RADIONET.COM
1999
RADIONET.COM
1999
Eric Clapton made a surprising appearance at Rob Reiner's Story of Us press weekend at Beverly Hills' Four Seasons Hotel last weekend. Well, perhaps not so surprising. Clapton, after all, provided the music for the forthcoming film.
"I just saw Bruce [Willis, who co-stars in the film with Michelle Pfeiffer] in the lift and told him how I saw The Sixth Sense and it's a great film," Clapton told Reiner, as he joined the filmmaker for an impromptu chat with a few reporters. Reiner's film is a seriocomic look at a couple in the 15th year of their unraveling marriage. Clapton composed the score, a plaintive crooning of a song called "(I) Get Lost" that's heard throughout the film, an echo to the couple's sometimes bitter battles.
"I feel very overwhelmed by the whole experience [of composing]," Clapton said, "and didn't come to L.A. for any of this. I have a place out on the beach I'm refurbishing.
"Rob asked me to do the music —
"'Do whatever you want to,'" Clapton said Reiner told him regarding the score. "That's irresistible to someone with my kind of ego!"
Reiner calls their collaboration "amazing" and spoke of "the incredible way this occurred."
"First," he said, "I thought, 'Who should do it?' I wanted a unique single voice with a guitar. I don't know Eric, I never met him and I wrote him a letter after contacting his person here in L.A. who said, 'Just write him a note and send him the tape [of the movie].' I've been a huge fan since before Cream, which makes me very old."
When Reiner didn't hear from Clapton he presumed the letter was never received and called the singer's office in London where "This woman in his office said, 'I'll find out and call you next week' and five minutes later, I'm not kidding, there is this DAT on my desk and a note that said, 'I hope you can use this in your film.'
"This is amazing how perfect it fits, this theme that examines the struggle of a marriage. Then I said, 'We need something to celebrate marriage,' and he said, 'I'll think about it.'
"Then he comes to LA with his two guitars, one gut string and one steel string, and made it up in the studio for eight hours. We were there for 10 [hours] and of that he literally played for eight hours."
Clapton, who is a nominee to be inducted into the Rock
and Roll Hall of Fame next year, shrugged off Reiner's hosannas. "It was that
interim space of just watching the movie and figuring what I could add to it."
As he watched Willis and Pfeiffer fight, he figured, "It was this loggerhead
situation where no one would back down and these two people are in a war zone
and I thought, 'When is someone going to apologize?' I'd make up the apology
and I wondered, is this the right thing to do? Because it's stating the obvious.
And I didn't know if Rob would like it. The last thing he may have wanted was
adding another dimension to the character of the film —
"It's the first time," Clapton added, "I've had that much freedom and encouragement to explore what I thought was a good idea."
"One line," Reiner noted, "is, 'You get lost inside your tears and I get lost in my fears that I'll be nothing without you.' That's the thing, the fear of expressing what you feel because maybe if it doesn't work you'll be nothing."
Before he left, Clapton was asked if perhaps he had a possible symphony on marital discord, having done other versions of the score he'd rejected for the one he liked, with the rest back in a drawer.
"I can't work like that, it's against all my principles to rehash it," he explained. "It's what gives it its strength; it's what I saw onscreen absolute and this is just what came from my heart. I didn't even meet Rob until it was written."
The film is currently slated for an Oct. 15 release.
"(I) Get Lost" will appear on Clapton Chronicles: The Best of Eric Clapton,
currently scheduled for an Oct. 12 release on Reprise. —
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