Eric Clapton Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
70 free Eric Clapton trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Eric Clapton trivia quiz covers six decades of Slowhand, from the Yardbirds and "Clapton is God" through Cream, Blind Faith and Derek and the Dominos to Unplugged, Tears in Heaven and the Crossroads Centre. The easy questions cover the bands, Pattie Boyd, "I Shot the Sheriff", the White Album solo and Blackie. Medium questions dig into Disraeli Gears, the Dirty Mac, Duane Allman, the Layla poem, Hazelden, Phil Collins and the Grammys. The hard and expert questions are for people who own the box sets: the Hoyer guitar, the Roosters, Kingston art college, Golden Beach, TDF, the Comic Relief No. 1, the Vanessa Williams chart block and Bonnie Bramlett's co-write. Every answer was checked against a reference page and each question carries its citation, so the dates, chart positions and names can be trusted. Difficulty is shown on every question, which makes it easy to build a round for a classic-rock quiz night or play the whole set. When you finish, try our Beatles, Cream and other guitar-hero quizzes.
30 of 70 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Clapton grew up believing that his mother was which relative?
His sister
His sister, he was told: his mother was only 16 when he was born, so her own mother and stepfather raised him as their son. He was still a boy when he learned who she really was.
Q 02Clapton's father, a soldier posted to England in the Second World War, came from which country?
Canada
Canada: Edward Fryer, who played piano in pubs while posted in England, went home before his son was born, and Clapton never met him. The absence runs through his 1998 song 'My Father's Eyes'.
Q 03Which band did Clapton quit in 1965 just as the pop single 'For Your Love' became its first big hit?
The Yardbirds
The Yardbirds had been a blues band, and Clapton, a purist, thought the single unacceptably commercial, so he walked out as it climbed the charts. The band coped: two more future guitar heroes followed him through its ranks.
Q 04How did Clapton get his famous nickname?
A pun on the slow handclap during string changes
A pun on the slow handclap during string changes: when a string snapped he stayed on stage to fit a new one, and the waiting crowd clapped slowly. His manager at the time turned the jeer into a nickname.
Q 05Which session guitarist turned down the job of replacing Clapton in 1965 and suggested Jeff Beck instead?
Jimmy Page
Jimmy Page passed the job to a friend he had known since his teens, then joined the same band himself a year later. When it fell apart in 1968 he rebuilt it as Led Zeppelin.
Q 06Which bandleader's group did Clapton join in 1965, producing the album fans call "The Beano Album"?
John Mayall
John Mayall's 1966 record got its nickname from the cover, where Clapton sits reading a copy of the children's comic. By the time it reached the shops, he had already left to form Cream.
Q 07Which three-word slogan about the young guitarist was sprayed on walls around London in the mid-1960s?
Clapton is God
Clapton is God was long thought to be a fan's work, but in 2016 Clapton said he suspected a put-up job by a man who worked for his old band's manager. He had earlier said the slogan embarrassed him.
Q 08Who were Clapton's two bandmates in the power trio Cream?
Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce
Ginger Baker and Jack Bruce already loathed each other: the drummer had fired the bassist from their previous band. Clapton agreed to join only if Bruce came too, and the trio lasted barely two years.
Q 09Which 1967 Cream album opens with the single 'Strange Brew'?
Disraeli Gears
Disraeli Gears owes its name to a roadie who, talking about racing bikes, said it when he meant derailleur gears. The band found the slip so funny that they put it on the cover.
Q 10Cream's live hit 'Crossroads' reworked a 1936 song by which bluesman?
Robert Johnson
Robert Johnson cut it in a Texas hotel room. Legend says he met the devil at a crossroads and traded his soul for his talent, though the song's own words never mention any such bargain.
Q 11Which Cream single did Clapton write with a Beatle, who played on it billed as "L'Angelo Misterioso"?
Badge
Badge owes its title to a mistake: Clapton misread the word "bridge", which his co-writer had jotted on the song's notes. The title has nothing to do with the lyrics.
Q 12Clapton played the lead solo on which Beatles White Album track?
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
While My Guitar Gently Weeps nearly went without him: Clapton protested that nobody ever plays on Beatles records. His presence put the quarrelling band on its best behaviour, and he went uncredited.
Q 13Which Rolling Stones guitarist played bass in the Dirty Mac, John Lennon's one-off 1968 supergroup with Clapton?
Keith Richards
Q 21Who is officially credited with co-writing "Layla" for its piano coda?
