Eric Clapton opened up on how he dealt with the heartbreak of his son’s death, after the four-year-old tragically fell 53 floors to his death through an open window of an apartment building.
The harrowing incident inspired the music star’s hit song Tears in Heaven, and led him to break away from the spotlight while he and his family grieved their heartbreaking tragedy. Conor Clapton, Eric’s son, passed away in 1991, but the celebrity opened up on how he dealt with his death 30 years later.
Eric Clapton’s son died in horrific accident
Eric Clapton’s son tragically died after he climbed through an window left open after janitorial work was done in the skyscraper.
His ex-wife Lory said it wasn’t until after Conor’s death that Eric met his reality.
She said in the past: “The tragedy is that the day he finally realized what Conor meant to him was just the day before our son died.”
Before his death, Lory and Conor had arrived in New York to spend Easter with the celebrity, who took his son to the circus on Long Island. She says, Eric looped so ‘happy’, and was excited to be more hands on with his son.
But ‘fate broke this’ when the accident took place the following dat at her friend’s apartment.
Lory had taken a bath to get ready for a day out at Central Zoo with her son Conor and Eric Clapton. The nanny was also there, while the janitor was cleaning the apartment.
When she came out of the bathroom, she received a fax with an estimate for repair work and starting looking into it. She says she heard Conor running around playing hide and seek with the nanny, who was right behind him.
She told his unofficial website: “But as Conor run into the room where the janitor was cleaning, the janitor stopped her to tell here that he had slid open the window – a huge wall of glass. In the second she stopped to listen to what he was saying, Conor ran straight through the window. I heard a dreadful scream, but it wasn’t Conor.
“It was the nanny, I ran into the room, shouting more and more hysterically, “Where’s Conor, where’s Conor?” Then I saw the open window and I understood at once.
“I felt all my strength leave me and I collapsed on the floor.”
Singer found out in tragic phone call
Eric said in a 1992 interview he found out when he received a tragic phone call.
“The first I knew was a telephone call from their apartment,” he explained.
“I was actually getting ready to go out of the hotel room to go and pick him up for lunch. Lory was on the other end of the phone, and she was hysterical, saying he was dead. And I could not let myself believe it.”
Lory said: “Eric arrived five minutes later, not realizing Conor had fallen to the street below. He came into the bedroom and I screamed, “He’s dead.” His eyes went dark and he said, “Dead, he’s dead. It’s impossible.”
“He found it hard to believe at first.
“Then his face turned to stone; it was like a film. We said absolutely nothing to each other. I just stopped functioning.”
Eric Clapton and Lory have never ‘spoken about their son’s death’
“The glass was about 4ft by 6ft tall and as we were staying there temporarily, I never knew it was even possible to open it,” the mother said.
“It wasn’t a window, but like a glass wall which was never, even meant to be opened. It was kept permanently locked, but the lock was broken and for some incomprehensible reason, the janitor swung it open to let in some fresh air. It had a wooden ledge a foot off the ground.
“Our son must have thought the glass was still there when he jumped onto the low ledge, a foot off the ground. At first, I wanted to kill the janitor. He had no common sense. He never even asked for forgiveness later.”
Lory added: “I kept thinking of ifs… if I hadn’t stopped to read the fax, I would have seen the window open and closed it. From that moment on, I ceased to live. The concierge called the ambulance, but obviously there was no hope. Eric went to see him at the mortuary, but I just couldn’t.”
She continued: “To this day we have never ever spoken a word about what happened. We haven’t even mentioned Conor’s name. We don’t need to because there are no words – we just both know.
“He wrote a song, Tears in Heaven, about it which was his way of dealing with the grief, but I have never heard this song, nor do I ever want to.”
Star isolated himself away from the world for a year
Eric Clapton told BBC Radio, after his son’s funeral, he didn’t have much contact with anyone for 12 months.
He said: “I had, I brought him [Clapton’s son] home from New York with the Italian side of his mother’s family, and we went through the process of the funeral, and when they left.
“And that I had this little Spanish guitar, I became attached to that. And I went away. I went off to Antigua, and I rented a little cottage there, in a sort of a community.
“And I just swatted mosquitoes all day and played this guitar and stayed there for almost a whole year without much contact with the outside world.”
While he tried to ‘heal himself’, all he did was play and write songs. He would rewrite and re-perform them over and over.
After, he was able to ‘come out’ after being ‘so deep’. However, when a documentary of his life released in 2017, more than 25 years later, it brought the ordeal back to the surface.
He said: “I had thought that I had taken care of it until I saw [the 2018 movie] ‘Life in 12 Bars.’
“And it’s very disturbing for me, but beautiful at the same time, the way it’s handled in the film. The footage I haven’t seen of him before, which is difficult to watch, with the underlying music.
“And playing ‘Tears in Heaven,’ I mean, it’s overwhelming, and I’ve got to go and do it again…”
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