Teresita Cruz-Del Rosario: The pain of Amy Winehouse, the triumph of Eric Clapton

Watch Amy Winehouse on YouTube: “Stronger Than Me” (2.2 million views); “Love is a Losing Game” (5.5 million views) or “You Know I’m No Good” (12 million views).
I’ve listened to “Love is a Losing Game” at least 50 times today in about 5 different versions: live, acoustic, demo version and recorded version with full musical back-up.

Her best rendition is Live a Radio Deejay (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf0rBv3M20M) with a singular electric guitar player. He sits a slight distance away from her. His notes are jazzed up, the diminished 7th, 9th, and 13th chords running up and down the fret board to mute an otherwise fully-loaded chord progression. It’s wonderfully subtle, never overpowers her voice and allows her tenderness to come through. Amy sings as though she’s savoring an afternoon drizzle and she isn’t battling anything or anyone.

Watch her move stealthily across the booth, or fiddle on a stool while adjusting her headphones. Hear her voice, strong like stone, a swelling river rushing to meet the ocean, sometimes a soft downpour. She astounds you.

This talent is one of those rare gifts the world has been blessed with. A deep baritone voice, whose texture isn’t just for singing, but for wailing, as though there emanates such unspeakable emotions from her underbelly that only she could know.

And then you witness the demons that must have gripped her, appearing drunk onstage in Serbia last March, using the four-letter F word when straight language failed her. In “You Know I’m No Good”, she wraps her tongue around the lyrics with swaggering emphasis:

I cheated myself,
Like I knew I would,
I told ya, I was troubled,
You know that I’m no good.

That her life had to end so sadly, so abruptly, even before she could ripen, is so reminiscent of others who, at 27, also died when the world was applauding their talent: Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison.

And then there’s Eric Clapton, the rock star of the Flower Power generation, my generation, the generation of rebellion, of disquiet, of dangerous experimentation, protest and counterculture.

Eric Clapton rose to phenomenal heights as a musician at 18 when he cut his first single with The Yardbirds. A wizard with the electric guitar such that the graffiti “Clapton is God” sprayed by an anonymous fan on a London subway become legendary in the musical world.

And very troubled maybe like Amy Winehouse was.

His mother was impregnated at 16 years old; he never knew his father and believed his mother to be his sister until she left to remarry, only to return with a half-brother. It was only then that he discovered who he really was.

Eric Clapton flunked his art classes and withdrew into the world of blues music. It could only have been the blues. It was the genre that allowed him to plumb the depths of his own private world -- one that was painfully raw, desolate, throbbing with rejection from the two people who brought him into the world but abandoned him. Like Amy Winehouse, drugs and alcohol were the two substances that lulled him into feeling smooth and easy, if only for a while, he wrote in his 2007 autobiography. He was deeply discontented amidst the fame and the money. He flirted with death and discontent, but each time, he pulled himself back from the edge.

Watch him play “Cocaine” on YouTube -- 16.1 million views. It’s a simple three-chord progression that celebrates a deadly drug. It takes a full 1.12 minutes before he launches into the main body of the song. He plucks angrily at the guitar strings as he stirs his audience into frenzied clapping. During the long solo riffs with his trademark black Stratocaster, he plays with utmost precision, never once going off-beat or off-key, even though gripped by the power of the habit he has since kicked and forsaken.

But Eric moved beyond the hurt inside, though not without the struggle. He chronicled it through his music. He wrote “Holy Mother” in the 1970s as a musical plea for sobriety, to be redeemed from the tentacles of alcoholism. In 2003, Luciano Pavarotti, the world-renowned tenor, staged a concert entitled SOS Iraq. Eric, clean-shaven and crisply dressed, stood on stage with Mr. Pavarotti, a full orchestra and a chorus of hundreds of children, sang “Holy Mother” again -- a fabulous mix of opera and rock, so post-modernly courageous as Pavarotti belted out the song in the tradition of an aria, while Eric jammed with the orchestra. The sting and the struggle were gone, the solo riffs were clean, and the passion for perfect music dominated the evening.

Eric’s complete redemption happened in 1991. “Tears in Heaven” was the song that etched his artistic greatness in the firmament of music. His son, Conor, then four years old, plunged to his death when he accidentally jumped from the open window of a 53rd story of a Manhattan apartment. Eric was a broken man. Many expected him to return to self-destruction via drugs and alcohol.

Surprisingly, he remained sober and instead wrote his most brilliant music. For the song and the album that he wrote at the moment of his deepest grief, he swept the Grammy Awards in 1993 and thanked his son for “the song and the love he gave me.” He later played before an enthralled audience that witnessed the pain still etched in his forehead as his voice crackled over the lyrics:

Time can bring you down
Time can bend your knees
Time can break a heart
Have you begging please, begging please

“Tears in Heaven” has been viewed 27,674,614 times on YouTube. The numbers spiral upward each time I visit the site (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AscPOozwYA8&feature=related). Elton John has reworked the song as a background for fundraising efforts for the December 2004 tsunami. Many other artists joined the chorus, and “Tears in Heaven” has become immortal. A few days ago, YouTube followers dedicated it as a memorial song to the victims of the Norway rampage.

Eric himself has built an alcohol treatment center in Antigua and has auctioned many of his favorite guitars, raising millions for the center. He has become a man for others.

It has been a long journey for Eric Clapton, now 65 years old. Every year, he graces the stage all over the world to bring music to his fans who have followed his life and his catharsis.

I watched him in Singapore and Hong Kong early this year. Whichever way he sings “Layla,” “I Shot the Sheriff,” or “Wonderful Tonight,” the songs that endure through generations, his fans see a musician who continues to generously gift the world with his imagination. He hasn’t faltered, he is never lazy nor perfunctory. The playing is perfect to the very last note.

Even while many of us know he need not do this. After all, he has millions and the happiness of a wife and four daughters.
But he does pursue every song with singular determination because he respects his fans and is grateful for his blessings. Watch him in concert as he sings “Change the World,” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGDIxcuPT7s) the song that won him the Grammy Award in 1996, to raise money for the rehabilitation center in Antiqua and to celebrate a musical life built on endurance, faith, and triumph:

If I could change the world
I would be the sunlight in your universe
You would think my love was really something good
Baby, if I could, cha-a-a-a-nge ---- the world.

If we can help it, the likes of Amy Winehouse should not happen again, just as Eric Clapton helped himself.

(Teresita Cruz-del Rosario is Visiting Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. She was formerly Assistant Minister during the transition government of President Corazon Aquino. She has a background in sociology and social anthropology and specializes in development and development assistance, migration, governance, and social movements. She plays the guitar and piano, and is a fan and follower of Eric Clapton. She can be reached at [email protected])