(Credits: Far Out / YouTube Still)
Sun 19 October 2025 19:30, UK
Eric Clapton has always been the kind of artist that thrives on the live performance aspect of music.
At this point, the ‘Clapton is God’ comparisons may have worn out their welcome with him, but it’s not that much of a stretch to consider him one of the originators of everything that a guitar hero was supposed to be. But for all of the great music that he’s written, he knew that the softer moments meant as much to him as the face-melting solos that earned him that title in the first place.
Although much of Clapton’s greatest work has been about interpreting those that came before him, it’s not like he was ever trying to outdo the legends by any means. He could only bring his own interpretation to that kind of music, but as soon as he started to see what the other singer-songwriters were doing around him, he realised there was a lot more for him to explore that didn’t necessarily have to be about the struggles of life or a woman treating him wrong.
And while a lot of the records Clapton made around that time could be a little too mellow for the guitar-focused crowd, it’s not like he didn’t have his fair share of highlights. His version of ‘Cocaine’ is solidified in rock history for a reason, ‘Wonderful Tonight’ will forever be on wedding playlists until the end of time, and even when working in the 1990s, albums like Pilgrim and Journeyman served as a reminder of the kind of artist he could be without a blues lick every few seconds.
For any guitar nerd, though, the happy middle ground was always going to be his Unplugged record. Hearing him strip down ‘Layla’ was a fantastic way of updating one of his classics, and even his interpretations of ‘Nobody Loves You When You’re Down and Out’ is fantastic for what it is. But for anyone that has suffered the way he has, many people in ‘Slowhand’s shoes would have been mortified having to play ‘Tears in Heaven’ more than once.
It’s bad enough for him to get one performance of the song down after his son’s tragic passing, but when hearing him play on Unplugged, it wasn’t simply a sad father grieving in public or anything. This was someone looking to celebrate the life of his son that was taken from him way too soon, and hearing him honoured in that way was all that he could have hoped for.
Many other fans might have considered this a harrowing experience, but Clapton knew that performing it was part of the healing process for him, saying, “The song ‘Tears In Heaven’…you could think that that would be a different song to want to go back to but, the whole sentiment of that song is…joyful is the not the right word but…emotionally it’s very moving, and it’s a quite human and vulnerable place to go. I think that’s important. I think allowing an audience to experience the artist’s vulnerability is probably the most valuable thing you can give them.”
And as far as tribute songs go, you’d be hard pressed to find one as heartfelt as this, either. Not many artists can turn that kind of pain into pure gold, but Clapton was the kind of person that was able to take the basis of a tragedy like this and turn it into a healing mechanism for anyone that has had to struggle with their own losses in life.
In essence, most of the song serves its purpose for Clapton the same way that ‘Here Today’ does for Paul McCartney. Both tunes serve as tributes to important people in their lives, but even if it’s difficult for them to get into that headspace again, it’s better for him to let that emotion out than have it eat away at them for years on end.
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