As many people know, 79-year-old Eric Clapton lost his young son in a terrible freak accident, leaving him devastated.
Few people are aware, however, of the artist’s heartbreaking last vow to his 4-year-old son.
“He would still be alive if I hadn’t looked at the fax.”
On March 20, 1991, Eric Clapton’s life was permanently altered by a terrible tragedy: the death of his four-year-old son, Conor, in a horrifying accident.
Conor fell from a Manhattan apartment window on the 53rd floor when he was in New York with his mother, the Italian actress Lory Del Santo. Conor raced by an open window that had been left unlatched after a maid had just finished cleaning, and in a tragic moment, he plunged to his death.
“They had left the window open. Lory said that Eric was in route to get Conor.
Before I went to see how Conor was doing, I checked out the fax machine after hearing it. It was just a few seconds after the hour when I arrived. He was gone. He would still be alive if I hadn’t looked at the fax.
Conor’s life ended in one of the most tragic ways possible only a few weeks before his fifth birthday. When Clapton received the news, he hurried to the site, even though he was elsewhere in New York at the time.
“Eric froze solid when I told him what had happened.” He seemed to have suddenly stopped working. He didn’t say anything. It was all so unreal. When Conor died, the relationship between Eric and me died,” Lory said.
At the time of the tragedy, Eric Clapton and Lory Del Santo weren’t together. Lory had full custody of their son, and she and Conor traveled to New York to spend Easter with Clapton.
On March 19, the day before the tragedy, Clapton took Conor to the circus on Long Island — their first time spending a full day alone together.
Clapton had excitedly purchased circus tickets, looking forward to making special memories with his son —never realizing it would be their last day together.
”That sawdust-scented afternoon showed him what he’d been missing,” wrote biographer Philip Norman, author of Slowhand: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton.
”When they returned to the apartment, with Conor chattering excitedly about the clowns and elephants, Eric told Lory that, from now on, he intended to be a proper father.”
Clapton also had hopes of bringing both Conor and Del Santo to London to live with him. The rock star was looking forward, ready to enjoy more time with his kid. He had promised him a trip to the Bronx Zoo the following day, followed by lunch at a neighboring Italian restaurant. That morning, while Lory got dressed and Conor ran enthusiastically about the flat, filled with the pure delight of a kid, disaster struck.
But regrettably, disaster happened.
Devastated by bereavement, Clapton walked away from the public eye. Along with Conor’s maternal relatives from Italy, Eric Clapton carried his son’s corpse home from New York in the agonizing days after Conor’s passing in order to get ready for the burial.
Conor was buried at Ripley, a little hamlet in Surrey, England, which is Clapton’s homeland. Clapton grew up in Ripley, which is around 25 miles southwest of London and has always had a special place in his heart.
Overwhelmed by his sorrow, Clapton fled to Antigua after the funeral and rented a little home, where he lived alone for over a year. He spoke about how, as a coping mechanism, he lost himself in music and seldom spoke to anybody.
I became hooked to this small Spanish string guitar I had when they went. I traveled to Antigua, leased a little cottage in a village, and spent about a year there playing this guitar and swatting mosquitoes all day while attempting to cure myself and avoiding much interaction with the outside world,” he said.
Music became his haven throughout that period. He repeatedly performed and rewrote songs in an attempt to find a way to let his emotions out. Clapton remembered, “I was able to come out because all I could do was write and play these songs, and I re-wrote and re-performed them over and over again until I felt like I had made some sort of move towards the surface of my being.”
He eventually turned his grief into music by working with Will Jennings to co-write Tears in Heaven. Originally composed for a movie’s soundtrack, the song turned into one of his most intimate and heartfelt compositions, serving as a means of grieving and preserving Conor’s memory.
In the midst of this terrible loss, Clapton also got a letter from Conor, which broke him much more. With assistance from his mother, Lory Del Santo, the little child had penned his first letter to his father only days before to the disaster. Tragically, the message didn’t reach Clapton’s London residence until after Conor had away.
Lory remembered that heartbreaking moment vividly: ”The baby had learned to write a few words and he said to me, ‘Oh mummy, I want to write a letter to daddy, what shall I write?’ “Well, write, I love you,” I said to him. That was written by him, and we sent it out like any other letter.
Eric and I traveled to London for Conor’s funeral after he passed away. I was there when, shortly after the burial, Eric checked his mail and saw that it contained Conor’s letter. I will never forget that moment.