Clapton’s ailing half-brother dreams of duet
On a sun-baked afternoon in the heart of Canada’s poorest neighbourhood, one-time Vancouver musician Fast Eddie Fryer slowly crosses Hastings Street to discuss his deteriorating health, his passion for guitars and his famous half-brother, rock legend Eric Clapton.
It is a death march of sorts as the severely hunched Fryer — cane in his left hand — feebly crosses the busy street to help set the record straight on having bloodlines with a rock icon and his own “end-stage” cirrhosis of the liver.
Awkwardly he climbs the stone steps at the Carnegie Centre in the epicentre of Vancouver’s infamous Downtown Eastside and sits down at a table that overlooks the homeless and hurting who shuffle like zombies around Main and Hastings.
In telling his story, Fryer asks for respect toward his multimillionaire Grammywinning half-brother — and a good, hot meal.
Despite reports of his demise and substandard living conditions, Fryer feels his health problems are being properly addressed and he is well cared for at his rooming house.
“They have been very much responsible for getting my medical condition under control,” said Fryer of his subsidized “medical” housing.
It was the spring of 1998 when Fryer first found out his biological father was also father to Eric Clapton.
As a Canadian soldier stationed in England during the Second World War, Edward Fryer Sr. had a wartime romance with Patricia Clapton.
She was eventually left to raise the future guitar whiz on her own, when Fryer moved into a new phase of his life after the war and began touring North America as a dinner club piano player.
Soon after discovering his lineage 17 years ago, Fast Eddie remembers how he was hounded by the press and just wanted to be left alone to deal with his own musical career — and his own demons.
Fryer at the time admitted he had an addiction to heroin and his long-term goal was to get clean and sober and resurrect his music career.
For both Fast Eddie and Eric, drug addiction early in their careers was a common thread.
Clapton made a muchpublicized full recovery from heroin addiction and continued with his career. Fast Eddie wasn’t so fortunate.
Hoping to meet and ultimately live his dream and jam with his famous brother, Fryer left the squalid conditions of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside in 1999 and moved to North Carolina where his sister resided. He started a band and, as he gained control of his life, kept in touch with Clapton through letters.
“We became popular with the college crowd,” he recalls of his fleeting musical career.
Eventually, Vancouver again beckoned and Fryer moved back. The last time Fast Eddie played a major gig was in July 2009, when his band, Eddie Fryer and the Lost Tribe, played at a concert in Nakusp. Ironically, he recalls that two members of the original Yardbirds played the Nakusp concert along with Steppenwolf and Colin James.
While there, he didn’t want to make it known his half-brother was one of the original Yardbirds.
“I kept it very hushhush,” he said. “I did not want to be known as ‘Eddie Fryer the half-brother of Eric Clapton.’ ”
Working hard to rebuild his musical career, Fryer recalls one of his proudest moments: He sent Clapton a demo tape of his work, and soon received a surprising hand-written letter from him.
“He played it, and right away he wrote me a personal letter where he said he played the CD and it blew him away. Yes, he liked it and I sent him a letter back just to say I was glad you were able to get an opportunity to see what your brother’s music was like.”
Eventually, Fryer was convinced he would in time meet Clapton — even play together — but then the wheels fell off his bumpy ride to sobriety.
“I relapsed on heroin,” he points out sadly.
If he can get the tendons in his hand fixed so he can again hold a guitar, Fryer would be thrilled to live out his dream and play with Clapton.