Picture from Jim Crowley. Visit his site for more

NEW YORK - In the mid-'60s, the blazing gifts of blues guitarist Eric Clapton inspired disciples to scrawl "Clapton Is God" graffiti throughout London subways. Thirty years later, Clapton's very human nature is writ large on Pilgrim, his first studio collection of original songs since 1989's Journeyman.

In the past decade, Clapton enjoyed huge acclaim and profits from two No. 1 albums, 1994's all-blues From the Cradle and 1992's Grammy-winning Unplugged, which sold 7 million copies and spawned the hit Tears in Heaven.

During that time, he also painfully adjusted to sobriety, survived broken relationships and suffered the loss of his 4 1/2-year-old son, Conor, who died in a fall from a high-rise here in 1991. Pilgrim, due Tuesday, focuses on Clapton's personal odyssey in smooth, polished R&B tunes darkened by despair, haunted by anguished questions and invigorated by hope.

"This album is me being me today," says Clapton, who at 52 is far removed from the prolific but insecure prodigy reigning in the Yardbirds, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Cream, and Derek and the Dominos. "I feel absolutely raw most of the time. I don't have anything left in my life that you can regard as a crutch: no women, no drugs or alcohol, no mind-bending stuff, no cigarettes. I don't really have anything left besides the knowledge of who I am.

Looking professorial in black-rimmed glasses and short salt-and-pepper hair, Clapton engages in this rare interview with introspective candor and humility, downplaying his role as rock's classiest act and examining his recovery from grief, substance abuse and counterfeit comforts.

Pilgrim confronts "the residue from the death of my son and the years after, when I tried to build a couple relationships that fell to pieces," he says, dumping three packets of sugar in his cappuccino. Peering outside his hotel suite window, he continues, "It's peculiar, because we are sitting not more than 50 yards, and almost at the same height, from where Conor fell. I looked out my window about 20 minutes ago and thought about what it must have been like for him. I can't fully take it on board. My experience of grief is that you take little sips of it, like very fine wine, and let it go."

Conor surfaces in the elegiac My Father's Eyes and Circus, a bittersweet recollection of a father-and-son outing. Clapton plans to sing it on his tour, but he feels the same apprehension that attended live versions of the equally moving Tears in Heaven.

"I'd be maintaining a balance, then a phrase or a word would just take over and I'd be in great danger of choking up and losing it," he says. "It's a risky business, like walking a tightrope. Being in front of an audience makes it worse, because the old co-dependent in me picks up on their feelings. I get swept up."

Fans touched by Tears in Heaven eased Clapton's grief. For a year, he started each morning by reading the 50 to 100 letters that poured in daily.

While confiding innermost agonies and fears, Clapton aims for universal appeal. His writing vacillates between anonymous abstractions and intimate specifics until he finds a balance that's "not too obscure and not too self-indulgent." Originally hailed as a blues guitar virtuoso, he has earned renown as a strong vocalist and sensitive songwriter, in the process gaining a vast female audience that regards him as a crooner rather than an ax-slinger.

Young women, Clapton's longtime weakness, no longer provide a satisfying fix. After divorcing Pattie Boyd (George Harrison's ex-wife and the inspiration for Layla), he was linked to a series of models and starlets, including Conor's mother, actress Lori del Santo.

His eye still wanders, but "what I've noticed is that women don't look back quite as much," he says, smiling. "I'm getting used to the idea that I'm not in the market anymore. As a man gets older, that becomes painful. The experience of looking at a girl and having her look back with disdain on her face is quite tough. It's like being criticized by your children. The humility in that is hard."

Though unattached, Clapton is optimistic and considers himself better equipped emotionally for a stable relationship than ever before.

At the moment, work is his preoccupation. U.S. concerts starting March 30 will include electric and semiacoustic sets that sample Pilgrim, his 32nd release since 1970's self-titled solo debut, and a cross-section of career hits. Lexus, in its first sponsorship of an entertainer, will underwrite the expensive production, which features a 20-piece orchestra but none of the spectacle favored by U2 and the Rolling Stones.

"No, that drives me crazy," Clapton says. "They annoy the hell out of me. I see it as a massive smoke screen for lack of a spark. I like the Stones - they are my old pals - but I can't stand to see those people live, because there is just too much flash and bang. It's like going to a fun fair. I like simplicity. I'm not a big one for hoopla."

Likewise offstage. He's quietly running a jewelry business and starting an underground clothing label. He devotes free time to fly-fishing and crafting silver-beaded leather items.

"It's a rich life," says Clapton, renouncing a myth, widely subscribed to in blues, that suffering yields good art. In the prime of life and in a hard-earned spell of calm, he's creating music that excites critics, moves fans and continues to heal his psyche."Music gave focus to issues that I couldn't grasp or verbalize or intellectualize," he says. "Pain and joy and sadness became materialized in music."

But is music his life's axis? "No, it isn't," he says adamantly. "And that's important. When music was the be-all and end-all, it became too frightening and overwhelming. A while back, I made a decision to bring it back into perspective. Now it's fun again."

By Dominic Kennedy

ERIC CLAPTON, the rock guitarist and reformed hellraiser, has become a volunteer worker at a drugs and alcohol clinic, persuading addicts that if total abstinence is good enough for him, they can also give up.

The artist nicknamed "God" now devotes as much energy to counselling sessions and leading discussion groups at a London clinic as he does to playing his guitar.

Clapton, whose five-year-old son Conor died when he fell from a 53rd-floor New York apartment, discloses that he was brought back from "the edge of the world" by getting to know his daughter Ruth conceived during a romance in Montserrat. He has also spoken for the first time about his affection for the singer Sheryl Crow, the chances of them getting back together, and his hopes that, at 53, he might become a father again.

He condemns much of Britpop as "children's music", saying that the bands may try to look tough but their records sound like Freddie and the Dreamers. In an interview with The Times Magazine today, Clapton says that after recovering from a disastrous journey through life, it became vital for him to give something back to others. He works as anonymously as he can at the addiction clinic. Clapton is creating his own 36-bed addiction clinic in Antigua, where he has a home. It opens in July, and will cater for wealthy Western addicts and poor islanders.