just be virtual ghost towns, with their album every five years mentality.

Oh, and by the way, Eric Clapton in later years is suffering from a serious nervous disease, "peripheral neuropathy": [www.washingtonpost.com]

I'm going to see Clapton tonight at The Forum in L.A. I paid a lot of money for FOS seats. I'm not going to be disappointed. Even "if" his guitar playing were diminished, he still has one of the best voices ever in rock music. Anyone who thinks this man is overpriced or should hang it up is just bitter and jealous in my opinion. All humans become diminished over time. I've had friends who were in their 40's and 50's die, and people have the NERVE to bitch about someone in their 70's? I bet they wouldn't do that about their own parents.

Eric is now doing slower, less incendiary music, and I think it suits him perfectly. I actually think that his music is improving as he's aging. Listen to his latest album, it's great from start to finish. He's at his peak for what he does. And, he was on fire at the last Crossroads Guitar Festival. On fire...

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reg thorpe
Yesterdays show at MSG review

[www.nydailynews.com]

"Clapton's legacy has already been cemented, rendering a subdued, middling performance such as Thursday night's as superfluous".

Hmmm not so good sounding.

I had a ticket to Wednesdays show at the Forum in L.A., but unfortunately had to miss it. Seems I didn't miss much, but still wish I could have been there as it might have been the last opportunity to see him.
Will savor the memories of all the past shows that I did see, several of which rank near the top of best concerts experiences I've ever had - ARMS Benefit '83 being just one of them.

_____________________________________________________________
Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

That time Eric Clapton auditioned for — and was rejected by — the Band

'I thought, my God, these guys are real serious," the guitar icon says.



Eric Clapton in a still from his new doc, Life in 12 Bars. (Tiff.net)

By Jesse Kinos-Goodin

Eric Clapton admits to not remembering much from large chunks of his legendary career — drinking and drugs will do that — but he vividly remembers the first time he heard the Band's Music from Big Pink.

"I was given an acetate of Big Pink back in England and it shook me to the core," he said during a press conference at the Toronto International Film Festival to promote his doc, Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars. "I was in Cream at the time with already the notion that it wasn't going in the right direction, and I thought, well this is what it is. I knew who Robbie Robertson was but I didn't realize that was their group. I thought they just appeared. I thought they were all from the Mississippi Delta."

So Clapton, doing what Clapton does, ventured out to test the waters and see if he could be a part of what the Band was doing in Woodstock, N.Y., even though he was technically still in Cream. As Robertson writes in his memoir, Testimony, Clapton called them up and asked if he could visit Big Pink, the house they were writing and recording in. "Eric was such a gentleman when he arrived, and pleased to be in our surroundings," Robertson wrote. "All of us lived quite privately, and I hoped Eric wouldn't find it too low-key and boring."

Clapton describes their first encounter as a clash of two cultures: he in bright bellbottoms and a frilly blouse, the de facto uniform of the hippie era, and the band dressed like they just came off the line in the factory.

"They were magnificent heroes for me," Clapton said. "And so I went up to jam with them, and it's [the] same sort of thing that happened with the Aretha [Franklin] sessions: I show up with all this paraphernalia on, the guys are all in work clothes, and I thought, well, are we going to jam? They said, 'We don't jam, we write songs and play the songs.' ... I thought, my God, these guys are real serious."

Clapton admitted many years later when he was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame that his intention was, quite frankly, to join the Band, although according to Robertson in his memoir, he never quite gathered the courage to do it. "I jokingly asked if he was suggesting that we could have two guitar players, or did he want to take my job?" he writes. "He never answered."

While Clapton didn't join the Band, he did go on to form Derek and the Dominoes and work with another rock icon, Duane Allman, whose distinct guitar work became a key sound on hit songs such as "Layla."

As for the Band, Clapton remained friends with the members and still credits The Basement Tapes and Music from Big Pink as a huge influence on his career.

"They were craftsmen, and they got it right," Clapton said. "Everything went on that record when it was right. Robbie is still a dear friend — I will see him soon — and that changed my life."

