The Heartbreaking Reason Eric Clapton Stopped Performing This 1992 Hit During His Live Shows

In 1992, Eric Clapton released “Tears In Heaven”. Written for the soundtrack to the film Rush, Clapton wrote “Tears In Heaven” with Will Jennings. The song is about the heartbreaking accidental death of Clapton’s four-year-old son, Conor, when he fell from a 53rd-floor window of a New York City apartment building.

“Tears In Heaven” says, “Would you know my name if I saw you in heaven? / Would you feel the same if I saw you in heaven? / I must be strong and carry on / Because I know I don’t belong / Here in heaven.”

A No. 1 single for Clapton, the singer performed “Tears In Heaven” for more than a decade. But in 2004, Clapton no longer included the song on his set list for a deeply personal reason.

“I didn’t feel the loss anymore, which is so much a part of performing those songs,” Clapton explains. “I really have to connect with the feelings that were there when I wrote them. They’re kind of gone, and I really don’t want them to come back, particularly. My life is different now. They probably just need a rest, and maybe I’ll introduce them for a much more detached point of view.”

What Eric Clapton Says About Writing “Tears In Heaven”

In 2007, Clapton released an autobiography about his life and career. In the book, he opened up about writing the song, following the devastating loss of his son.

“Musically, I had always been haunted by Jimmy Cliff’s song ‘Many Rivers To Cross’, and wanted to borrow from that chord progression,” Clapton says. “But essentially, I wrote this one to ask the question I had been asking myself ever since my grandfather had died. Will we really meet again? It’s difficult to talk about these songs in depth; that’s why they’re songs. Their birth and development is what kept me alive through the darkest period of my life.”

“When I try to take myself back to that time, to recall the terrible numbness that I lived in, I recoil in fear,” he continues. “I never want to go through anything like that again. Originally, these songs were never meant for publication or public consumption; they were just what I did to stop from going mad. I played them to myself, over and over, constantly changing or refining them, until they were part of my being.”

One of Clapton’s biggest hits, Jennings says commercial success as a songwriter was far from his mind when they wrote “Tears In Heaven”.

“I was so involved in the sensitivity of the subject, and I didn’t even think about that,” Jennings maintains. “I’m passionate about all the songs I write, but it was just in another place entirely, another category.”

Photo by Phil Dent/Redferns