Eric Clapton didn’t realize how bad things had become for him as his 1981 U.S. tour began. He jokingly owned up to being an alcoholic but had no idea he really was one. He thought the pain in his back was the result of an over-enthusiastic welcome from a drinking buddy. He knew he was spending a lot of money on drugs too — £1,000, the modern equivalent of over $11,000 a week — but thought his management would warn him if it really got out of control.
They didn’t. No one did. It seemed like Clapton was such a vehement character that no one dared tell him he was well into the red in terms of finance, health and possibly even creativity. His new album, Another Ticket, seemed better than some of his recent work — but the fact was, he didn’t care.
“I just thought, ‘Well, as long as I can play… I’ll just stay alive long enough to play,” he told Classic Rock many years later. But he nearly hadn’t — on March 13, 1981, just after he’d played his seventh show of a 57-date run, his body finally failed.
“I collapsed in agony as I came offstage in Madison, Wisconsin,” Clapton wrote in his 2007 autobiography. “We flew to St. Paul, Minnesota, where Roger [Forrester, tour manager] had me rushed to a hospital. I was diagnosed with five bleeding ulcers; one was the size of a small orange. The doctors told Roger, who wanted to fly me back to England, that I could die at any moment since one of the ulcers was pressing on my pancreas, and could burst imminently.”
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