Eric Clapton recalls pleading with Mick Jagger not to seduce his girlfriend

Eric Clapton says that he pleaded with Mick Jagger not to seduce his girlfriend away from him in the late 1980s, prior to Jagger's affair with her. Clapton writes about the incident, among many other things, in his new book Eric Clapton: The Autobiography, which has just been published.

Clapton recalls how, while recording his 1989 Journeyman album, he fell in love with a 21-year-old Italian model, referred to only as Carla. Clapton writes, "While (our affair) was still going strong, the (Rolling) Stones came through town on their Steel Wheels tour. Carla asked me if I would take her to see them. We went to the show and afterwards I took her backstage to meet the guys. .... I remember saying to Jagger, 'Please Mick, not this one. I think I'm in love.' In the past he had made several unsuccessful passes at (my former wife) Pattie (Boyd), and I knew Carla would appeal to his eye. For all my pleadings, it was only a matter of days before they started a clandestine affair."

He went on to say that, "After Carla had stood me up a couple of times, I got a call from the girl who had introduced us, telling me Carla was seeing Mick and it was serious. The obsession gripped me for the rest of that year, and took some grisly turns when I found myself guesting with the Stones on a couple of shows, knowing she was lurking in the background."

Clapton said that although the affair definitely hurt his relationship with Jagger in the short run, he and Jagger are on good terms now: "The deception involved in her affair with Jagger drove a deep wedge between me and him, and for a while I found it hard to think of him without malice. Later on, of course, I quietly felt both gratitude and compassion towards him, first for delivering me from certain doom, and second for apparently suffering such prolonged agony in her service."

As companion to the autobiography, excerpts of which had been published in The London Times, a compilation album called Classic Clapton was released this week, featuring 36 hits from the course of his career, including Cream's "Sunshine Of Your Love," Blind Faith's "Presence Of The Lord," and Derek and the Dominos' "Layla," and such solo hits as "After Midnight," "Let It Rain," "Lay Down Sally," "Wonderful Tonight," and "Tears In Heaven," among others.

Clapton says that the adulation he's received for his guitar playing has been embarrassing for him at times: [ Click to listen if you have a backstage pass] "In terms of my guitar playing, yeah, I just thought it was all blown out of proportion. You know, I never saw myself as being that much better than anybody, really. I mean, I just saw myself as being another guitar player who knew a little bit about, you know, the history of it all. I didn't ever really see myself as being particularly gifted, so it was very difficult to absorb all that kind of early adulation."

Eric Clapton will appear on CNN's Larry King Live! on Friday (October 12th).
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