Jim Gordon
Jim Gordon alone shares the credit with Clapton, but Rita Coolidge, his girlfriend at the time, has long said the piano melody came from a song the two of them wrote together.
Q 22At which Miami studio was Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs recorded with producer Tom Dowd?
Criteria Studios
Criteria Studios went on to revive another career: Clapton urged the Bee Gees to try recording in Miami, and their sessions there produced "Jive Talkin'" and their reinvention as a disco band.
Q 23Which Hendrix song did Derek and the Dominos record as a tribute just days before Hendrix died?
Little Wing
Keith Richards swapped guitar for bass, with Jimi Hendrix's drummer Mitch Mitchell behind them. The Stones shelved the TV special they played it for, so the performance went unseen for decades.
Q 14Blind Faith, Clapton's 1969 supergroup, featured which singer-keyboardist?
Steve Winwood
Steve Winwood's new band debuted at a free concert in Hyde Park and took its only album to No. 1 in Britain and America, then fell apart within a year.
Q 15Which Blind Faith song was the first for which Clapton wrote both the words and the music?
Presence of the Lord
Presence of the Lord was his own song of thanks, yet Clapton did not sing it. He left the lead vocal to a bandmate.
Q 16Clapton's first solo album yielded a US No. 18 hit with a cover of which J. J. Cale song?
After Midnight
After Midnight changed its writer's fortunes: J. J. Cale, by his account dirt poor at the time, heard the cover on his car radio. Its success led to his first album.
Q 17Where did the "Derek" in Derek and the Dominos come from?
A pianist friend's nickname for Clapton
A pianist friend's nickname for Clapton: Tony Ashton had taken to calling him Derek, or Del, though accounts of who picked the band name differ. Clapton wanted to blend into a group, not headline one.
Q 18Which guest guitarist added slide guitar to the Derek and the Dominos album Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs?
Duane Allman
Duane Allman froze mid-solo when he spotted Clapton in the front row of an Allman Brothers show in Miami. Clapton then had him into the studio, and he played on most of the album.
Q 19In the Persian poem that inspired "Layla", what becomes of Majnun when he is kept apart from Layla?
He goes mad
He goes mad, and the name says so: Majnun is an Arabic word for crazy or possessed. The tale of a love he could not have struck a chord with Clapton.
Q 20"Layla" was written about Clapton's unrequited love for whose wife?
George Harrison's
George Harrison's marriage to Pattie Boyd ended and she went on to marry Clapton, yet the two guitarists stayed close friends.
Little Wing was meant to honour a living guitar hero, but Hendrix never heard the recording: he died days after the session, weeks before the album came out.
Q 24Which fellow rock star organised the 1973 Rainbow Concert to help Clapton kick heroin?
Pete Townshend
Pete Townshend coaxed his friend back on stage after nearly two years away, assembling an all-star backing band and putting on two shows in a single day.
Q 25Who wrote "I Shot the Sheriff", the cover that gave Clapton his first US No. 1?
Bob Marley
Bob Marley's song almost stayed on the shelf: Clapton doubted he could do it justice, and his band had to talk him into putting the cover on the album.
Q 26Clapton's album 461 Ocean Boulevard is named after the house he stayed in while recording it in which US state?
Florida
Florida: the rented house stood in Golden Beach, near Miami. The album ended three years in which heroin had kept Clapton out of the studio.
Q 27On which 1977 album did "Wonderful Tonight" and the J. J. Cale cover "Cocaine" appear?
Slowhand
Slowhand carries a song Clapton insists is anti-drug. To make the point he later took to adding the words "that dirty cocaine" when he played it live.
Q 28Clapton wrote "Wonderful Tonight" while waiting for Pattie Boyd to get ready for whose Buddy Holly party?
The McCartneys'
The McCartneys' party had the couple running late: Boyd kept trying on outfits, so Clapton picked up a guitar to pass the time. By the time she was ready, he had the song.
Q 29Which three Beatles were guests at the 1979 party celebrating Clapton's marriage to Pattie Boyd?
George, Paul and Ringo
George, Paul and Ringo did more than turn up: they got up together for an impromptu jam. The wedding itself had taken place weeks earlier in Tucson, Arizona.
Q 30At which American treatment centre did Clapton check in for alcoholism in January 1982?
Hazelden
Hazelden, in Minnesota, did not take the first time: Clapton backslid, went into treatment again and counts his sobriety from 1987.