The “very personal” song Eric Clapton struggled to record: “Went through five incarnations”
The worst thing you can give to any artist is a deadline. Music tends to come and go without any set schedule half the time, and the minute there’s a due date on when an album is supposed to come out, suddenly, there are many more expectations beyond just having enough to fill out a record. You now have to make sure whatever you put is authentically yourself, but Eric Clapton was going to wait years before ‘My Father’s Eyes’ was perfect.
Although Clapton was always known for playing some of the best blues music known to man, he slowly started to turn towards easy-listening territory once he reached the 1990s. His Unplugged record had broken down the door for what ageing rockers could do in a performance setting, and the amount of hearts that were won by hearing the acoustic version of ‘Layla’ is probably far too many to count.
While many Clapton purists may have preferred that he cut to the chase and plug in his guitar again, ‘Slowhand’ was coming from a much more personal place this time around. Having already lost his son in a tragic accident in the years leading up to the album Pilgrim, Clapton had written ‘My Father’s Eyes’ as a tribute to his child.
Speaking with Guitar World, Clapton had been working on the song based on his relationship with his own father, saying, “’My Father’s Eyes’ is very personal. I realised that the closest I ever came to looking in my father’s eyes was when I looked into my son’s eyes.” Clapton was always one to sing what was in his heart, and just knocking out a recording wouldn’t suffice.
After countless rewrites, Clapton thought that the version he had written was far too childish to let go of. Even though the song is meant to reflect the innocence that any father has when thinking about the way they can see their parents in their kids, making the whole thing a sob story wasn’t something Clapton was that interested in.
When laying down the final track, Clapton eventually went through countless takes before settling on something that felt right, explaining, “‘My Father’s Eyes’ was the hardest song to record on the album…[It] went through five incarnations in the making of this record, and I would veto it each time and say each wasn’t good enough. Now, I actually think subconsciously I just wasn’t ready to let it go because it meant – on some level – letting go of my son.”
‘Tears in Heaven’ is the most identifiable track that Clapton wrote about his son’s death, but ‘My Father’s Eyes’ might actually be the better composition. Since it’s a bit more lively than the acoustic classic, hearing Clapton with a bit more energy feels like he’s picking himself up a little, even though he’s having to go through problems that no parent should face.
Compared to other Clapton love songs, this is the first time he feels like he’s crying out in pain, almost praying for a day when he can see that look in his son’s eyes just one more time. A piece like that might seem impossible to let go of, but by releasing his pain into the world, Clapton created a gift that the entire world could embrace when dealing with their own problems.
