That was the Year That Was… Farewell 2025!
It’s hot here in the South China Sea and you catch me walking back from a performance in the Wheelhouse Bar aboard the Diamond Princess!! It’s been an interesting year, lots of adventures, travels, gigs and bopping back home to see my family in between! Reflecting back on what has occurred, I have selected a few choice images to describe the crazy year that is about to end…
My Guitar Heroes
When you achieve something and think that you finally arrived, there always seems to be one extra hurdle to get across the finish line. At least that's my experience. When I decided to be a professional guitarist at age 19 I imagined it would be hard to make a living as a musician however I underestimated how hard it is. If I could go back and tell my younger self what the future holds I'd make a lot of changes. I'm sure some of you feel the same, right?! Firstly, I would've taken the opportunity to get my A-level in Music, gone to university and studied to have a better grounding in my subject. Instead, naïvely, I thought I could learn all I needed to by myself. I bought many books on Music, jazz play alongs, I listened to as much music as I could in different genres I took my teachers advice of working with as many different musicians as possible.
Eric on the Constellation: SHOWTIME
The stage was set, the band rehearsed and EQ’d by the sound guy and the lights were being programmed. There was a wait until the show started in the evening and I was a little nervous. I knew my parts and I was a little worried that I would forget some of the lyrics. However, after a practice again in my cabin, I was confident that I would put on a good show. I was quietly excited. This was a big thing for me, I'd taken a long time to develop the show in conjunction with my agent and tested it on Princess cruises while I was employed as a guitar of vocalist. The entertainment team there had been very supportive of my show and the audience who had witnessed the birth of the show loved Eric Clapton. In fact, whenever I played Eric Clapton on a cruise ship, I got such a great response…
Eric on the Constellation: The Rehearsal
Getting into the theatre wasn’t as easy as you might think, up in the lift, all the way along the deck to the far end and then through a very heavy door, down some steps, through a tight gap between the bar and some fixed chairs… through a curtain, down another couple of stairs and finally into the backstage area! Not the easiest with my heavy cases. However, later I was to discover there was an easier route, but my newness to Celbrity Cruises meant I was yet to find out.
I was early. The stage crew were there wheeling the piano into position and running cables so I asked where I was to stand and started setting up my equipment. Got the guitars out of their cases and started tuning up. One by one the musicians arrived…
Eric on the Constellation (3)
The day of my first show arrived as ship ported in Naples, Italy. I had been practicing in my cabin the last few days and felt well prepared so I took a walk out into the city in the morning. I was determined to sample a real Italian coffee and after applying sun-block factor ‘never’ (my pasty white skin always burns) and revealing my legs for the first time in a long while, I headed out. The weather was really hot and it felt good to get some vitamin D. One thing that took me by surprise about Naples was not its interesting architecture or the throngs of people, but the level of pollution.
Eric on the Constellation (2)
The wait for my performance was about a week. This gave me plenty of time to get used to the new ship, the way it worked, what I could and couldn’t do and how guest entertainers operated while sailing around Mediterranean Sea. One issue was washing!
Eric on the Constellation
It was May and I was sitting in Heathrow eating a decent fry-up and drinking as many cups of coffee as I could manage. I managed about three. Luckily it was coffee o’clock, which seems to happen to be any time of the day for me. So, high on caffeine the flight to Rome was very pleasant apart from a little turbulence on landing. The next day I would be joining the…