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Eric Clapton is acknowledged to be rock's greatest virtuoso, the unrivalled master of its most essential tool, the solid-body electric guitar.

Clapton transfigured three of the 1960s' most iconic bands - the Yardbirds, Cream and Blind Faith - walking away from each when it failed to measure up to his exacting standards. He was the only outsider be an honorary member of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, and the studio musician of choice for solo superstars from Bob Dylan to Aretha Franklin. No life has been more rock 'n' roll than Clapton's in his epic consumption of drugs and alcohol, his insatiable appetite for expensive cars, clothes and women - most famously revealed when he fell in love with Pattie Boyd, the wife of his best friend, George Harrison, and the inspiration for 'Layla'.

With the benefit of unrestricted access to family members, close friends and fellow musicians, and his encyclopedic knowledge of Sixties music and culture, Philip Norman has created the definitive portrait of this brilliant insecure, often pain-racked man. Slowhand reads like a textbook account of all the pathologies of the rock-star life: promiscuity, infidelity, heroin addiction, alcoholism -- Victoria Segal * SUNDAY TIMES * It has taken a biographer as perceptive and clear-sighted as Philip Norman to do Clapton justice ... Despite everything, you end up liking Clapton, and feeling as if you know and understand him. It is proof that Norman's biography has done its work -- Will Hodgkinson * THE TIMES * As usual, the masterful biographer Philip Norman has unearthed countless fascinating details -- Mark Mason * DAILY MAIL * On a mission to expose the music of the US south to a new audience in as pure a form as possible, [Clapton] captured the raw emotion of the sound he loved enough to transfix his young listeners. A generation was discovering an alien language with which they instinctively felt at home. That cultural leap - which began with conversations in record shops, coffee bars and art schools, and eventually swept the world - is one of the key stories of the last century and is always worth re-examining, as Philip Norman does in this biography of one of the movement's pioneers * THE GUARDIAN * Solid and sad -- Helen Brown * DAILY TELEGRAPH Music Books of the Year * Lucid -- Peter Aspden * FINANCIAL TIMES * Many unexpected details have been unearthed by an author painting a vivid picture of a man whose extraordinary career has been carved out of his ability "to conjure magic from a slab of electrified wood" -- Russell Newmark * THE BEAT * Extraordinary stories ... the entire tale, including how, miraculously, late in life Clapton learned to function as a normal, civilised person, enjoying a long and apparently faithful second marriage, is told with wonderful vividness -- Trevor Hodgett * ROCK N REEL *

Slowhand: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton