Richard Clapton

Richard Clapton
A band is performing outside a shop forefront. The male at left is playing a guitar and is at a microphone. A fifty-seven year-old male in middle is shown partly in left profile. He has dark hair, wears sunglasses and is playing a guitar while at a microphone. A drum kit is to his left and behind, but the drummer is not in shot. A third band member, also on guitar, is mostly obscured by frame cut-off. Two audience members are in the foreground.
Clapton (centre) performing at The Entertainment Quarter in October 2005
Background information
Born (1948-05-18) 18 May 1948 (age 76)
OriginSydney, New South Wales, Australia
GenresRock
Occupations
Instruments
  • Vocals
  • guitar
Years active1965–present
Labels
Websiterichardclapton.com

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."[1] 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.

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference McFarlane was invoked but never defined (see the help page).