Guitar hero Eric Clapton unplugs for MTV

While many guitar players took the blues route, Eric Clapton remains one of the most expressive and melodic to ever take to the instrument and genre. Photo: AFP Filepic

For acoustic guitar-toting wannabes first getting to grips with the instrument in the early 1990s, a few tunes stand out as baptisms by fire. There’s the obligatory More Than Words by Extreme, Poison’s Every Rose Has Its Thorn and Patience by Guns N’ Roses.

But the album that truly turned aspiring guitar players on their heads was a highly unlikely one, a session enshrined in the annals of MTV’s then-ubiquitous Unplugged series. By 1990, blues guitar hero Eric Clapton wasn’t exactly denting popular music’s charts. However, just a year later, following the horrible death of his toddler son, Conor, he wrote (with Will Jennings) and recorded the aching Tears In Heaven.