Richard Clapton (born 18 May 1948) is an Australian singer-songwriter-guitarist and producer. His solo top 20 hits on the Kent Music Report Singles Chart are "Girls on the Avenue" (1975) and "I Am an Island" (1982). He reached the top 20 on the related albums chart with Goodbye Tiger (1977), Hearts on the Nightline (1979), The Great Escape (1982) and The Very Best of Richard Clapton (1982). Clapton's highest-charting album, Music Is Love (1966–1970) (April 2021), peaked at number 3 on the ARIA Chart.
As a producer he worked on the second INXS album, Underneath the Colours (1981). In 1983, he briefly joined the Party Boys for a tour of eastern Australia and their live album, Greatest Hits (Of Other People) (1983), before resuming his solo career. Australian rock music historian Ian McFarlane described Clapton as "one of the most important Australian songwriters of the 1970s." On 12 October 1999, Clapton was inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) hall of fame. In August 2014 he published his memoirs, The Best Years of Our Lives.
Career
Early years
Richard Clapton was born on 18 May 1948, however his birth name is elusive. When the artist changed his birth name in the mid-1960s, he used the last names of two of his music heroes, Keith Richards and Eric Clapton. Speculation over his age has varied: an article in Who magazine (1996) gives his birth year as 1951, while Ian McFarlane's Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop (1999) has 1949. In a 2002 interview with The Ages Warwick McFadyen, he described himself as being 50-something.
Clapton's mother was a night nurse at a Sydney hospital and his Australian-Chinese father was a doctor—they had a volatile relationship and divorced when Clapton was two years old. During his childhood, Clapton had no contact with his father and lived with his mother, who had mental health problems. She would periodically place him in care until she committed suicide when he was aged ten. Clapton met his father at her funeral and was subsequently enrolled in a Sydney boarding school, Trinity Grammar, at Summer Hill. As an adolescent he listened to the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, and was given his first electric guitar by a school friend's father. He cites Richard Wherrett—his house master and English teacher at Trinity who later became a theatre director—as an early mentor.
In 1965, Clapton formed Darktown Strutters with Ross Andreasen, Mick Bradley, Will Fowler, Dennis Hunter, Ross Lamonde and Ian Peepman. He left school in his final year without completing his mathematics examination. He played guitar while training as a commercial artist in the 1960s. He raised enough money to board ship, in late 1967, to London where he played with three locals in a pre-punk group. This was followed by a group with four North Americans who were raided by the police for marijuana importing. His visa had expired and he moved to Germany, where he played in a band, Bitch; he worked solo in folk clubs and on streets busking. Clapton, as guitarist and vocalist, was a member of Sopwith Camel (not the United States band of same name), with Burghard Rausch on drums and Michael Günther on bass guitar (both members of krautrock group Agitation Free). Clapton emerged in the early 1970s as a singer-songwriter in the "troubadour" style of Neil Young and Jackson Browne.
1972–74: Debut album: Prussian Blue
In March 1972, Clapton returned to Australia from Rotterdam via SS Orcades. He signed a publishing deal with Essex Music and a recording deal with Infinity Records, a subsidiary of Festival Records. His debut single, "Last Train to Marseilles", was released in October of that year. Clapton was backed by Red McKelvie on guitar (ex-the Flying Circus), Kenny Kitching on pedal steel, John Capek on piano (ex-Carson) with John Bois on bass guitar and Tony Bolton on drums, both from Country Radio (see Greg Quill). At the end of the year he briefly joined a jazz-rock group, Sun, for six weeks into early 1973—he replaced their previous lead singer, Renée Geyer.
Clapton's debut solo album, Prussian Blue, appeared in November 1973—it included "Last Train to Marseilles" from a year earlier—and was produced by Richard Batchens (Blackfeather, Sherbet). Two more singles were issued, "All the Prodigal Children" in October and "I Wanna Be a Survivor" in July 1974. On "Hardly Know Myself" and "I Wanna Be a Survivor" Clapton was backed by the La De Das, with other tracks variously featuring McKelvie, Glenn Cardier on guitar, Russell Dunlop on drums, Mike Perjanik on organ, Trevor Wilson and Mike Lawler on bass guitar and Ian Bloxham on percussion.