Sidelined by Eric Clapton’s “Tears in Heaven” song lyrics

April 25, 2025

Sharifu

So there I was, making my morning coffee. I popped on some headphones, hit the play button on the right ear muff not knowing what music would come on, as one does, and then proceeded to watch water boil as I came into consciousness. Then came out of nowhere these beautiful lyrics accompanied by great acoustic guitar…

“Would you know my name
If I saw you in Heaven?
Would it be the same
If I saw you in Heaven?”

— Eric Clapton, Tears in Heaven

I was like, “what? Excuse me?” Talk about a loaded statement…. one that I clearly did not have the context of, nor did I really understand.

I imagined friends talking and I thought “of course you’d know your friend’s name in Heaven.”

But it still didn’t make sense…

So I hit Google with a “tears in heaven lyrics meaning” query and damn, when I heard the story, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This might be the saddest song I’ve ever heard - and not in a bad way - in a beautiful way. A way that captures something real and meaningful and personal; this is what songs can only hope to do.

Brace yourself

The song is about Eric Clapton losing his 4 year old son. Ahh, to die so young, now the first verse made sense… Would they even remember you? Would they meet you with the same glee a son meets their father with, years and years later presumably, in heaven?

A single day before the accident that took young Conor Clapton’s life, nzherold.co.nz says that Eric had taken his son out for the first time on his own to the Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. There was clowns, elephants… Conor was over the moon and Eric had discovered the joy of being a father. He told his wife Lory…

“from now on, I intend to be a proper father”

Biographer Philip Norman remarks “That sawdust-scented afternoon showed [Eric] what he’d been missing.

On the tragic day of the incident, and lets be sensitive enough not to lay blame here, a janitor was working on a window in their high-rise apartment and had left it open.

The janitor called out to warn the nanny looking after Conor, but the boy ran past her before the information could register…

Conor was in the habit of leaning against that window to look out.

I just can’t imagine having the best thing in life slip out of your hands so suddenly.

After the funeral, Eric Clapton had received a letter in the mail.

Before the incident, Conor asked his mother ‘Mommy, I want to write to daddy. What should I write?’

The letter simply read “I love you, dad.”

CONFESSION

I’ve always found it a touch bland when I see really talented musicians do cover after cover after cover after cover… nothing original.

Songs, for me, are really personal to the artist(s) that write them. Perhaps it’s a skill to write so vaguely that anybody can resonate with a song. But for me, the good stuff is personal.

At the same time, if one ever hopes to write something great, they should really look to great songs.

“Tears in Heaven” is an incredible song. It starts like a puzzle that makes you want to discover the context. And when you do, those lyrics hit like a truck.

The song can make you feel something without the context as well and with that mellow tone, it seems so harmless, casual in a way…

It moved me to share the story anyway.

Lets learn GUITAR together.

What song are you thinking about?