As listeners, we become somewhat anaesthetised to the pain of our favourite musicians, and we hear them sing about love, heartbreak and betrayal so often that we almost take for granted the real-life experiences that inspired the songs, but when it comes to Eric Clapton, there is truly no understating the gravity of his trauma.
When he sang “Would you know my name / If I saw you in Heaven?” on ‘Tears In Heaven’, Clapton wasn’t curiously speculating on the state of mortality and the potential afterlife; he was asking his late song a deeply existential question as a means of coping with the crippling trauma of his death. Because on March 20th, 1991, Clapton’s son Conor tragically died after falling from a 53rd-floor New York City apartment window.
A shocking and almost unprecedented level of trauma not only shook the ground Clapton walked on, but that of his contemporaries too, who all galvanised in the wake of the tragedy. While Clapton’s own song was a fitting tribute for Conor, his friend Phil Collins felt compelled to similarly write a track in honour of Clapton and his late song.
“I wrote the lyrics for ‘Since I Lost You’ for Eric,” he explained. “Eric was dry at the time, and I told him one of my concerns: that the easiest thing for him to do after this terrible loss would be to start drinking again. He said that, no, ‘that would be the hardest thing’. In the studio the next day, Mike, Tony and I, all of us good friends of Eric’s, are talking about this unimaginable tragedy.”
He continued, “We’re working on a new piece of music. I start singing a lyric: ‘My heart is broken in pieces.’ Lily turned two earlier that same week, and I’m thinking of all the times I’m separated from her. I write from the perspective of a dad who is often a long way away from his kids and who has to entrust their care to others. It’s a gnawing feeling that’s always preyed on me. I’ve long said to all my kids, ‘Remember when you’re crossing the road: stop, look both ways. I know it sounds dopey.”
Honouring the privacy of his friend’s trauma, Collins revealed how he ran the song by Clapton himself, checking that the deep-rooted feelings being excavated in his own music didn’t run too close to the bone. But rather unexpectedly, Clapton had beaten Collins to the punch, revealing that he had written a song himself.
“Then he says that he’s written a song,” Collings remembered. He continued, “His label want to release it as a single. He’s not sure, so he wants my opinion. Eric plays me ‘Tears in Heaven‘. It’s a beautiful song. In his grief, Eric has pulled together something extraordinary. Another reason to love him.”
Collins continued on with his track and released it on Genesis’ 14th studio album, We Can’t Dance, which ultimately became his last with the band.
The record itself received overwhelming success and was crammed with a catalogue of lead singles, meaning ‘Since I Lost You’ fell more humbly into the background of the release, which, to Collins’ mind, was the most respectful outcome.
