Eric Clapton may be one of the most celebrated and respected musicians in the world, but behind the dazzling career and the iconic guitar riffs lies a heartbreak so profound it continues to shape his life and his music to this day.

The rock legend experienced an unimaginable tragedy on March 20, 1991, when his four-year-old son Conor died in a freak accident in New York City. The young boy fell from the 53rd-floor window of a Manhattan apartment in a moment that shattered Eric’s world forever.

Just a day earlier, Eric had made a heartfelt promise to Conor’s mother, Italian actress and model Lory Del Santo. The couple, who had been engaged briefly before going their separate ways, had been co-parenting their little boy, with Lory having primary custody. 

On that fateful March afternoon, Eric was preparing to take his son on their first solo outing together. He had bought circus tickets and was eager to create memories, not knowing they would be their last.

“That sawdust-scented afternoon showed him what he’d been missing,” wrote biographer Philip Norman, author of Slowhand: The Life and Music of Eric Clapton. “When they returned to the apartment, with Conor chattering excitedly about the clowns and elephants, Eric told Lory that, from now on, he intended to be a proper father.”

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Eric was making plans. He was excited to spend more time with his little boy. The following day, he had promised Conor a trip to the Bronx Zoo and lunch at a local Italian restaurant. But that morning, as Lory prepared for the day and Conor bounced about the apartment with the joyful anticipation only a child can have, fate intervened.

A janitor arrived to clean the large windows of the Galleria apartment in Midtown Manhattan, where Lory was living with her new partner, film producer Silvio Sardi. As Eric made his way through the city to collect his son, the unthinkable happened. 

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One of the cantilevered windows had been left open. Conor, impatient to see his father, ran excitedly into the living room. In a split second, he leapt onto the low window ledge where he often pressed his nose to the glass — but this time, there was nothing there. In an instant, the little boy was gone.

The moment is seared into Lory’s memory, and for Eric, the shock was paralysing. Lory had to call him with the devastating news. In disbelief, Eric could only manage a broken, “Are you sure?” before calmly putting down the phone and walking the seven blocks from his hotel to the Galleria, praying there had been some kind of mistake.

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Speaking candidly to People, Eric later recalled the surreal horror of that morning. “I remember putting the phone down and calmly walking from my hotel to that place as if nothing happened,” he said. 

“And I walked past the street and, this is a terrible thing of shame for me, which I’ll never, ever perhaps recover from… seeing that crowd of people and a paramedic van and knowing that he was there, trying to be resuscitated… and walking by. I’ll punish myself forever about why didn’t I run? Why didn’t I go to see him? The truth is I couldn’t. I was so frightened.”

Conor was laid to rest in the peaceful churchyard of St Mary Magdalen in Ripley, Surrey, not far from where Eric himself was born. His funeral took place on March 28, just two days before Eric’s 46th birthday. Among those who came to offer their support were fellow music legends George Harrison and Phil Collins.

The pain of losing his son would stay with Eric forever, but it also led to the creation of one of his most hauntingly beautiful songs: Tears in Heaven. 

Written as a tribute to Conor and a means of working through his grief, the track became a global hit and won three Grammy Awards. But for Eric, the success was bittersweet. The song was a window into his soul, a vulnerable moment laid bare in melody.