[www.cbc.ca]

Review from the L.A. Times for the Wednesday show at the Forum - the show I unfortunately couldn't attend:

Eric Clapton at the Forum: Was it dullness or was it bliss?
Mikael WoodMikael WoodContact Reporter Pop Music Critic

I have no trouble understanding why Eric Clapton keeps threatening to retire from the road.
There’s the nerve damage he says makes it painful for him to play guitar. There’s the time away from his family, whose love he’s described as the thing he was always searching for. And not least there’s the fact that whenever he performs, he can’t get offstage without playing “Tears in Heaven,” the plaintive pop hit he wrote in the early 1990s about the tragic death of his 4-year-old son. Who in his right mind would want to relive that horror every night? Yet there he was Wednesday at the Forum in the first of four concerts through Monday, two of which had been rescheduled from March, when Clapton canceled at the last minute due to sickness — one more reason he might understandably call it quits at age 72. Why do it then? After watching the show, I’m no closer to knowing than I was when I walked in, which in a weird way may have been the show’s strength.
With some floor seats priced at $500, money is a motivator, of course, just as it is for plenty of other classic rockers, including those who made millions playing last year’s insanely lucrative Desert Trip festival.
And perhaps Clapton feels the need to drum up interest in a new documentary about his life that premiered this week at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Beyond those pragmatic concerns, though, he seemed almost blissfully undriven as he moved through a set meant to encapsulate his half-century in music, from his early days playing the blues with the Yardbirds through stints in Cream and Derek and the Dominos and onto stardom as a solo act. (Before he reached Los Angeles, Clapton brought the same show to New York’s Madison Square Garden and London’s Royal Albert Hall.) At the Forum, he wasn’t showing the kids how it’s done, like the Rolling Stones at Desert Trip. He wasn’t demonstrating his creative fortitude, like Bob Dylan with the standards albums he won’t stop releasing.
And though Clapton ripped some impressive solos — and laid into his wah-wah pedal for a noisy “White Room” — he wasn’t sticking up for the idea of the electric guitar at a moment when the instrument has lost much of its talisman-like power.“Maybe the guitar is over,” he reportedly said during a news conference in Toronto.

Am I making the concert sound dull? Some of it was, particularly the blues stuff, which lacked the energy the music needs. “Cocaine” also felt very blah — an irony the song’s author, the late J.J. Cale, may have appreciated, even if it didn’t make the main riff sound any less creaky. But in the best parts of Wednesday’s gig, Clapton seemed to reach some kind of zen state that rendered his ambitions and his calculations irrelevant; he was playing because playing is what he does. Backed by a slick yet unfussy band that featured bassist Nathan East and drummer Steve Gadd, Clapton gave “Lay Down Sally” an eternal-groove quality, as though we’d just happened to check into the tune at that moment. To start “I Shot the Sheriff,” Clapton played a long, ambling intro, in no hurry to get to the song’s catchy chorus. Even “Wonderful Tonight,” that once-creamy ballad used and abused by countless wedding DJs, had a lightness to it that you can also hear on Clapton’s last few studio albums — including the one called “Old Sock,” which says everything about his belief in low-impact activity. Remarkably, that soft touch extended to “Tears in Heaven,” which I’d have thought Clapton might try to get through quickly, wary of getting sucked into its quicksand. Instead, he hung around for a few minutes in the song, which he’d rebuilt with a delicate reggae arrangement. For a guy so eager to bail, he looked like he had nowhere else to be.

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Rip this joint, gonna save your soul, round and round and round we go......

Good review. Balanced and reflective.

Eric Clapton Talks Addiction, Cream's Brilliance, the Future of the Guitar

The guitar icon looks back on his turbulent history, as chronicled in new doc 'Life in 12 Bars,' and ahead to what's next

[www.rollingstone.com]

I am looking forward to seeing this on Showtime Network
looked for a date, none I could find as of yet.

Need to see him again! Last (and only) time was in 1990 for the Journeyman tour and...it wasn't great, he seemed "absent" (boozed up to be honest), not a great memory.

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IORR Links : Essential Studio Outtakes CDs : Audio - History of Rarest Outtakes : Audio

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35love
I am looking forward to seeing this on Showtime Network
looked for a date, none I could find as of yet.

Saturday night Feb 10

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filstan

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35love
I am looking forward to seeing this on Showtime Network
looked for a date, none I could find as of yet.

Saturday night Feb 10

Thank you!
Seems all the good stuff (series new seasons I watch) all coming after new year.