Richard Clapton (born 18 May 1948) is an Australian singer-songwriter-guitarist and producer. His solo top 20 hits on the Kent Music Report Singles Chart are "Girls on the Avenue" (1975) and "I Am an Island" (1982). He reached the top 20 on the related albums chart with Goodbye Tiger (1977), Hearts on the Nightline (1979), The Great Escape (1982) and The Very Best of Richard Clapton (1982). Clapton's highest-charting album, Music Is Love (1966–1970) (April 2021), peaked at number 3 on the ARIA Chart.
As a producer he worked on the second INXS album, Underneath the Colours (1981). In 1983, he briefly joined the Party Boys for a tour of eastern Australia and their live album, Greatest Hits (Of Other People) (1983), before resuming his solo career. Australian rock music historian Ian McFarlane described Clapton as "one of the most important Australian songwriters of the 1970s." On 12 October 1999, Clapton was inducted into the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA) hall of fame. In August 2014 he published his memoirs, The Best Years of Our Lives.
Richard Clapton was born on 18 May 1948, however his birth name is elusive. When the artist changed his birth name in the mid-1960s, he used the last names of two of his music heroes, Keith Richards and Eric Clapton. Speculation over his age has varied: an article in Who magazine (1996) gives his birth year as 1951, while Ian McFarlane's Encyclopedia of Australian Rock and Pop (1999) has 1949. In a 2002 interview with The Age's Warwick McFadyen, he described himself as being 50-something.
Clapton's mother was a night nurse at a Sydney hospital and his Australian-Chinese father was a doctor—they had a volatile relationship and divorced when Clapton was two years old. During his childhood, Clapton had no contact with his father and lived with his mother, who had mental health problems. She would periodically place him in care until she committed suicide when he was aged ten. Clapton met his father at her funeral and was subsequently enrolled in a Sydney boarding school, Trinity Grammar, at Summer Hill. As an adolescent he listened to the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan, and was given his first electric guitar by a school friend's father. He cites Richard Wherrett—his house master and English teacher at Trinity who later became a theatre director—as an early mentor.
In 1965, Clapton formed Darktown Strutters with Ross Andreasen, Mick Bradley, Will Fowler, Dennis Hunter, Ross Lamonde and Ian Peepman. He left school in his final year without completing his mathematics examination. He played guitar while training as a commercial artist in the 1960s. He raised enough money to board ship, in late 1967, via MS Achille Lauro, to London where he played with three locals in a pre-punk group. This was followed by a group with four North Americans who were raided by the police for marijuana importing. His visa had expired and he moved to Germany, where he played in a band, Bitch; he worked solo in folk clubs and on streets busking. Clapton, as guitarist and vocalist, was a member of Sopwith Camel (not the United States band of same name), with Burghard Rausch on drums and Michael Günther on bass guitar (both members of krautrock group Agitation Free). Clapton emerged in the early 1970s as a singer-songwriter in the "troubadour" style of Neil Young and Jackson Browne.
1972–74: Debut album: Prussian Blue
In March 1972, Clapton returned to Australia from Rotterdam via SS Orcades. He signed a publishing deal with Essex Music and a recording deal with Infinity Records, a subsidiary of Festival Records. His debut single, "Last Train to Marseilles", was released in October of that year. Clapton was backed by Red McKelvie on guitar (ex-the Flying Circus), Kenny Kitching on pedal steel, John Capek on piano (ex-Carson) with John Bois on bass guitar and Tony Bolton on drums, both from Country Radio (see Greg Quill). At the end of the year he briefly joined a jazz-rock group, Sun, for six weeks into early 1973—he replaced their previous lead singer, Renée Geyer.
Clapton's debut solo album, Prussian Blue, appeared in November 1973—it included "Last Train to Marseilles" from a year earlier—and was produced by Richard Batchens (Blackfeather, Sherbet). Two more singles were issued, "All the Prodigal Children" in October and "I Wanna Be a Survivor" in July 1974. On "Hardly Know Myself" and "I Wanna Be a Survivor" Clapton was backed by the La De Da's, with other tracks variously featuring McKelvie, Glenn Cardier on guitar, Russell Dunlop on drums, Mike Perjanik on organ, Trevor Wilson and Mike Lawler on bass guitar and Ian Bloxham on percussion.
According to rock historian Noel McGrath, the album suffered from lack of radio exposure—Australian commercial pop radio was overtaken by a local version of the Drake-Chenault "More Music" format—with a drastically restricted play list shutting out many Australian performers. Garry Raffaele of The Canberra Times observed, "[he] sounds as though he's involved with the real issues of our time—pollution, man's inhumanity to those who share Spaceship Earth with him, communication difficulties. He writes of these things but his words are not likely to convince anybody. It's the simplistic trap again."
Due to grass-roots support, Prussian Blue sold steadily and four years later it was still selling 200–500 copies per week. Critics praised the album, which contained songs written while in Europe and Festival kept him on their books. He described the title track in Rolling Stone Australia as "the only song I ever contrived" and "came about when I was going through my 'wanna-write-me-a-masterpiece' stage, which everyone goes through". It took, "six weeks getting all the right clever rhymes and all".
1975–77: Girls on the Avenue to Main Street Jive
Clapton's commercial breakthrough came with his single, "Girls on the Avenue", issued in January 1975. Although Festival had little faith in the song—initially releasing it as the B-side of "Travelling Down the Castlereagh"—it was picked up by radio and reached No. 4 on the Australian Kent Music Report Singles Chart in March. According to Clapton:"Not only did I not feel that 'Girls on the Avenue' was the perfect song, but Festival Records rejected that song six times. They'd say to me, 'What's the chorus, is it "Don't you slip" or "Friday night ..."?' I don't know! Why does a song have to have a hook or a chorus? You either like the song or you don't!"
The song was written about his observations of women from and around the Avenue, Rose Bay, although it was seen as a paean to prostitutes by the record label, radio commentators and the prostitutes themselves. According to Clapton, it took half an hour to write. He said the only real money he ever made out of "Girls on the Avenue" was when it became available "on one of those bargain Explosive Hits (compilations) and they sell about 400,000 each time". According to him, in 1976 there were three cover versions of it: one by Mike McGear, another by ex-Fairport Convention member Trevor Lucas and an obscure Greek version.
The album Girls on the Avenue, also produced by Batchens, appeared in April 1975. For touring and session work he formed the Richard Clapton Band with John Carr on guitar, Ken Firth on bass guitar, Ace Follington on drums, McKelvie on guitar and Tony Slavich on keyboards. The album cover depicted Clapton with three women—one was a prostitute. Other tracks dealt with similar themes to his debut album. Because of the commercial nature of the song, he was accused of selling out by deliberately writing a commercial song, a claim he refuted. A second single, "Down the Road", was released in June but did not chart.
Clapton moved to Melbourne to write new material for his third album, Main Street Jive, which released in July 1976, again produced by Batchens. He contributed six tracks to the film soundtrack for Highway One (1976). It provided the single, "Capricorn Dancer", which reached No. 40 in early 1977 and remains a concert staple. Other contributors to the soundtrack, produced and engineered by Batchens, were the Dingoes, Bilgola Bop Band, Skyhooks and Ol' 55 with one track each. Clapton toured Europe at the end of 1976 with his band including Slavich, Michael Hegerty on bass guitar (ex-Stars), Kirk Lorange on lead guitar and Jim Penson on drums (ex-Blackfeather).